Lewis Schaffer hates Britain.

A New Yorker transplanted to Peckham by way of a failed marriage to an English woman, he is only still here because of their two young children. “I’m not an immigrant. I’m not a tourist. I’m a hostage,” he grumbles melodramatically.

He has been resident for eight years – almost long enough, he thinks, to make a friend. “It takes about nine years, so I can tell that one is coming soon.” Certainly long enough to learn how to fit in: “I’ve had to shut up and stop smiling. When I speak to people, I don’t try to shake their hands or touch them in any way. I try not to reveal any personal information because it makes them feel guilty when they don’t reveal any.” Nothing, it seems, will reverse his negativity towards his new home, although he will grudgingly admit to a fondness for tea, Ann Summers stores and relegation in football: “If they are rubbish, they are punished. There’s something about that fluidity which is so American. You’re up, you’re down... it’s like a Frank Sinatra song.”

For the past 18 months Schaffer has been touring a comedy show around the UK in which he airs his amusingly audacious opinions on just why this country is rubbish and America is great. “It’s not even a show,” he says. “It’s just me, Lewis Schaffer, telling a story in a circuitous way. It’s like Ross Noble except I know what I want to say.”

By way of example, he offers: “Every problem that comes here, you think it’s come from over there. Obviously that must be where things happen. A kid can’t poke a kid with a knife without someone blaming America. The economy can’t collapse without someone blaming America. It must be the greatest country – look at the power it has over your minds.”

Then there is: “In England they think the country is s*** but they believe they themselves, as Englishmen, are great.

Americans are losers who come to a great country, whereas English people believe they live in a dump that’s keeping them down. They are so arrogant – worse than the French! At least the French can back it up.” Is it tongue-in-cheek? He claims not. “You think I’m kidding so you can have a good laugh. I think I’m serious, so I feel like I’m imparting some wisdom to you.”

The show was a hit at the last Edinburgh Fringe, with critics hailing it variously as “hilarious... offensive... fascinating.” It was something of a turnaround for a comedian once renowned for his spectacularly disastrous stage appearances. What changed?

“Mainly I got fed up trying to be nice,” Schaffer says. “I realised that (as one review put it) I was an entertaining car-crash of a spectacle and if people didn’t like that, they could f*** off.” He also believes the show taps into a key element of our national psyche: “You lot just love having your bottoms smacked.”

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