Alan Morrison steps back in time and remembers an interview with the iconic comedian.

By nature, I am one of life’s hoarders. Books, CDs, magazines, university essays, umpteen packing cases filled with movies taped from TV that form an unrivalled (albeit unwatched) video library … All these, and more, clutter up my living room, work space and attic. And yet every now and then my instincts prove me right, and something I’ve tucked away for years will re-emerge like a crumpled £10 note lurking in the pocket of a forgotten jacket.

A few months ago, I was watching American: The Bill Hicks Story as part of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. A documentary on the late, fearless stand-up comedian, it triggered a memory. Hadn’t I done a phone interview for The List magazine with Hicks in 1992, about 18 months before he died? As the film rolled on, mixing rare live footage with interviews featuring close friends and family, I became sure that, somewhere in the storage boxes upstairs, I still had the transcript of that very conversation. The cassette it was recorded on would long since have been put to new use, but a handwritten version of my questions and Hicks’s answers could well be stowed away, gathering dust. The documentary is due for a wider cinema release on May 14, so last week I decided to see if my hoarder tendencies would strike gold. And behind the outgrown baby clothes, beneath a suitcase containing school reports, I found what I was looking for.

Today Hicks is remembered as a cult figure in the world of comedy but, early on, his acerbic opinions on politics, big business and hypocrisy – aimed straight at the heart of his home country – was a rare thing indeed. His anger was real, his intelligence was fierce, his observations were funny but came with a bitter tang of truth. Hicks was outspoken on the subject of the first Gulf War and, while his countrymen waved their flags, he would defend a protester’s right to burn it.

Denis Leary couldn’t have got away with his controversial routines if Hicks hadn’t first burned a path through righteous indignation with his flame-thrower wit. From Frankie Boyle to Andy Parsons, Michael Moore to Chris Rock, so many others owe him a debt for pushing back boundaries of what could be said on screen and stage.

There are countless clips of Hicks’s act on YouTube, and the new film puts those routines into a personal context: the drink and drugs that freed him from inhibitions before addiction became a ball-and-chain of its own; the censorship that frustrated and inspired him in equal measure; the pancreatic cancer that finally killed him at the age of 32.

Over the years I’ve often wondered what Hicks would have had to say on any number of topics – Monica Lewinsky, weapons of mass destruction, 9/11, global financial meltdown – had he lived. Would the words transcribed from an 18-year-old interview reveal a comedian whose insights were timeless or outdated? Would any of the man’s passion and personality remain on paper?

I’m looking now at this single sheet of lined A4, black pen covering the front and three-quarters of the back, the evidence of a brief half-hour spent talking to the greatest stand-up comedian I have ever seen. When we spoke, Hicks was about to embark on a UK tour late in 1992 – I know this because, although there’s no date on the paper, we talked about the forthcoming Bush-Clinton election. Sadly, I’ve condensed some of his quotes into notes rather than write out everything he said, but I began by asking why he felt compelled to take such a politicised stance. “I think it’s important to expose lies, otherwise what other ground are you standing on?” Hicks replied. “Also, it’s a real relief to have someone say what maybe a lot of people are feeling. Like during the Gulf War, over in America, there were no critics. ‘Hey boy! Isn’t this great? Aren’t we proud?’ That was the spectrum of debate. But I don’t think that was the way everyone felt.”

Was there a comedy movement in America back then that might open up that debate? “The comedy scene is changing here rapidly,” Hicks pointed out, “but not because of the material. This is a time that should be rife with satire in America, but there is nothing happening with that. It’s changing because of the overexposure and saturation of it – there’s literally a Comedy Channel, 24 hours of comedy. But the people who have been doing really good, biting political and social satire have not been given anything on TV.

“There is a target that will continue in America, and that target is the covert censorship of ideas: that you’re not allowed to enter into the spectrum of debate. You can’t enter the idea that, hey, maybe a $160 billion defence fund in times of peace is a waste.”

On paper, these words look more like the polemic of the hustings than the stuff of good jokes. But I’ve written the words “cackling laugh” after that last quote. Hicks had a way of turning his cynicism into humour. British audiences learned that first-hand on his previous UK tour, which coincided with the Los Angeles riots of April 1992, sparked by the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

“The day I arrived, the riots occurred in LA,” Hicks told me, “and I was trying to get news of my city burning to the ground. And all there is, is this f***ing snooker tournament. Jimmy White – who, by the way, was playing nine months before, when I left. The last thing I saw on TV in Britain was Jimmy White – turn off the TV, head for the airport, come back, Jimmy White’s still on. The guy hadn’t left yet, man.”

There’s a series of phrases scattered across the page too. They’re almost like slogans or tried-and-tested lines from other interviews he’d done, but no less incendiary: “You guys are missing nothing from our culture. The Americanisation of the world needs to be stopped immediately.”

“I love America, but I hate, I guess, Americans.”

“I hate arrogance and pride.”

“America is going through a spiritual crisis. Why is that? Because they only value two things here – fame and money. If you’re not going to be famous and you’re not going to be rich – which the majority of people are not – you’re going to have a crisis if that’s all your cultural values.”

He warmed up on that last point, firing on all cylinders after getting President George Bush in his sights.

“America is suffering a nervous f****** breakdown right now. Hopefully when they get Bush out of there, get rid of this smarmy, smiley Skeletor, maybe they’ll feel better. Base the choice not on your f****** wallet. ‘But he’s not going to raise taxes!’ But he’s the devil. ‘He’s not going to raise taxes!’ But he’s Satan, he’s destroying the planet. ‘But he won’t raise my taxes!’ F*** you, f****** little greedy pig. Vote with your f****** heart, just once.”

I reminded him that, on the night of the election, he’d be in Leeds. “If Bush wins again, I’m going to be a new resident of Leeds. I’m going to be flat-hunting. And if Clinton wins, I’ll be your new cultural ambassador.”

Clinton won, but Hicks didn’t have enough time left on the planet to achieve more himself. Maybe, in retrospect, what’s admirable about his final months is the way he continued to get his message out there, knowing he was living under a medical death sentence, shrugging off the pain to open the eyes, ears and minds of as many of his fellow Americans as possible.

I look again over these notes, and one paragraph in particular jumps out, the final clue as to why Hicks continued fighting to the end, wilfully offending the ignorant, never cosying up to the broadcast establishment.

“Comedians act as a conscience for a world,” he said. “They don’t go along with the group usually. Before a mob mentality can form, there’s always that one guy outside the crowd saying, ‘Ehhhh, wait a minute …’”

American: The Bill Hicks Story is in cinemas from May 14.