All the rage
His comedy isn’t for the faint of heart. But if you’re willing to go the distance Doug Stanhope has plenty of shock and awe in store, including rape jokes and gags about ugly Irish people.
Paul Nolan, 15 Sep 2011
You may remember controversial comic Doug Stanhope from the tabloid furore which followed one of his performances at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs festival a few years ago, which ended with headlines screaming, “US comic says Irish women too ugly to rape!”.
“It was just really good PR,” shrugs Stanhope. “It was a mis-booking and I should never have been on a mixed bill, especially with a Dara O Briain crowd. It went poorly, a million comics have shows as bad or worse, but I just happen to have a really brilliant manager who can spin it into front-page tabloid outrage. I don’t do mixed bill shows anymore – the Leeds Festival was the last time we tried that.”
Here, Doug is referring to a performance at the 2009 Leeds Festival, where he made derogatory remarks about the Royal Family and the attitude to the English in general. This resulted in several members of the audience booing him and aiming various projectiles in his direction, although the comic happily baited the hecklers throughout the set.
“They just didn’t like me,” recalls Doug. “My act is like death metal in that if you’re just showing up at the bar to watch music, you probably won’t like it! If you’re not there to see me specifically, you’re probably not going to enjoy it. When I have to do 45 minutes, I’m gonna do it, whether you like it or not. I’m gonna fulfil my contractual obligations and get paid – I don’t give a fuck about you!
“The Leeds show was a comedy tent at a music festival, so not only were they not there to see me, they might not even have been there to see comedy. They might just have been in that tent because it had the space to get out of the rain, while they waited for Faith No More to go on. Shows like that I kind of enjoy throwing in the toilet (laughs). To this day, I still don’t have any idea why we did Leeds and Reading.
“I said to my manager, ‘It’s a music festival, they’ll fucking hate me!’ He goes, ‘Oh, I know, but they’re very prestigious gigs.’ I’m like, ‘That’s all the more reason not to do them.’ He says, ‘They’re very high-profile.’ And I’m going, ‘They’ll boo me and throw garbage at me – I’d rather that be a more low-profile event!’”
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