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My first time with Doug Stanhope

Our assistant Ed Williams tells us how he fell in love with comedian Doug Stanhope...

I remember the first time I heard a Doug Stanhope comedy album. I'd just moved back to London and was going through a bit of a cultural renaissance with my flatmate. We'd stay up all night getting wasted, listening to music, watching films, and classic comedians. I'd decided to take a much-needed break from the audio-visual overload to hide in my bedroom and play my newly purchased Resident Evil 4 (complete with chainsaw controller - that I never used). Once you've watched your 5th Lynch movie in the space of 48 hours, you need to kill some infected Spanish villagers to gain some perspective.

As I shotgunned my thousandth Capcom monstrosity, an angry American voice seeped through my door. It was talking about taking ecstasy by itself in Alaska, and the problems associated with it - basically, how the temptation to engage in sexual activity with inanimate objects becomes overpowering after a given period of time. It then went on to offer the homosexuals in the audience a free ticket for life, due to their pro-active approach to tackling the planet's overpopulation problem. By the time the voice moved on to DMT (and the dangers involved), I had to put my controller down. Who was this man? How was he getting away with this? It was my flatmate's greatest hit mix of his favourite Stanhope skits, and I was hooked.

It's easy to compare Stanhope to Hicks, as both use the voice of an angry everyman. But it's a disservice to Doug not to dig a little deeper. He's a true libertarian in every sense of the word, strongly opposed to the state legislating against drugs, sexuality or any freedom that comes down to personal choice. But instead of ramming it down the audience's throat, he pitches examples that hold society's hypocrisy up to a mirror, so we can all look at it with him, laugh and agree that the system is flawed. He takes arguments to the extreme not just to get a laugh or to shock, but to press home his points. This does mean that things can get a little rough at times. The man does not care if he offends you - it's your problem, not his, and you have every right to switch him off or walk out of his show.

At a time when British comedy had reached a point where to "shock" an audience was considered the height of genius, I was relieved that there was still someone out there willing to give his material a bit of weight. You can retro-justify a joke all you want: if people didn't get your point in the first place, you need to take a long hard look at your material, and ask yourself "Is what I'm trying to say a) clear enough and b) worth pissing off this many people?" In Doug's case - yes it is. He's not on some pseudo-crusade to push the limits of comedy. He's not just aiming for a cheap laugh. His material cuts to the very bone of society's ills, and he is there to hold open the festering wound and invite us to take a long, hard look. Then to lighten the mood, he'll throw in a dick joke.

You can pick up a copy of Doug Stanhope’s new DVD, Before Turning The Gun On Himself, from Play.com.