Dear Bill

Abstract

the comedian Bill Hicks, after doing his twelfth gig on the David Letterman show, became the first comedy act to be censored at CBS's Ed Sullivan Theatre, where Letterman was in residence and where Elvis Presley was famously censored in 1956. Presley was not allowed to be shown from the waist down. Hicks was not allowed to be shown at all. It's not what was in Hicks' pants but what was in his head that scared the CBS panjandrums.Hicks, a tall 31-year-old Texan with a podgy face, aged beyond its years from hard living on the road, was no motormouth vulgarian but an exhilarating comic thinker in a renegade class all his own. Until the ban, which, according to Hicks, earned him 'more attention than my other 11 appearances on Letterman times 100', Hicks' caustic observations and mischievous cultural connections had found a wide audience in the UK, where he is still something of a cult figure.Hicks certainly went for broke and pronounced his real comic self in the banned Letterman performance, which he wrote out for me in a 39-page letter that also recounts his version of events. Hicks had to write out his set because the tape of it, which the Letterman people said they'd send three weeks earlier, had not yet reached him. Hicks, who delivered his monologue dressed not in his usual gunslinger black but in 'bright fall colours, an outfit bought just for the show and reflective of my bright and cheerful mood', seemed to have a lot to smile about. Letterman, who Hicks says greeted him as he sat down to talk with, 'Good set, Bill! Always nice to have you drop by with an uplifting message 1 .' and signed off saying, 'Bill, enjoy answering your mail for the next few weeks,' had been seen to laugh. The word in the green room was also good. A couple of hours later, Hicks was back in his hotel, wearing nothing but a towel, when the call came from Robert Morton, the executive producer of the Letterman show, telling him he'd been deep-sixed. Hicks sat down on the bed.