Doug Stanhope - Life and Career

Life and Career

Stanhope quit high school after his freshman year. His comedy career began in 1990 in Las Vegas.

He has made appearances at several major comedy festivals, including the Montreal Just For Laughs, US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Chicago Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where he won the Strathmore Press Award in 2002.

Stanhope was the winner of the 1995 San Francisco International Comedy Competition where he edged out Dane Cook in a three-week contest. He has appeared in dozens of national and international standup comedy television specials. He claims that his appearance on the BBC television show, Live Floor Show, (broadcast March 20, 2003) was fueled by "ecstasy". According to Stanhope, "TV is just for the money; live performance is where it’s at."

In 2003 and 2004, Stanhope co-hosted the fifth and sixth seasons of The Man Show with Joe Rogan. He hosted his own radio show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio in 2005. That year, Stanhope hosted Girls Gone Wild: America Uncovered. When asked what it was like working with Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis, Stanhope admitted "He's pure, unadulterated evil," and "The most awful human being I've ever met in all of my time in the entertainment business."

He has established a group of touring comics known as The Unbookables featuring artists such as Andy Andrist, Sean Rouse, James Inman, Brett Erickson, Travis Lipski, Brendon Walsh, Norman Wilkerson, Kristine Levine, and Brian Potrafka. The Unbookables' first CD, Morbid Obscenity, also featuring Andrist, Rouse, Lynn Shawcroft, and Banjo Randy, released July 4, 2006, on Stand Up! Records, was released as a benefit for a friend, Arthur Hinty, to help pay for a gastric bypass.

Stanhope appeared in the film The Aristocrats, telling a caustic joke to a baby. He was the subject of an 8-page feature in British GQ under the title "Is This America's Most Depraved Man?" by Robert Chalmers in 2006. In summer 2006, he was booked to appear on several bills at the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny, Ireland; he told his lairy, late-night crowd, that Irish men sleep with children, because—as the headline to the following day's Irish Daily Star put it—"Irish women are too ugly to rape! Comic booed after shocking festival jibe." He managed to perform for just 10 minutes before having all his remaining slots canceled, yet garnered several more full-length solo performances.

He appeared alongside Rouse at the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh on August 2006 to 5 star reviews from the press. On his opening night he took what was believed to be an ecstasy tablet that was handed to him by a member of the audience. During his Edinburgh performance he included a segment that was perceived as anti-Semitic. Stanhope responded in his 2007 Showtime special, No Refunds, by elaborating on the incident and including an extended bit on "Jew-hating".

He self-published a book, Fun with Pedophiles: The Best of Baiting ON October 2006, which includes several of his "baits" which had appeared on baiting.org. Baiting is the practice of setting up a false Internet instant messaging persona, say, that of an underage female, waiting for others to message you asking for sex, and then brutally abusing the "baitee" in a chat session that is logged to share with others. He discussed his self-published book and the philosophy behind it on Penn Jillette's radio show on San Diego's 97.1 FreeFM on November 22, 2006. In 2007, Stanhope made two TV specials—one in the US for Showtime, recorded at The Gotham Comedy Club in New York City on March 12; and one for the UK's Channel 4 Comedy Lab, filmed at the Caves in Edinburgh, Scotland titled "Doug Stanhope: Go Home". The Showtime special, titled No Refunds, premiered August 3 and was released on DVD August 14. His live show was voted "Best Comedy Performance of the Year" by Time Out New York for both 2006 and 2008.

On September 25, 2008, Stanhope appeared as a guest panelist on the Channel 4 programme 8 Out of 10 Cats whilst in London as part of his unofficially titled "Is Mom Dead Yet?" tour. Stanhope's mother, Bonnie Kirk, appeared regularly on The Man Show as well as several independent features and opposite Sean "Puffy" Combs at an MTV Music Award sketch where she played an aging stripper. She died at the age of 63 in October 2008.

Stanhope lives in Warren, Arizona (part of Bisbee) near the Mexico border in a small house with musician/author Amy "Bingo" Bingaman.

In August 2009, Stanhope was booed and had several bottles thrown at him at the Leeds Festival in the UK, after making derogatory comments about the Royal Family and the attitude of the English, which he likened to people in the stone age. Many people left early, and Stanhope continued to bait and taunt hecklers throughout his set.

His live show was placed in the top 5 of the 20 Best Live Shows of 2009 by London's The Guardian newspaper.

Stanhope's 7th album, From Across The Street, was released on November 24, 2009. It was originally intended to be released under the name Live from Cape Fear (and later I Ain't Never Won Nothin' In My Life). According to promotional materials mailed to reviewers, "half of the proceeds made from the CD sales will be going towards medical bills incurred by maintaining the crygenically frozen remains of his mother's cats at the Bisbee Forever Hope life suspension facility in accordance with her wishes."

In 2010, Stanhope aired a series of vignettes during Newswipe with Charlie Brooker in the United Kingdom.

Stanhope is managed by Brian Hennigan.

On November 17, 2010, Stanhope signed to rock and metal label Roadrunner Records to launch their new comedy label, Roadrunner Comedy. Cees Wessels, CEO of Roadrunner Records, said, “We are very excited to launch Roadrunner Comedy, yet another innovative iteration of the Roadrunner brand. We look forward to welcoming a variety of like-minded comedians to the Roadrunner family—new artists with dynamic talents—that will be making us laugh for years to come.”

On March 8, 2011, Roadrunner Records announced that Stanhope would have the debut album for the newly created comedy label. The live CD/DVD release was released on May 3, 2011, entitled Oslo: Burning The Bridge To Nowhere.

In cooperation with the mayor of Reykjavik, comedian Jón Gnarr, Stanhope has scheduled a performance in Iceland's only maximum security prison, Litla-Hraun, for September 25th 2011. Fans who want to watch the show would have to commit a crime; for them he invented The Stanhope Defense.

Stanhope appeared on the FX television show Louie as Eddie, a fictional comedian that Louis C.K. knew 20 years earlier when they first started performing, in the season 2 episode titled "Eddie". It first aired on August 11, 2011.