Special Offer: Pay to Watch Doug Stanhope Get Liquored Up & Miserable

Image via

Doug Stanhope - adored in Britain, ignored in America.

​Doug Stanhope is a sick man: a sufferer of umbilical hernia, a surly boozer, recidivist smoker, champion of recreational drugs, former Libertarian candidate for President, rambling social satirist and stand-up veteran who's crawling out of his hole in the Arizona desert to play the Firebird on Saturday night.

He managed to call Daily RFT as planned, but did so an hour late, thanks to an unexpected visitor...

Daily RFT: Did you say the lead singer of [trash-metal band] Exodus is coming to your house down in Bisbee, AZ?

Doug Stanhope: Yeah, he emailed a couple years ago and said he was a fan. We've swapped emails back and forth. So now [he and his girlfriend] are comin' down, I don't know if they're staying or not.

But he doesn't drink, so that's creepy. This is one of the few sanctioned social events I'll attend where people don't drink.

And we're cleaning up the house, for a fucking death metal guy. It's a death metal guy, and I'm fucking mopping the floor.

You recently quit smoking. How's that going?
 
I'm smoking as we speak, sir. I got one of those electronic cigarettes and it actually works pretty well. Now I can smoke like in airports. I end up smoking twice as much.

Some of your best work, in our opinion, has been your ranting on BBC's Newswipe.

The BBC knows how to do TV. They run six episodes and stop, quit while they're ahead. They're not like American sitcoms going into their 19th season, and they have to add a fucking alien or some random child they had out of wedlock that appears on the scene.

Stanhope on BBC.

​How'd you get hooked up with that show?

I honestly don't know. Brian, my manager -- he's the Scottish guy that called you -- we have a very special relationship.  I'm the only one he manages. He's a funny prick. He's the guy that brought me over to Europe for the first time.

I showed up there in 2002 with full-page articles. I had more press just stepping off the plane that he handed to me --  before I'd ever done a show there -- than in my entire 13 years of comedy at that point in the states.

Why was that?

Well, it was his PR skills, plus the fact that they do treat comedy like an artform over there. They don't treat it like a Chuck E. Cheese wastebasket for washed-up talent.

That bothers me so much. Wrestlers are now doing comedy. Everybody that's washed up - Kato Kaelin did comedy. It's such a rubbish bin for failures. Fucking Terry Bradshaw - I don't know if it's happened or it's coming, is putting together a Vegas review. Fucking Terry Bradshaw.
 
In Britain, they have some respect for [comedy]. Which makes it terrifying. Because over here, I can fuck off for a night. If I'm not in the mood, or I'm too drunk, I tell people to fuck themselves for an hour. It's not gonna make national news. Over there, at any given time, any national newspaper could be in there waiting to tell the whole country you suck.