Hunting Wry And Low

With apologies to Lemmy, Mike Patton, Bobby Gillespie, Slash, Shaun Ryder, Tim Burgess, Larry Love, Andy Cairns, Pete Doherty, Shane MacGowan, Brian Molko and all the other rock ‘n’ rollers it’s been my privilege to meet at the height of their hedonism, the most badly behaved person I’ve ever encountered is a comedian who for legal reasons – plus the fact he’s considerably bigger than me – shan’t be named here.

From gratuitous sex and picking fights to lying through his teeth and the excess consumption of drink and drugs, he is the filth hound that other filth hounds call the Guv’nor.
“Man, you’re making me feel all nostalgic,” Reginald D. Hunter says ruefully. “There was a time when I was deep into drugs and whoring but I’m all about the jokes now, sir. I’m completely about the jokes!”
As a result of him becoming a wholesome family entertainer – somebody has to invent a sarcasm typeface – the 44-year-old has ditched the controversial Pride & Prejudice… And Niggas and Trophy Nigga show titles in favour of the altogether more Daily Mail-friendly In The Midst Of Crackers, which as we speak is going down a storm at the Edinburgh Festival.
“By the way, the whoring and drugging and drinking and fighting you were talking about – I’ve seen plenty of that these past few weeks in Edinburgh… especially among the Irish cats. Your comedians are the finest ambassadors a country could have.”
Indeed, it’s an Irish funnyman who turned the then teenage Reginald D. onto the idea of making people laugh for a living.
“As a Third Grader, I was staying with my sister and her family in Michigan and every night at 11 o’clock it was Benny Hill and at 11.30 Dave Allen,” he reminisces. “At first it was Benny Hill who fascinated me – you didn’t get to see many tits on TV in Georgia at the time – but then I became obsessed with Dave Allen. The way he told a story… man, that guy was a genius. I didn’t fully understand the references, but I knew absolutely what he meant. Like the main role of the Catholic Church was to prevent fucking. It’s only much, much later that I realised he was saying these things that needed to be said about Ireland on British television. I know you guys haven’t always got on, but the English did good giving Dave Allen his own series.
“The first person who really made me laugh,” Reg continues, “was Richard Pryor. My mother being a staunch Christian was against laughter and music and fun, so I did the typical kid thing of sneaking down to the basement to watch him. The ‘eureka moment!’ was when I was about 12 or 13. Dad was out drinking and Momma was in the back gossiping on the phone. No one was aware of my activities, which was rare, so I was able to tune into the devil’s own channel, HBO, and see Richard Pryor’s famous 1979 Long Beach concert from rude start to even ruder finish. Again, it was the set-ups I loved as much as the jokes themselves.”
Sadly, within 12 months of delivering one of comedy’s landmark performances, Pryor set himself on fire whilst freebasing cocaine and drinking 151-proof rum.
“Not a good combination,” Hunter solemnly notes. “I don’t know if it was that, but by 1982 Richard Pryor started going downhill. He was still a step faster than other comics but at that Long Island gig he was three steps faster. Whether you’re a comic or an athlete or a supermodel, there’s a window for us all. Eddie Murphy’s closed after he got married, had kids and started making just-for-money films like The Nutty Professor. If he were still around today there’s a chance Bill Hicks would be making rom-coms with Jennifer Anniston. We all pass our sell-by date at some point.”
Reginald D. obviously being the current Usain Bolt and/or Cara Delevigne of stand-up.
“Am I breaking world records or getting out of bed for, well, it’s gotta be more now than the $10,000 Kate Moss was getting?” he reflects. “Sadly no, but after feeling I wasn’t funny for a while I can look at myself in the mirror again and say, ‘Hey handsome, you did good out there tonight!’”
Talking of which, when Reg played the Iveagh Gardens recently my girlfriend’s were one of about 500 pairs of female eyes mentally undressing him.
“I’ve been told that people feel secure being around me. They realise I’m not sexually threatening… that goes a long way with white women. They know that I’m probably stoned and I ain’t going to beat nobody up or cuss nobody out. I’ve had gay dudes hit on me and say, ‘I didn’t know whether or not you’re gay but I knew you wouldn’t punch me if you weren’t.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re right!’”
