The Hour

There’s a long history of comedians courting controversy, and American comedian Reginald D. Hunter is no exception.

In 2006, posters for his stand-up show Pride and Prejudice and Niggas were banned from the London Underground for fear of offending commuters, even though it had won a Writer’s Guild Award when it previewed at the Edinburgh Fringe that year. Far from changing tactic, his show this year is titled Trophy Nigga.

In the run-up to his performing at the Fringe, he told The Hour why he loves living in the UK: “I like rain. And in many respects it’s more relaxed than America – socially. In terms of drinking and carousing and stuff.

“I go back to Georgia and two glasses of wine at dinner and people are ready to do an intervention. But over here people are pretty liberal about those kind of things. Women dress like hookers on the weekend. So yeah, I’m at home man, I feel at home.”

Like his fellow American comedians Rich Hall, Greg Proops and Joan Rivers, Reg has had far more success here than at home.

“We have to remember that America’s a younger country,” he explained. “We’re not so mature in a lot of ways. We still laugh at pies in the face and slipping on a banana peel and people who got shot in the butt.

“Over here people reward cleverness as much as they reward pure funny. In America, not so much. Over here you can be dissatisfied, ‘I feel like this about the Queen or the Prime Minister’, and over here people are like ‘yeah, yeah’.”

Reg rose to fame after years on the comedy circuit in 2005, with appearances on Have I Got News For You and Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and now regularly features on nearly all TV panel shows – despite the fact that he doesn’t actually own a television.

He once commented on this, “I don’t like television, I don’t watch television. I have seldom seen myself on it and I have come at an accommodation with myself to appear on it.”

Despite this, he owes his livelihood to the box, and explained his reasoning behind it: “There’s only, like, less than a handful of panel shows that I do, and the ones that I do tend to be the ones that are less scripted. And it’s also the reason why I haven’t really done much television beyond panel shows.

“I’m used to, you know, for ten years if something messes up on stage I know where to start looking. But in television an idea passes through so many hands that you’re lucky if it’s still good by the time you go to air.

“So I’ve just learned not to need that. And so I’ll do the bits where I can do the things that I do and if I can’t I’m doing my time preparing for the Edinburgh festival.  Every year we circle august - comics like myself. We call it exams for clowns. ‘Put your pencils down and show us what you’ve been thinking about all year’.”

It’s this preparation that has made him such a constant hit at the Fringe. He remains one of only a handful of artists who has been nominated for a Perrier award three times in consecutive years.

Even with his success his attitude to performing hasn’t changed since he started out. “I’m just usually happy to see anybody… I remember the first Edinburgh when I was averaging four people a night, so that trained you not to be picky.”

If you fancy seeing Reg inTrophy Nigga, he is performing at Pleasance Courtyard every night at 8pm until August 29. Over 18s only.

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