Reintroducing... the “world’s most offensive comedian and close-up magician” Jerry Sadowitz, who plays the Grand Opera House, York, for the first time since 2001 on Tuesday.

The last time Glaswegian comic Jerry Sadowitz blitzed the Grand Opera House, he picked on The Press reviewer, Charles Hutchinson, one of only 30 people – Jerry’s estimate – in the theatre that night. He grabbed the unsuspecting reporter’s notepad and a skirmish between comic and critic ensued.

Now Jerry is back, and so is Charles Hutchinson’s notebook as he prepares for round two with the controversial comedian, who calls himself “a kind of pile-up on the M1 involving Colonel Gadaffi, Ken Dodd, Bernard Manning, Lenny Bruce and Tommy Cooper”.

After 25 years, Jerry, you are finally doing what you’re calling your “first proper English tour” of 30 dates… but you are always playing shows, aren’t you?

“I haven’t done a tour before; I always wanted to do it, I just couldn’t find a promoter to do it for me. Most promoters would not come near me and they still don’t. They perceive me to be ‘difficult to handle’. But it’s good to be doing one finally, though there’s no right time to go out on tour.”

How has comedy changed in those 25 years?

“When I was starting there was no such thing as politically incorrect comedy, and the difference is that now everyone is doing it and I have the satisfaction that no matter how the tour goes, everyone loves me vicariously as I started it.”

You claim to be the most relentlessly plagiarised stand-up since the early Nineties...

“I can’t think of any good comedian in the past ten years who hasn’t ripped off my comedy. If that sounds arrogant, so be it.

“But what they do is water it down and that destroys the art of comedy, it destroys it if you’re untroubled by the pain that created it. It’s easy for them because there’s nothing to compromise, but I wouldn’t compromise. No. Not in my stand-up.

“I do everything that comedians should have been saying for the past 20 years but either haven’t got the brains, the balls, or the ability to live without the fame and fortune.”

You’re calling your show Comedian Magician Psychopath; what exactly will it feature?

“It’s difficult to say because I will start on something and then heavily improvise. I think the best thing is to heavily warn your audience that I don’t shy away from talking about difficult things and I don’t censor myself.

“But I definitely believe that whatever muse is writing things in my head I think, he would stop if I became too commercial. Actually, muse is not the right word, it’s more like demon.”

Are you becoming more bitter as you grow older?

“It gets worse, the bitterness. It’s the circumstances of life.

“You don’t even have to get to my career before you get to the failure, which started frankly from the moment I was born. I cannot believe I’ve survived this far without cigarettes, alcohol, sex, success or good health.

“So the bitterness was there before I became a comedian and as you get older, it becomes more difficult as your body ages; it becomes more overwhelming. You can tell the people of York that unless they want me to end up in hospital, please come.”

• The interview passed without mention of the unfortunate contretemps of November 2001. Water under the bridge and all that.

“If you come to the show, you must come and say hello afterwards,” said Jerry at the close. Maybe not, Jerry, maybe not.