Culture That Made Me: Reginald D Hunter on Richard Pryor, Alex Haley and Southern wit

The American comedian - currently touring in Ireland - also includes Marlon Brando, music videos and Saturday Night Live in his selections

Reginald D Hunter is in the midst of an irish tour. 

American comedian Reginald D Hunter, 52, grew up in Albany, Georgia. In 1997, he secured a place at RADA’s acting school in London, but shortly afterwards switched lanes to become a stand-up comic. His travel series Reginald D Hunter’s Songs of the South and Reginald D Hunter’s Songs of the Border, which explored the music of America’s South, was broadcast on BBC television. He’s currently touring his stand-up show in Ireland, including Cork’s Everyman on Saturday, February 5, and also Limerick, Waterford and Dublin . See: https://www.reginalddhunter.com/  

Saturday Night Live 

During the Seventies, I had a lot of unsupervised TV-watching time. I loved Saturday Night Live. I started getting into irreverent humour. My very working-class conservative Christian family were alarmed by this. It was so subversive. It was silly. I cried like a little girl when John Belushi died. There are some people you can count on for a laugh. He had similar electricity that Sammy Davis Jr had. Whenever he took the stage, you didn’t know what was gonna happen. I loved Dan Ackroyd. Jane Curtain and Lorraine Newman – I kept looking at them thinking, “She’s funny. I’d marry her. I’d like to have a funny wife.”   

Richard Pryor 

Richard Pryor: 'When Pryor came on the scene, nobody was doing or sounding the way he was.'

My older brother had comedy albums that he left floating around I used to listen to like Richard Pryor’s That Nigger’s Crazy. The album [with a title like that] won a Grammy [laughs]. When people try to tell you why or how Pryor was great, I listen to them and they might go close but they can’t get why “that n****r’s crazy”. When Pryor came on the scene, nobody was doing or sounding the way he was. Black folks, we sounded like that to each, but nobody that we was listening to on TV sounded like that. People are suckers for anything that feels authentic.

Glenn Wool 

Of my generation of comedians – “my graduating class”, I call them – Glenn Wool is everybody's favourite. He’s a comic’s comic. He's funny on stage, but he is gut-destroying off stage. You be, like: “Why don't you do this on stage? This shit you doing in the dressing room do it on stage!” I’ve never been around Glenn and his funny wasn’t on. Even if he was in a shitty mood.

Work your funny bones

I was arguing with a lady friend of mine a few months ago. She was arguing with me actually. I said: “Time out. Try to remember that when you're arguing with someone, it's imperative that you keep your sense of humour, especially while arguing.” A lot of people completely lose their sense of humour when they're arguing and it gets worse. You must fight to keep your sense of humour. It's easy to be funny when you feel good. Anybody can do that.

American Deep South wit 

To me, there's nothing like southern intellectuals. To have the true appreciation of the range of the human mind, but still be folksy about it – your Mark Twains, your William Faulkners. When people ask me what’s the difference between England and the South I tell them: “In the South, we pride ourselves at how much we say it, how much we get in your face, how direct we are. In England, they pride themselves on how much they don’t say, but still manage to get their point across.”   

The first stand-up comedian

I love Mark Twain’s books. He makes me proud to call myself a southerner. I find him prescient. A lot of things he said about human nature, politics or religion are just as true today as they would have been back in the nineteenth century. He was probably the first stand-up comedian in America. At a time when there wasn’t Twitter or even radio – he even preceded vaudeville – they booked him all over the United States to come and give “lectures”. It was stand-up.

Black Like Me 

Book choices: Black Like Me and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

I always remember reading a book called Black Like Me. It was a famous book in the early 1960s where a white man – John Howard Griffin – tanned his skin and flipped up his hair and essentially made himself a negro. He reported first-hand what it’s like hitchhiking through the South as a negro, and it's horrifying. A movie was made of it, but I've never seen it. There seems to be something almost intentional in the way the book has been forgotten.

Marlon Brando 

I loved the autobiography of Marlon Brando for lots of reasons. If I had to be a white man, I’d be Marlon Brando. In the early 1960s, he marched on the front line with Martin Luther King before A-listers were doing it.

Alex Haley

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley has stayed with me. I saw Alex Haley speak a year before he died. He came to my hometown. I remember he said: “My two grandsons, when they graduate high school I intend to pay for them to travel the world for a year so that when – and if – they do enter university, they can enter with a sense of purpose.” That always stuck with me.

Music videos

I came of age in the early ’80s when the video music explosion hit. Every weekend, me and my buddies would stay up late at night on Friday and Saturday nights. From midnight to 6am, they’d show popular videos. It was like radio but on TV. It was weird back then because sometimes you'd be into something and your black friends would be in your room and they'd be like, “Whose Bruce Springsteen album is this?” “Ah, I think my sister was in here playing my stereo. I don't know, but it’s got some good tunes on it. I ain’t listened to it that much. I’m just saying.”