Not just the perfect antidote to the McCarthy witch-hunt era, Lenny Bruce destroyed the false moral majority. A jazz age counterculture hero, Bruce’s scattergun approach demolished smug ideas about race, sex and the politically-correct taboos we take for granted. His so-called ‘sick’ humour was the stand-up rap of its day?he took the N and F words and beat them to death with wit. His own life balancing on the edge, Bruce simply went further with berserk interior monologues.

This second volume of carefully improvised verbal mayhem includes “The Palladium”, which fuses dope, porn and disease into an abbatoir for scared cows.

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Crazy and unique.