Reginald D Hunter chats about his new tour, being too British and stage fright (From News Shopper)

Reginald D Hunter bringing latest tour to Croydon's Fairfield Halls

4:07pm Monday 31st October 2011 in Comedy

Stand-up powerhouse Reginald D Hunter is back with a new tour, visiting Croydon's Fairfield Halls next month. News Shopper chats to the US comic about why Sometimes The Devil Tells The Truth.

THIS autumn will be a treat for fans of Reginald D Hunter. By the time the public gets a chance to see the powerhouse comic in full small-screened flight with his debut live DVD, he will be on the last lap of his tour, Sometimes Even The Devil Tells The Truth, coming to Croydon's Fairfield Halls on November 19.

It all sounds typically challenging for the stand-up star.

“Since September 11, there’s been a lack of elegance about government deception," Hunter says.

"It’s been naked and half-done and ill-prepared, kind of balls-out. When you listen to politicians or entertainers talking about profitability or collateral damage, they’re telling you nakedly that whatever their interests are it is not for a collective good. Sometimes even the devil tells the truth.

"My sister got mad at me about the title as she’s a born again Christian. But to tell the best lies you have to have a basic understanding of the truth; blueprint-wise you have to know how that works. So as we move away further from the collective good and public discourse and more towards personal interest, people are losing any sense of the need to even use euphemisms any more.”

It may come as a surprise to anyone in the UK familiar with the Southern drawl and relaxed swagger of Reginald D Hunter that audiences back in the nation of his birth consider him to be ‘too British’.

He discovered this recently when he returned to the US to play some gigs in LA at the kind of venues which aren’t printed in the comedy section of the city’s listings magazines.

He said: “In America, people have a need to identify you quickly, work out what you are and what you represent. They try it most quickly through what you look like or what your accent is or what your clothing is; they need to figure out your type.

"A friend of mine said ‘you look and sound weird to them’. So after a few bad gigs, I walked back on stage and said ‘I’m told that I look and sound weird’. That got a little bit of a laugh. ‘Well, suffice to say I’m a mixture of country, nigger and a slight dash of Europe’.

"And after I said that, the audience were like, ‘that’s plausible: ok, go’ and I was in there.

"I have American friends who tell me that I’m now a British comic because of my manner and my sensibility. Yet my British fans point out how American I am. People hear what they want to hear, man.”

For a decade now, British comedy fans have heard a lot from Reginald D Hunter and they seem to like what’s been reaching their ears.

Having decided that careers in the States as either a teacher or preacher were not his destiny, Hunter came over to the UK with a place at RADA in his back pocket.

That project didn’t work out, but by then he had well and truly caught the stage-bug and decided to try a bit of stand-up in Birmingham and then on to London where the opportunities for aspiring comics were more plentiful and audiences seemed tuned in to Reg’s passion, intelligence and attitude-shaking.

“British audiences reward cleverness," he explains.

"And not everything that is clever is necessarily funny.

"American audiences do something different with cleverness. Sometimes I think they don’t register it, but that’s a gross assumption and a gross mis-characterisation of nearly 300 million people.

"It took me about five years to find any kind of stroke in the UK. It’s a very confusing place; there are many contradictions here, in terms of social manner and what means what.

"I came over with my research limited to having watched a handful of British films: The Long Good Friday, My Fair Lady and Salaam Bombay!, and I thought, ‘I’m ready!’”

He now has a career which has been laden with critical acclaim (his first three Edinburgh Fringe shows received Perrier nominations), audience approval (each year in Edinburgh, there has been an incremental rise in the size of venue he’s performed in) and street recognition (thanks to the TV work he’s done such as Have I Got News For You and 8 Out Of 10 Cats).

And at long last he will be making his mark on the nation’s DVD shelves with the November release of his live filmed debut, shot over two nights in June at London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

“It was surreal, I’m still a bit traumatised about it; maybe three per cent traumatised," Hunter admits.

"Everyone’s day has little traumas in it, like you have a car accident or someone yells at you at work and that can jar your spirit.

"But all those things are curable by a good night’s sleep. You wake up and you think, ‘now, something happened yesterday? Oh well.’

"One of the traumas of stand-up is talking to 600 people and going down great and suddenly you’re all by yourself; there’s something jarring about it.

"Stand-up at this level appears to be a soloist art form, but you have other people around you and not just people who know about being funny, but people who know about lighting and sound and it’s fun being part of a team.

"When I was a kid I watched baseball, and at the end of the World Series the winning team ran on the field and hugged each other and went insane. I thought, ‘I want to experience that. I want to climb on a guy’s back and roll over and pour champagne on his head, I want to know what that’s like.’”

When it comes to surrounding himself with people, he goes with those he can trust and whose opinions he respects totally.

Two of those people are John Gordillo, a former flatmate and fellow comic who has directed many of his shows, and long-time writing partner Amanda Baker.

He said: “The lessons that John and Amanda have taught me resound in my ears. The first big gig I did after the first Perrier nomination was at His Majesty’s Theatre.

"I’d never seen three tiers of people looking at me before; it was a little like a deer caught in the headlights.

"What John and Amanda taught me was that if you want to be a stand-up, then you cannot be beaten by a building, you cannot let the prestige or reputation or the lavishness of a place intimidate you. As a stand-up you are supposed to have an inherent disrespect for every building you are in.”

To book, call 020 8688 9291 or visit fairfield.co.uk

:: The comedian's new DVD, Reginald D. Hunter Live, is available from November 14