‘Hello, my name is Stuart, and I’ve got problems.’ So Hudson sets up his sociopathic stage persona – a deranged stalker-stoke-flasher who’s just as likely stab you as pass the time of day.
He looks the part, too, physically imposing but shabby and unkempt, with a killer’s air of detachment from society. You can almost believe his claims to have come straight out of jail.
He’s not the first comic to take the stand-up’s default position as the outsider and push it to the extremes of criminal immorality, and because of that, some of his lines seem obvious and predictable – from the ‘…and so I stabbed her’ punchline to the restraining orders from the reluctant object of his obsessive interest.