Reginald D. Hunter

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This week’s entertainment highlights

the critical list THE HEADLINER: COMEDY

Compelling, frank and wickedly smart, the American standup tells ELLA WALKER just how funny he’s going to be this year.

Reginald D. Hunter: “People wanna fight less when they’re laughing.”

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Editor: Ella Walker email: ella.walker@cambridgenews.co.uk For breaking entertainment news for the city, visit cambridge-news. co.uk/whatson Follow @CamWhatsOn on Twitter

HAT deep southern American drawl, all warm and edged by laughter, Reginald D. Hunter really is quite enthralling. It makes a change – comedians can be so intimidating.

Of course, you can’t expect them to be hilarious all the time, that would be exhausting, but more often than not they’re dry, cutting and far less funny on the phone than they are on stage.

Having seen Georgia-born Hunter spit out a spiky, chokingly funny set at Latitude Festival, I was anxious, but the man doesn’t disappoint in real life, oh no.

Mesmerising to listen to, playful and candid, he directs his complete attention at you as if, right now, you are the only person he has time for, and he plans to make you laugh.

The youngest of nine children, it’s a skill Hunter put to work earlier than he can remember.

“I was probably quite small [when I got a taste for entertaining]. I was class clown at the school that I went to and I was asked to spend the remainder of the period in the hallway on a number of occasions . . .”

He adds thoughtfully: “People seem to wanna fight less when they’re laughing.”

Moving to the UK permanently in 1997 to become an actor, Hunter famously abandoned a life of Shakespeare in his mid-20s after being dared to try out at a comedy club. He nailed it, made a tempting £100 and has been racking up TV appearances and touring frantically ever since.

That’s not to say his material hasn’t caused skirmishes of its own. His tour posters have been banned on the London Underground and several of his gigs have been de-named by fretful, censorious venues, anxious about his use of the N-word in show titles.

As a result, he is regularly dubbed “provocative” by the press, but doesn’t see himself, or his material, that way.

“There’s something about the word ‘provocative’ that has the connotation of something to do with sex or some scantily dressed woman saying ‘VOTE!’ You know what I mean?! That seems provocative to me,” he laughs. “I just think of myself as myself. I think I’m only provocative to middle class white people who are only accustomed to hearing people like themselves speak. But the people in my circle? They used to me, they as mad as me. The people that I come from? They’re worse!”

When it comes to people in the audience who do feel it’s necessary to chat back, Hunter’s experienced

so many heckles – good and bad – he says it’s like “asking a woman: what’s the crudest thing a construction crew has ever said to you on the way to work?”

Considering his flair for stirring up controversy though, he hasn’t yet found a line he’s not willing to cross.

“To date I have not run across any subject matter that I think is off limits.

The only subject matter that is off limits to me is a subject matter that I don’t have something different to say about or I can make funny. I wish I had more austerity jokes; I just haven’t been able to make them funny yet!”

He has a process, he says, for formulating material. “I go through, plucking ideas from like a tree, and then I jot them down and put them in a bank for later. Then I go and I sit down at some point, and I look at those things, I look at articles and magazines that I’ve been collecting, and I re-read those and I find out what’s striking to me about them, and I correlate those with actual human experiences I’m having with family and friends.

“Then I ask myself: what do I really think of this?

Bottom line, no bull, and then, after I find out what I really think, I enjoy a tasty beverage or some such thing, and then I proceed to make my truest, most innate core thoughts as silly as I possibly can.”

Depending on the kind of comedy you do, Hunter says, it’s important your life mirrors it in some way.

“If you just do fluffy stuff, then I imagine a fluffy lifestyle to a certain degree would assist with that.

Me personally, I have explored darker themes and I think to explore them you kinda have to live them a bit. And I don’t mean like you got to go out and be a prostitute to talk about prostitution – I ain’t saying nothing like that. I am saying that, as best you can, with your safety in mind, then you try to put yourself in the shoes of the subject matter you’re speaking on, so that you can speak with some degree of authenticity.”

His current show, The Man Who Attempted To Do As Much As Such, is coming to Cambridge Corn Exchange and theme-wise he explains he’s “partial

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Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | April 30, 2015 | 27

“I’m only provocative to middle class white people who are only accustomed to hearing people like themselves speak. But the people in my circle? They used to me, they as mad as me.

The people that I come from?

They’re worse!”

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THE HEADLINER: COMEDY to interweaving things,” so expect thoughts on family, life, government, taxes and stories from his international travels.

“It’s an adventurous show,” he says, not giving much away.

“I’ll be different than I’ve been before. I don’t know which way but I mean, you keep evolving.”

Now 46, does he think he’s getting funnier with age or is he facing down the terrifying predicament of becoming a grumpy old man? “Oh man, do you know what, that’s an excellent question young lady,” he laughs (told you he was a charmer). “I do think I’m going to be very funny this year cause for the last three or four years I’ve been feeling kinda in a bad mood and I’m not in a bad mood no more. I think I’m naturally kinda funloving.

“However, I was home recently in the Deep South and I was looking at my father, who’s 96, I’ve got two brothers in their 60s, and you know, they can be grumpy as hell so, it’s like, I got the same DNA! So what does that say about me? You know, I hope not.

“I’m gonna work real hard, I’m gonna try hang out with more fluffy people because I don’t think my brothers hang out with no fluffy people.”

When he’s not doing comedy, Hunter’s basking in the praise his recent BBC series, Reginald D. Hunter’s

“I was home recently in the Deep South and I was looking at my father, who’s 96, I’ve got two brothers in their 60s, and you know, they can be grumpy as hell so, it’s like, I got the same DNA! So what does that say about me? ”

From page 27 Songs of the South garnered, exploring his homeland’s musical heritage and identity.

“I was enriched by the experience, and I mean like 20 times over,” he says reverently, before adding: “There were pockets that were very fun, but there were also things like sunburn, which I got really acquainted with and I will never tease white people about again.

“I see this as a serious condition, I didn’t take y’all seriously before I experienced it and now I have, so that was unpleasant. So things like sunburn, mosquitoes, gun-toting, bloodthirsty racists – them kinds of things can make it sort of less fun, but in the places we went that didn’t have them things, or at least two of them, haha, we managed to do all right.”

So after the racists, the sunburn, three Edinburgh Festival Award nominations and a Writers’ Guild Award for Comedy, there can’t be too much else to tick off on his career wish list . . .

“There are several things but quite frankly I just met you!” he guffaws. “I mean, you seem like a real lovely person but discussing the rest of my life plans? Oh no man! Buy me a drink first at least!”