Eddie Murphy - Delirious

Long before Eddie Murphy started spinning out the same old pro-prosthetic cookie cutter characters that were once so hilarious in Coming to America, he was busy cutting edges as one of the most controversial and in-demand stand-up comedians of the 80s. Reappraising the evidence of this classic 1983 performance from a then 22 year-old Murphy - only now being made available on DVD - the most glaring explanation for his early retirement from the stage seems to be that he simply ran out of stereotypes to wax into submission. Indeed, the melting pot of Reagan era America provides a bounty of targets and topics for an animated Murphy to indiscriminately discriminate against: ranging from subtle allusions to the paranoia born in response to Affirmative Action through to the smaller hysteria caused among small children by the sound of the Ice Cream Man's tannoy. His ego might have been grossly extroverted in comparison to his mentor, but, on this evidence, it's easy to see why Murphy was once heralded as Richard Pryor's heir apparent. [Dave Kerr]