Reginald D Hunter goes back to church with his new stand up tour

Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Sunday, June 28

WHEN Reginald D Hunter is a special guest on panel shows like QI or Have I Got News For You it’s easy to forget that this apparently warm and cuddly comic once had his 2006 tour posters banned from the Tube.

Indeed only two years ago Hunter was at the centre of tabloid controversy after a performance at the Professional Footballers Association ruffled a few feathers with his uncensored take on racism, and a Facebook spat when an audience member accused him of misogyny.

So his first tour of the UK since 2013 has set Hunter something of a problem.

“There’s a new demographic added to the mix,” he says.

“I keep running into people who know me in different ways – from panel shows, from stand-up, from the music doc [BBC Four’s Songs Of The South], you never know where people are going to come from. That’s the toughest part of this, the collection of expectations based on how people have come to you. It’s all a fragment of who you are.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly some critics have described this latest tour as slightly mellower than what has gone before.

It’s not a description he entirely agrees with.

“I’m not saying some of the things which are like landmine issues,” he says. “I don’t think I’m talking about rape in this tour.

“Coming back to stand-up after being away from it I’m not pre-occupied with being controversial or edgy – it’s about being funny.

“A tour itself is like going back to church – and I haven’t been to church for a long time. If you go two weeks without performing you feel like the world has moved on. It’s only now I feel like I’ve got some dexterity back.”

Hunter’s recent documentary experiences form part of the tour. Songs Of The South saw him return home to the southern states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and his home state of Georgia to investigate its traditional music.

Initially he admits he was reluctant to take the job on.

“I didn’t think they would pull it off,” he says. “I had to keep an eye on the British people around me. They were all like: ‘Let’s go over there’ and I had to tell them: ‘No, they will kill us if we go in that building’.

“I’m from a sleepy town, and the entirety of the South - apart from the major cities - is sleepy.

“It’s really weird – they don’t quite revere the music in the way British people do. I think it’s the same way people in Liverpool don’t love The Beatles the way people do in New York. A lot of the Southern artists I spoke to were like: ‘Really? You want this?’”

Hunter left Georgia at the age of 27 to study at RADA, and makes an annual return visit to see his family – where he claims to be the fourth funniest in the room.

He is revisiting those early years in his forthcoming autobiography.

“My best ideas don’t see the light of day because I haven’t figured out a way to make them funny,” he says.

“The nice thing about the documentary and the book is I can look at ideas without the pressure of having to be funny.”

Making the documentary made him see his home town through new eyes.

“The South has changed,” he says. “There’s very little industry, and there’s fewer black people around because so many of us have been locked up. There is a fascination in the US with incarceration.

“I was talking to Kate Pierson from The B-52s about how Southern ladies and gentlemen seemed to recognise each other.

“It goes beyond lines of race and gender – if you’re Southern you know how to behave. That was one of the most enjoyable aspects – I got reminded the south wasn’t totally composed of poor race relations and a lack of education, there is a joyous thing. We like to party and welcome people. It’s a real juxtaposition – we are welcoming, but we are so murderous.”

A lot goes back to the civil war, and the feeling the South was cheated by the North.

“Slavery ending wasn’t a moral re-awakening,” he says.

“The North wanted to take over the industry of the South, and the best way was to take away the labour force. Southerners feel like a way of life was stripped from them.

“There are ways that can be changed. There are very few things in the world that can’t be changed with 15 minutes of apology and some land or money.”

Starts 8pm, tickets £25/£23. Call 01273 709709.