Reginald D Hunter interview: 'Both America and Britain have lost their minds'

Seeking adventure: Georgia-born Reginald D Hunter fell for London
Kash Seff
Simon Hemelryk23 April 2019

It has been 20 years since American comedian Reginald D Hunter made Britain his home. He has seen quite a lot of change in that time — much of it positive, but a fair bit negative, too. The 50-year-old comedian, whose new show, Facing the Beast, marks the anniversary of his arrival from Albany in Georgia, USA, can still recall the sense of optimism around that time.

“I was sat next to an Englishman on the plane over here and, I swear, the level of excitement coming from him…” he says. “Tony Blair hadn’t been elected long before, and this guy was like, ‘There’s going to be changes! Our time is coming!’”

Hunter studied acting at Rada, then discovered stand-up and decided not to return home. “I called my sister and she said, ‘Well, there ain’t nothing new happening here’,” he says in his deep Southern drawl.

“I wanted to seek action, adventure and the British way. There were fantastic house parties and I met my first Russian guy. All my life I’d been told they were bad, so I felt like Han Solo meeting Darth Vader. But we got drunk together and I was like, ‘Oh man, you’re just a person.’

“I had come from a very Christian American background and had been as judgmental a motherf***er as that can produce. But I learned that there are many ways life is lived best. I could probably have done that anywhere, but being in this country was still a big shock to me.”

Yet in recent years some of that British positivity and openness that so impressed Hunter has been lost.

“The attitude from that guy on the plane I was never to see again,” he says ruefully. “We seem to have less money now and there’s more of a vocal Right wing.”

The 40-date tour, which is at the Richmond Theatre and Alexandra Palace next month and the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in June, deals with everything from the Palestinian question to “what to do if your woman wants her a**hole bleached”. But Hunter also confronts arguably the biggest upheaval in his adopted country since he has been here: Brexit.

As a semi-outsider, he isn’t quite sure how the referendum was allowed to happen. “When the vote was approaching, I was saying, ‘Of all the things the Government doesn’t let you decide, why are they letting you decide this?’” The result, he says, was engineered by “some cats who, for 30 to 40 years had despised the European Union and had been waiting for that defining moment when technology could be used to subvert votes”.

Brexit supporters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg are well protected from day-to-day reality by wealth, he argues, allowing them to revel in the past glory of empire. “They convinced a lot of others that if we just leave the EU, it would be the first step towards getting it back. But Britain doesn’t quite have the world’s number-one navy any more. Brexit is the crowning glory of what the far Right has been working towards for many years. And we’ll see it go further.”

The sometimes controversial comic finds the trend for people finding offence by misinterpreting what others say frustrating.

“I spend a good deal of effort crafting words and getting ideas across, because I want them to be considered. If you hate the idea, that’s fine. But if halfway through you hear the word ‘woman’ and decide I’m being misogynist and don’t hear the rest of my idea, I might have to give you the skunk eye.

“A bunch of so-called feminists — I’m going to call them vigilantes — said [on social media] that they were coming to one of my gigs to mess things up a few years ago because they’d decided I was a misogynist.

“I was exhausted but summoned all the hatred in my heart and it turned out to be a very good show. Many of the feminists stayed and enjoyed it,” he says with a rich chuckle. “I haven’t been called a misogynist lately, but I’m fairly certain that it would take less than three words to provoke that sort of thing again.”

Hunter’s show also deals with the complexity of sorting out the US gun problem. “Even if you made guns illegal now, you’d still have 320 million of them already in the country. What are you going to do about that?”

So with the difficulties of gun control and the rise of Trump, Brexit and the far-Right, which is in a better state at the moment, the US or UK? “Put it this way: both countries have lost their minds, but only one of them has money,” he replies.

On a personal level, though, Hunter, who has a girlfriend and a 17-year-old daughter and has become a favourite on TV panel shows such as Have I Got News for You, seems very happy living in London.

“Where I am is super-peaceful. I didn’t realise I needed this much quiet until east London gave it to me. But whenever I’m walking through London, whichever part I’m in is my favourite. All those bridges — I call that postcard London. Dining by the Thames is really nice, too.”

The growth of multiculturalism has made London a better city, he says. “More and more, ethnic groups are moving out of their neighbourhoods into the wider culture. I think the housing scramble has meant that people just can’t afford to live in an area where everyone’s like you.

“Oh, and the increase in bicycle paths has been f***ing crucial,” he enthuses. “They’ve added excitement and losing fat [to getting around]. With the new paths there’s less danger of someone opening a car door and you doing a somersault into oblivion.

“I’m really getting into cycling. In fact, I’m going to get a new bike soon.”

Reginald D Hunter’s Facing the Beast tour is at Richmond Theatre on May 15, Alexandra Palace on May 16 and Shepherd’s Bush Empire on June 22; reginaldhunter.com

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