HIS new show may be called Some People V. Reginald D. Hunter but the American comic's arrow will be fired at one person in particular at the Grand Opera House in York on Thursday. Donald Trump.

"Trump is the elephant in the room, especially if you’re American. You’ve got to say something about him,” he reasons.

What might Hunter say about his hunted target, the American President? “I’ll say I love him,” he jokes. “Not since Martin Luther King have I loved someone so much.”

Hunter, who was born in Albany, Georgia, in the Deep South of the United States, has lived in Britain for 15 years but nevertheless he still felt the full force of Trump's election to the presidency last November. "When it happened, it took me two weeks just to get out of bed," he recalls. "I thought, ‘What’s the point of anything? The law? Sex? Jokes?’. It made me feel so down. Not because I was scared of his economic policies or his out-there views.

"No, I was scared by thinking, ‘What does this mean for humanity?'. At this point, we thought we were pretty smart. But if people can be so easily duped and pitted against each other, are we really any better than Cro-Magnon man?”

Trump's triumph was such a surprise to Hunter that his show needed a hasty revamp. "It was mostly written last autumn. Then Trump got elected, and I had to rewrite it very quickly,” he admits. "I’m almost ashamed to do stand-up this year. I spent the whole of 2016 repeatedly telling people that Trump was not going to win. I’m amazed they still let me do comedy.”

Hunter initially arrived in Britain to study drama at RADA before switching to comedy full-time after accepting a dare to do stand-up, since when he has become a regular panellist on BBC1's topical quiz, Have I Got News For You and BBC2's QI. Last year, he made the three-part series Songs Of The South for BBC2, wherein he journeyed through 150 years of American popular song on an epic road trip from North Carolina to New Orleans.

York Press:

"I love the fact that in Britain you’re allowed to be openly smart," says Reginald D. Hunter

That was then, this is now, and now means stating what he thinks of Donald Trump and his team. “They really don’t know what they’re doing. At first, you were scared that they had some kind of master plan, like Spectre taking over the world. But no, they are just useless. Once revolutionaries get to power, they don’t know what to do with it. They didn’t realise how hard it would be and how scrutinised they would be,” says Hunter.

“You can do what you want when you're just talking to your people. But you can’t when you go outside your circle and say things to the media. You can’t criticise the people who have been running the country for decades: the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the CIA. They’re grown people. You can’t talk to grown people like dogs or children.”

Is Hunter worried over what Trump might do? "No. Trump has already offended so many different agencies in Washington that I get the feeling they will freeze him out. They’ll take his proposals and act like they’re stuck in some committee," he says. “I think they made that decision right after the Inauguration. If the judicial and legislative branches don’t like what you’re doing, they can stop you."

Hunter has no wish to move to the USA any time soon. Instead, he enjoys living over here. "I love the not-loudness of the Brits compared to Americans. I like the ease of discourse and the fact that you can disagree without guns," he says. "I also love the fact that in Britain, you’re allowed to be openly smart. In fact, you can get laid in Britain for being openly smart. I can’t think of any other country where that’s true.”

Hunter has often been labelled "controversial", but he counters: "All you have to do is tell the truth and uptight, middle-class, white people will lose their minds. You don’t have to try and be controversial; just tell the truth. But in fact, in terms of controversy, I’m a watered-down lightweight compared to some of my family and friends.”

Comedy, he suggests, has the power to change people’s minds. “Especially at the moment, we need people who can give sustained, articulate disagreement, and comedy is very much part of that. We can learn something from comedians that we can’t learn from our philosophers or politicians or intellectuals or clergy. If you animate a point with a joke, it really does sink in,” he says.

If Hunter has one wish for the impact of Some People V. Reginald D. Hunter, "I hope people will come away feeling less distressed about our current situation," he says. "I hope they can extract one or two methods to defend themselves against the rampant me-ism that is going around now. I think that the alt. Right and Trump and Brexit can only come about when there is a philosophy of me-ism, rather than us-ism.”

Reginald D. Hunter presents Some People V. Reginald D. Hunter, Grand Opera House, York, June 15, 8pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york