The stand-up who is serious about comedy

THERE might not be a funnier act in Ireland this year than Reginald D Hunter, who is performing in 14 venues over the next three weeks, with a later date at the end of May, at Vicar Street.

The American stand-up, who has lived in London since 1997, first visited Ireland in 1998, and is friends with Irish peers, including Ed Byrne. “There’s that underlying tension that a lot of my Irish friends have,” he says, “that duality: ‘You’re doomed, you’re doomed, you’re doomed, but you should try and succeed’.” Hunter, who was shortlisted three times in a row for the Perrier award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, at the start of the last decade, is a familiar face from British television’s panel shows, including Have I Got News For You. TV viewers get a sense of his easy, Deep South charm from these vignettes, but they have little of the force of his stand-up shows.

Hunter’s performances, usually with a glass of vodka in tow, are carefully crafted, like one long sermon, and he has the poise and delivery of a good actor, unsurprisingly so, as acting was his first calling. His move to the UK was precipitated by selection (one of six from 1,500 applicants) for New York RADA. His lines have a dark, Wildean artifice to them. The British, he once mused, don’t like “women unless they’re mothers or children unless they’re missing”.