Ulcerative Colitis

" But for all his hates, he doesn't hate life - he's just angry that he doesn't enjoy it.

He burst on to the stand-up scene in the late 1980s, sweeping safe, cosy alternative comedy out of his furious path.

He was the riskiest and the rudest; the pioneer of comedy without borders.

He was called "the most gifted young comedian of the decade" and, in 1992, got his own BBC TV series, The Pallbearer's Review.

But then everyone started to learn what comedy without borders really meant.

It meant gags about Aids and cancer, the holocaust and child abuse.

He was labelled racist and misogynist: venues banned him; promoters dropped him; the BBC (and later Channel 5) took fright and canned his series.

He ended up living in a bedsit in Camden, north London, doing occasional gigs and working in a magic shop to pay the rent.

"Life," he says, "is a series of f****** disappointments." But it wasn't just that life did the dirty on Sadowitz.

He didn't help himself, and he alienated people who might have helped him.

At times, he undermines his own hard work.

Take this interview, for instance: he does it, under duress, to promote his forthcoming Scottish tour.

Then, the next day, he sends me an e-mail asking if I can persuade my editor not to publish it.

(Sorry, Jerry.) Plenty of comedians before him have toned down their material to suit TV executives' sensibilities, but he doesn't....