Reginald D Hunter: 'I'll go on 'til someone stops me' Hunter should really publish a self-help guide, explaining how to keep your head when all around you are losing theirs. When you meet him in person, the quiet American, 44, talks much as he does when he's on stage - slowly, intently, allowing time to think, weighing up questions, pointing up absurdities, breaking into smiles and the odd laugh. The PFA chairman Clarke Carlisle claimed it made a "huge mistake" hiring him. Everyone waded in. Looking back on the affair now, he says, "I couldn't find a real trace of anger from anyone - only mock outrage." Time we took a sanity-check? "It's constantly misrepresenting and calling things other than what they are - it's a problem and it's pandemic," he intones with a frown but no discernible ire. I've seen more and more people doing it. It's one of the reasons why everyone is dumber - we use words based on how they relate to our feelings. We've become position-takers. There are plenty of things that Hunter says during the course of our hour together that could conceivably get him into hot water. Although the Fringe this year marked a moment of resurgent feminism, with Bridget Christie winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award, he offers a provocative male counterview about equality and the sexes. Patriarchy, he believes, has been "misframed. There's plenty wrong about patriarchy, but it's also what makes men take care of their children. It's just another system to help ensure the orderly continuation of civilisation. As for many grievances directed at his own sex, he wonders aloud: "You know what the problem with western women is? They've been driven slowly crazy because they've been convinced that they can have everything. Women have been tricked into believing that being a woman is hard. No, man, life is hard. For articulating similar observations about female attitudes in this way in the past, some have called him sexist, others have called him a misogynist - a charge he sweeps away. Misogyny is male hate towards women - there's nothing even in my angriest darkest periods where I've been hateful towards women. One of the reasons I say the things I do about women is because I'm actually a feminist - I root for women but my love for women is similar to my love for black people. I'm not going to tell you you're right when you're wrong. I want to hear from anyone considering what I'm saying - I want to be corrected - but just reacting with your programming - gender, race, class - a child can do that. He came to the UK at the start of the New Labour era to study acting at RADA. After a friend's £10 wager in a comedy club that he try his luck, he found he might have a gift for stand-up instead - "I had a sense that maybe I should apply myself to this - which I hadn't done with much of my life." So far, so good; so far, so funny - and no lynch-mob in sight, for all the controversies. "There's no grand plan," he says, with a bemused smile. I don't see it that way. I just came over here and went as far as I could. That's the philosophy - I'll go on 'til someone stops me. Reginald D Hunter continues his 'In The Midst of Crackers' tour from Oct 4; reginalddhunter.com