Bill Hicks (1961-1994) was and remains one of the most legendary stand-up comedians of all time. His caustic, no-holds-barred view on the shallow nature of American society has earned him the admiration of comics and artists such as John Cleese, George Carlin, Dennis Miller, Tool, Lewis Black, David Cross, Radiohead, Super Furry Animals, Dave Attell, Russell Brand, Patton Oswalt and Ron White.

Hicks was raised in Texas – his was a typical middle-class WASP upbringing in which most problems were quietly repressed and an air of tension permeated every situation. He was an alienated child who found his solace in obsessively studying the masters of stand-up comedy – Woody Allen, Richard Pryor and the regulars on The Tonight Show. Hicks began to perform comedy with his best friend Dwight Slade and by the age of 16, he was a regular at the Comix Annex in Houston.

Soon, he began performing with a tight-knit group of stand-ups who called themselves the Outlaw Comics. The ringleader of the group, Sam Kinison, organized a show meant to heighten their profile – and the only comic who directly benefited from the show was Hicks. He was discovered that night and soon was off to Hollywood – Kinison was left in debt and had to work it off on the road for months. Hicks, however, almost immediately found himself a regular at the Comedy Store.

For years, Hicks honed his act. He went from a straight-laced kid from Texas making fun of his parents to an anarchistic, mercurial hedonist who seemed bound determined to experiment with as many drugs as possible. Hicks spiralled into alcoholism and took copious amounts of hallucinogens. However, after losing his girlfriend and the respect of a staggering amount of club owners across the country, Hicks sobered up in 1988.

Soon thereafter, he was signed to a small independent record label who released his first album – 1990’s Dangerous. The album became a massive success – not in America, but in the UK after Hicks played a series of sold-out performances and Channel 4 aired a taped special of his set at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival. Hicks enjoyed far more success in Britain than he ever did in America, where he always claimed to be on a “Flying Saucer tour”:

Which means that, like flying saucers, I too have been appearing in small southern towns in front of a handful of hillbillies lately, and I’m beginning to doubt my own existence.

Hicks' success continued to grow in years to come, gaining critical praise from all sides and being named Rolling Stone magazine’s “Hot Comic of 1993”. Later that same year, Hicks was invited to perform on an episode of the new Late Show with David Letterman. Hicks had been a regular act on Late Night since 1984 – despite several clashes with Standards & Practices – and performed a full set. However, later that night, he received a call explaining that network executives had decided to pull his set entirely due to concerns about his material – mainly jokes about pro-lifers and killing Billy Ray Cyrus on national television. Hicks was shocked and heartbroken. He took to performing the full set live onstage for audiences, then explaining that he’d been censored on Letterman for saying that exact routine and that the networks were keeping it from the audience because they thought of them all as idiots. The incident garnered him a considerable amount of publicity.

However, he was soon diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was optimistic about this diagnosis – continuing to work and plan future projects right up until he was physically unable to. These include the talk show Counts of the Netherworld, several film scripts he’d written and a planned concert film for his album Rant in E Minor. Unfortunately, the cancer spread quickly and he died at the age of 32 in 1994.