I just loved this show at the Apollo. All good. Brilliant Canadian warm up act followed by the great man himself.
Ignoring for the moment just the comic bits, there was an interesting contrast seeing this and the film the Butler in close succession. The Butler was good, but incredibly worthy, and not altogether credible for something based on a true story. The subject, the life of a black butler in service to a number of presidents, stood as a story of all black liberation, from the butler's childhood picking cotton where his father is shot in cold blood in front of him for (rather politely) objecting to the young master raping his wife to going through all the liberation struggles (voting, education etc) as each president changes, his oldest son joins the Black Panthers, his other son is killed in Vietnam, he eventually joins the anti-apartheid protests and ends up celebrating Obama's presence in the White House. Just all a bit too much of a microcosm.
But the link with Reginald D Hunter is an early comment in the film where the son is admonished for using the word "nigger" as a word white people use to do black people down.
Except famously its exactly the word that the very black Reginald D Hunter uses as a natural part of his vocabulary. Its all how you want to use words really. Of course if you are really PC you don't want to go and see Reg. For the rest of us its a brilliant entertaining evening as he is funny and interesting in equal measures.
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