It's been a two-week wait, and it's been worth it. US comic Doug Stanhope arrives for the Fringe's final week, still riding the waves he made here two years ago. And even at a first night on which he was obviously finding his feet, he blazed with the honesty, outrage and lucidity that made his name.
I can't think of a comparable home-grown stand-up, someone to whom comedy is a safety valve for transgressive free speech. Only the beer gives him the courage to perform, he says. His careworn baby-face as often looks like crying as laughing. And he'll give you a hundred reasons to do both, from his scandalous routine about sex with conjoined twins, to some lateral thinking about government and nationhood. On patriotism: "There are only two countries: are you a dick or are you not a dick?" On democracy: "Would you call yourself a Christian if they changed Jesus every four years?" It's a bumpy ride: some of Stanhope's opinions are disagreeable. But that's a price worth paying to sample his uninhibited moral candour. Much of what's wrong with the world melts away in Stanhope's flame, as when he comments on a poll, in which only 3% of Americans answered "Don't know" when asked if there would be terror attacks at the Olympics. "You all don't know!" he rages. "What are you, flatmates of Mohammad Atta?" This is comedy with brains and guts and a heart.
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