Reginald D Hunter

I have to admit to being a Reginald D Hunter virgin until now. But boy, did he pop my comedy cherry. He is a fantastic, sexy, friendly, funny hour in anyone’s Edinburgh. His show is a seriously intelligent tap dance along the tight-rope of inter-racial sexual politics. It is a skilled performance. Given to, I noticed, an all white audience.

He has been told, he says, that as a comedian he is really a philosopher. Hunter opens with some relaxed but funny stuff, which he does, he tells us, to “get into my rhythm”. And he has himself some kick-ass rhythm. He talks about images of white women and of black women, he talks about the way he reacts to gay men, about being “black middle-class”, being a “kid bomb”, about his first love, the glorious guilt of “liberal white people”, and about using racism to advantage. He demonstrates the preconceptions that operate between black and white and male and female.

“I need a white woman” he says. You could virtually hear female capillaries dilate across the auditorium. His story about a rich white woman who told him “I don’t see colour” had the entire audience gasping in disbelief as much as we were laughing.

“I should have told you”, he says, “some of my stuff isn’t funny – it’s interesting.” Well “interesting” has rarely made me laugh so much. As a parting gift for those who have come to see the sexist monster who has been so ludicrously and inaccurately written about elsewhere, his closing anecdote about a girl in a wheelchair is stunningly, incorrectly, hilarious.

You could do a great deal worse than be Reginald D Hunter’s prey for an hour.

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