Let’s get the censorship issue out of the way first. Reginald D. Hunter has attracted quite a number of column inches over the decision to ban advertising of his show, Pride & Prejudice & Niggas, from London Underground. He has a point of course when he says there were no complaints in Edinburgh this summer. But Edinburgh in deranged festival mode is a very different place from the Tube in the rush hour, and it’s surprising that someone as intelligent as Hunter can’t see that context makes all the difference.

Besides, the N-word does not just contain a racial sting; like it or not, it also conveys an aura of thuggishness. Hunter is doing a remarkable job of re-educating the public about the intricacies of race, and I can easily imagine a time when the N-word will have been neutered. But we’re not there yet.

Fortunately, he doesn’t dwell too long on the controversy in this immensely thoughtful, multilayered dissection of our phobias and foibles. Any black American comedian who ventures into the murky terrain of race protocol is going to be compared with Richard Pryor. Hunter’s relentless profanity can sound a little second-hand. But he has the ability to raise his game, examining sexual politics with a rare degree of candour and deploying a persona that is an engaging blend of swagger and insecurity.

While he has in the past been accused of misogyny, his discussion of gender power games gives both sides an equally uncomfortable time. As he recounts arguments with an old flame, he skewers his own inability to commit to relationships and the double-talk of girlie-era feminism.

As for the charge that there was an element of anti-Semitism in his Edinburgh routine, well, the supposedly offensive joke that he repeats here is really a clever observation on the pros and cons of laws banning Holocaust denial. Hunter toys with other taboos as he embarks on a superbly acted re-creation of a sexually frank conversation with his aged father. Even an unshockable metropolitan audience can be taken by surprise at times.