Far from cute and harmless

American comic Scott Capurro topped the comics' unofficial walkout league at the Edinburgh Festival earlier this year, deafening the much more mild outrage stirred up by Brendon Burns's pornography-related show. Now, Capurro's stand-up show Erect in London is about to open, and fans may have to dodge past placard-waving protesters to see it. But the ultimate he-bitch of comedy isn't losing any sleep over the prospect of upsetting another city. "I don't give a shit about those who don't like my work," he snaps. "I'm never going to win them over anyway, so why bother? My work is for a discerning audience who don't have knee-jerk responses."

The material that started the controversy is about the so-called Holocaust industry, with the pay-off line: "Holocaust, schmolocaust. Can't they find something else to whine about?" Capurro swears that he never set out to shock, but once he discovered the effect of the material, he ran with it.

"When the tension came, instead of denying it was there, I tried to build on it by adding what some people might think is even more offensive material - being anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. And by the end of the run I was enjoying the buzz so much because the audiences understood the joke."

While comedians such as Jackie Mason have made a good living out of their Jewishness, it's considered in questionable taste for non-Jews to tell jokes along the same lines. Capurro attacks this double standard, while also pointing out the Uncle Tomism of those black, gay and female comedians who denigrate themselves for cheap laughs. Capurro is happy to be a gorgeous gay man in a straight world - if you have a problem with his homosexuality, deal with it.

He doesn't have a problem with straight comedians telling gay jokes, though, just as long as they're funny and he's allowed the same latitude. "I was in South Africa recently and was told my material was unsuitable for the Sabbath. Yet every straight comedian had a butt-f****** queer, fag-hating joke in their act. I was furious."

What's winning about Capurro is that he doesn't use the "I'm-nice-really" line to win back an audience he has offended: "I will take them on and I don't care if I seem mean while doing it. I didn't fly 5,000 miles to sleep on someone's couch in Old Street to be told I'm not funny. I'm funny, that's a given. If you're offended, then leave."

But he's proud that after one show in Edinburgh, a Jewish man approached him and said: "'All of my family except my aunt and cousins died in the Holocaust. I thought you were hilarious. Keep up with it.'" Capurro, 38, trained as an actor in Los Angeles and, rather more prosaically, Birmingham (West Midlands) - "Satan's asshole" - before turning to comedy at the beginning of the 1990s. His audiences are lulled into a false sense of security by his good looks and urbane delivery. Just when they are thinking he's cute and harmless, he'll hit them with the line "All you can think of right now is me with cock in my mouth, isn't it?"

Capurro, brought up in a single-parent Italian Catholic household in San Francisco, has Jewish and black ancestry himself, which his anti-Semitic, five-time married Southern belle maternal grandmother discovered when she researched the family tree a few years ago. The wonderful irony was not lost on her grandson, who says that much of his acerbic wit comes from her.

"I guess I'm attracted to those kind of people. Maybe that's why I'm a Jew wannabe because the Jews I grew up with were rich, well-educated, enigmatic and aggressive and I really liked that. I like people with opinions."

Capurro certainly livens up a comedy scene that is increasingly banal, political comedy in particular being in its death throes. Like his hero, Lenny Bruce, Capurro is an equal opportunities offender, taking on a woman's right to choose, opposition to the death penalty, the Aids industry ("I want to smack those smug red-ribbon wearers in the mouth") and the modern plague of victimhood - "God, I wish I'd been fisted by my uncle. I wish I was black and in a wheelchair."