Stand-up comedy is strange and difficult art to master. The are great many people who attempt to do it—but very few are any good, and can hold your attention for very long. But even bad comics can become successful and have sell out shows, particularly in America. But few are able to do routines that actually matter. Routines that can enlighten us and make us laugh at the same time.

Doug Stanhope is one of the rare great comics that come along that can hold the crowd’s interest and talk about serious subjects, and yet make you laugh at the same time. There’s something of the poet about the really great comics like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, George Carlin and now Stanhope. Stanhope strikes his comedic note, through logic, decimating one’s preconceived notions of almost anything under the sun: politics, religion, paedophiles, drugs are just a few of his subjects. He comes of as being a very well read man. He knows more than most of his audience.

I happened to see Stanhope perform, in a local club in Saint Louis. There was a great mixture of people in the audience: college boys, young attractive females, couples and loners. At one point during his set, he looks down at a table of attractive girls, and asks them, ”do you even know who I am? You’re not my usual demographic. My audience is usually a bunch of angry guys dressed in trench coats.”

The girls chuckled, and Doug invited anyone from the audience to heckle him. Which nobody did, perhaps seeing that bit he did that you can see on youtube.com called, “Don’t Boo a Girl,” which is a brutal attack upon a heckler in the audience. Doug is a drunk and uses drugs, and he makes no apologies for doing so, even for a performance. He said he had been drinking and doing drugs, but I could not tell because, he was very coherent during the set.

Doug’s comedy is not for everyone. He’s raw, and there is often walk outs during his shows, because he challenges his audiences’ beliefs: another hilarious bit:‘My Space and Paedophiles,‘ which is basically Stanhope analysing the culture of fear-mongering we have about paedophiles. He bluntly tells the audience that “…no-one wants to fuck your kid. Even if you dressed them up in a Catholic girl’s uniform and had junior bouncing up and down on a pogo stick, with his or her hindquarters exposed so temptingly, chances are that your kid would have made it through puberty without ever being pooned.”

Something must be said about the openers for the show—a group of comedians, Doug has dubbed, “The Unbookables” - a group of misfit comedians, that would have a hard job getting booked in the bland, sterile, cookie cutter comedy clubs throughout The States. I was expecting something interesting from these comedians, but grew bored and disinterested with the litany of “racial” and “retard jokes;” Until Doug took to the stage.

Stanhope has stated in interviews, that people often walk out of his shows in the States and that going to one of his shows is like going to war - “you won’t all be there at the end.”

Like Bill Hicks, Stanhope seems like a good a guy, and intelligent, but like a good friend, doesn’t have a problem telling you your flaws.