Interview: Doug Stanhope

US comedian Doug Stanhope returns to the UK this month for a series of shows, finishing up at The Pavilion, Bath on Sunday, June 17.

Stanhope has been drunkenly stumbling down the back roads and dark alleys of stand-up comedy for over a quarter of a century, roads laden with dank bars, prostitutes, cheap drugs, farm animals, evil dwarfs, public nudity, menacing third-world police, psychotic breaks, sex offenders, and some understandable suicides. With material ranging from true-life graphic perversion to volatile social criticism, Doug is vulgar, opinionated, brutally honest, shockingly uninhibited, and certainly not for everybody.

“Doug might be the most important stand-up working today.” Ricky Gervais

“Doug Stanhope is the most dangerous comedian in the world. If we both were fighters I would avoid him at all costs. He’s a bad, bad man.” Chris Rock

“Doug might be the most important stand-up working today” – Ricky Gervais. What do you think he means by this and is there something in what he says?
I don’t know. He said it somewhere and the publisher thought it would help sell books. I don’t know if it did.

And Chris Rock has called you “the most dangerous comedian in the world.” Thoughts on that?Chris likes to make a lot of hay about the fact that I’m a ‘bug-chaser’ – one who deliberately has sex with people with AIDS in hopes of contracting the virus. Although I haven’t achieved that goal, Rock still considers me to be “dangerous.”

Are you as darkly cynical through and through as you appear onstage?
I’m never the same guy for an entire 24-hour period. It’s frustrating.

When you look around the rest of the comedy landscape, do you find much of it bland, polite, cosy, not dealing with the real mess of life; or do you just think, ‘fine, they’re doing their thing, I’m doing mine’?
I don’t watch stand-up comedy. But I assume, like a prostitute, if they are coming to me then they must not be getting what they want at home.

How is your girlfriend Bingo recovering?
Oh shit! Bingo! I completely forgot to follow up on that whole coma thing! I better call the hospital. Man, do I look like a jerk right now.

See much of Johnny Depp these days?
As much as I do any of my friends. Unless they are in a train station in Leeds or Birmingham or Glasgow, I don’t see much of anyone anymore. Oh, wait. I did see Johnny in the Birmingham train station in an ad for Sauvage cologne. Gosh, he’s dreamy.

What are you most looking forward to about your Bath show? What can the audience expect?
I’ll be reading from the New Testament mostly and then asking people where they are from. I’ll say things like “Nice shirt! Must be laundry day,” followed by a classic Stanhope roll of the eyes.

Doug Stanhope plays The Pavilion, Bath on Sunday, June 17. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bathcomedy.com/whats-on?id=917