Googling Reg’s hometown of Albany, Georgia last night revealed the existence there of 1). Roads coincidentally called Lonesome and Hardup, which intersect, and 2). A thriving Christian comedy circuit.
“Sadly Ray Charles, who was born in Albany, moved away before he could use this coincidence to blow Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ out of the water. As for your second discovery, it’s a simple formula – Loneliness x Hardupness = Jesus. If you wanted somebody to make you some BBQ in Albany, they will probably be Christian. If you wanted some moonshine, which is still popular, they’d probably be Christian. They just don’t brew moonshine on Sundays, that’s all. I used to have this joke, which is, ‘If you want to upset Americans just act like you’ve never heard of Jesus but if you want to upset English people say you’ve never heard of the film Withnail And I. They will fucking lose their minds!’ Anyway, I applaud your online detective work.”
Where the ‘net gets it wrong is in its claim that whilst still an actor Reginald D. appeared alongside Joe Pesci as ‘tow-truck driver’ in a 1992 episode of Tales From The Crypt.
“I’ve heard that too and it’s completely untrue,” he laughs. “If my being ‘tow-truck driver’ in an episode of Tales From The Crypt is your sole reason for wanting to conduct this interview I’ll understand if you terminate it now.”
Home & Away’s not on for half-an-hour, so let’s keep ratcheting.
“I tell you what, I was home last Christmas and my brother, with whom I still butt heads like a teenager, turned to me and goes, ‘What’s this stuff you’re saying about mother?’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ to which he replies, ‘It’s on your Wikipedia page that mother abused you and hit you and you got your ass kicked. I mean, we all did but no one abused you.’ I said, ‘Did you read the part about me being ‘tow-truck driver in Tales From The Crypt?’ Him: ‘Yeah, I meant to ask you when did that happen?’ Me: ‘It never did, just like I never said mother was an abuser.’ It’s kind of cool though that I’ve my own mythology!”
Not being ‘tow-truck driver’ I can handle, but if Reg tells me he never had a gun pulled on him by a crack dealer who caught him cheating at cards my whole world will implode.
“No, I was cheating and my buddy who sold crack to get his fix on did pull a gun on me. I was like, ‘You were caught card cheating by a nigger who was high on crack? If you can’t slide that nigger now what chance do you have with somebody who’s sober?’ I was a while coming to terms with that.”
Less denting to Reg’s self-esteem was a reviewer describing him a few years ago as ‘the black Bernard Manning’.
“That’s one of the benefits of being an outsider. It didn’t sting the way it would’ve if I’d been from Britain. I talked to my agent about using ‘He’s the black Bernard Manning’ on my next year’s poster instead of the usual ‘He’s a comedy genius!’ but it aroused a different sort of alarm with them than it did me.”
Putting aside his racist cuntdom for a moment, Manning was technically a very gifted comic.
“It often works that way. Mozart was an arrogant little shit but the music of the heavens came out of his body. Bernard Manning had loathsome politics but proficiency-wise was the best stand-up England has ever produced. At least his racism was overt. It’s the people who seem reasonable but are quietly campaigning behind the scenes for the reintroduction of lynching who you’ve really got to watch
out for.”
I’m going to spare Reginald D. an eight trillionth question about what went down at the Professional Footballers’ Association Awards in April, and instead refer you to his Iveagh Garden take on events, to whit: “It’s only natural that players who’d never heard that sort of language off the pitch before would be offended by my use of the word ‘nigga’.”
Touché! Of course, stand-up is but one component part of a wildly successful career that’s been fuelled by Reg’s rapier witted contributions to 8 Out Of Ten Cats, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, QI, Would I Lie To You and, most crucially, Have I Got News For You. Exactly how spontaneous are those Paul Merton ad-libs?
“When you turn up on the day, you get given the topics but not the questions,” he divulges. “You’ve then got a couple of hours to think of lines pertaining to Jay Z or the referendum or whichever member of the Royal Family has embarrassed Her Majesty that week. The comics who have the hardest time on Have I Got News For You are the ones who try to crowbar their existing jokes in. On the odd occasion you’ve something that fits perfectly you have to ask yourself, ‘Do I hang on to it or burn this baby right now?’ The answer in my case always being, ‘Fuck it, there is no yesterday and there is no tomorrow. You only have this moment right here. Burn the bitch, burn it!’”
Mantras for life don’t come any more awesome than that…