When: Tuesday, 8pm.

Where: Hull City Hall, Queen Victoria Square, Hull.

Tickets: £20.

To book: 01482 300300.

Visit: www.reginalddhunter.co.uk

Arrival: Reginald D Hunter – who was born in Albany, Georgia – moved to Britain when he was 27, to study at the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts.

On stage: He took his first stand-up gig after a dare and has gone on to establish himself with performances on TV shows including Have I Got News For You.

Acclaim: Reginald has been a three-time nominee for the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival.

He might have been "irradiated" with anger at the world, but Reginald D Hunter is still the most gentlemanly of stand-ups, as Will Ramsey finds out

R eginald D Hunter doesn't sound like an angry man. There's the booming laugh for a start, which punctuates the end of each tale with the finality of a full-stop. Then there's the voice, an elegant Deep South drawl that glides down your ear like a stream of honey.

But all is not settled in Reginald's world. Certain things have got the 42-year-old comedian really, badly, riled.

His latest tour, Sometimes Even The Devil Tells The Truth, hints at the furiously angry place he found himself in at this time last year.

Not that you'd know from the way he phrases it.

"I don't know if I can state it simply," he tells the Guide, from a London hotel room.

"But when I started writing this last January, I was irradiated with anger. I had to go to a few places to work it out. I couldn't let my lovely English audiences see me that mad.

"At that time, the greater world and the political world converged with my personal world in a way that can happen when you spend too much time on your own in hotel rooms.

"I think, in a way, it's a sadness – a sense of loss. I'm 42 now and there's a sense of a loss of innocence – you're trying to find a way of keeping your warm, inviting nature, but at the same time not be taken advantage of.

"There is a way to do it, but I'm still figuring it out."

To avoid offending the "lovely English" – Reginald has called this country home for the past 15 years – he returned to America to spend six weeks with his family.

Though that was not without incident. While watching President Barack Obama speaking on TV, Reginald uttered the phrase, "Sometimes even the devil tells the truth", which initiated a blazing row with his sister, a born-again Christian.

"He had said something truthful, which was different to a lot of the other stuff that he had been coming out with," said Reginald.

"My sister said that the Devil is the father of lies – I said that you can't tell a great lie without a strong idea of the truth.

"Nowadays, politicians, like advertising agencies, are not as clever as they once were. Sometimes, the truth slips out."

This sense of a loss of innocence – of a time which, he feels, is less concerned with hiding greed than it once was, has played on his mind for a while.

"If only you have time to think about it, you realise there's so much in life that you just don't need," he said.

But while these thoughts might rankle, they make him realise that this country, rather than his homeland, is the best place to float them.

"I know that for business reasons I'm supposed to say that England feels like home now, but the truth is, it does," he said.

"When I leave to go back to America, I always feel like I'm ready to be around an openness, and women who are more direct.

"But after a while, I realise I'm not going to get the level of analytical intelligence you get here.

"I love the US, I love Australia, but if you want a discussion about the political situation, you can find that here with a taxi driver or a hairdresser.

"In other places, that doesn't seem to be the case, it puts people off. Elsewhere, you find there are these 'low-voltage' people, they'll talk about Jesus, or the kids or the weather, then after that, they won't know what to say."