Profile: Jerry Sadowitz, comedian

In the US, comedian Gilbert Gottfried just lost a commercial endorsement after joking about Japan's natural disasters. Yet if Sadowitz fails to emulate him on his Scottish tour – by not reprising his gag from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 – crowds shouldn't feel short-changed.

As Logan Murray, his partner in the 1990s sketch act Bib and Bob, says: "He may violently disagree, but I think his magic background made him of the opinion that you should never give them the same trick twice unless there's a compelling reason to do so. Never let them see the mechanism, second guess or feel safe in what you're doing."

Janey Godley, who in 1983 as publican of the Weavers Inn in Glasgow gave "this bedraggled, grumpy bloke" his first gig, recalls vividly Sadowitz's introduction, bursting onto the stage with a cartoon-style bomb labelled "BOMB", the fuse fizzing: "Everybody stopped and stared at this guy running about, they'd never seen anything like it. Mouths dropped."

Godley says she was later "physically stunned" by Sadowitz's line: "What's pink and fluffy and doesn't move? Norman Tebbit's wife's slippers."

"For me, Billy Connolly can't touch him, neither can Bill Hicks. He was a generation starter who defined what comedy was and what it was to become. He makes Frankie Boyle look like a surly child in a playground, throwing his shoes at passersby."

Richard Herring, who supported Sadowitz before the latter was sacked by their shared management, agrees: "I like Frankie (Boyle] and Jimmy (Carr]. But they are framed in a knowing irony that Jerry doesn't have, which makes him the real deal and attending his gigs unpredictable and slightly scary. He is properly offensive and can offend me, but in the way that art should, rather than in that way of someone saying something for effect – which is true of most other offensive comics, including me."

Seeing Sadowitz recently, Herring wrote: "You will certainly be offended by some of the stuff he says, unless you are a moron and yet in a sense you'd have to be a moron to be genuinely offended … I can't exactly pin down why Sadowitz's use of the word 'spastic' is funny whilst Frankie Boyle's is not (in my mind at least), although I think it's mostly to do with the raw pain that underlies Jerry's act. It has an honesty that is lacking in most comedy, even though perversely I don't think Jerry honestly thinks the things he says.

"But even if it's not true, it's real, or the anger comes from a real place, even if it is exaggerated. He hates everyone and everything, but mostly himself. He is punching downwards, but managing to punch himself in the face. I laughed till I cried, I felt sick, I watched in awe at the wonderful responses and emotions he elicited from his crowd. You can understand his anger against all other comedians, because compared to him they are all phonies."

The chequered career of the "c*** in the hat" appeared to have grown increasingly out of step as alternative comedy became mainstream, with stand-up's boom seemingly intensifying Sadowitz's hatred of a scene he inspired.

Murray recalls their liberal indulgence of hecklers sparking a theatre riot. And on the first night of Bib and Bob's run in London's West End, reeking of baked beans they'd smeared themselves in for their final sketch, they realised their PR company hadn't invited them to their own aftershow party.

"I remember Jerry and I wandering around Piccadilly with a bag of props, a hula hoop, vaguely smelling of baked beans, looking for one or two venues we thought the party was at. We finally got to the place, saw all these arseholes enjoying themselves and drinking our champagne, turned, and walked off to find our proper mates. That experience seemed to typify the business."

A typically charged element of Sadowitz's shows comes when he voices his opinion of other comics. "I love him for doing this," enthuses Herring, "that he holds no-one in such esteem that he won't attack them. It is almost the final taboo of comedy to round on your peers and it can easily be mistaken for bitterness or envy. With Jerry, myself and Stewart Lee, that's part of the joke.

"Railing against the more successful comics is allowing that part of all of us that craves for huge success to come to the fore. And, of course, there are some comics who have had great success without necessarily being as skilled or as funny as some that haven't. Comedians should really be outsiders and it should make people uncomfortable when they become rich, part of the establishment or start back-slapping at awards ceremonies."

If Sadowitz's influence can be perceived, in a diluted form, in Craig Ferguson's Bing Hitler character and, latterly, the styles of Boyle and Carr, Herring also acknowledges it in the persona he adopts for his Collings and Herrin podcasts, "where I allow my subconscious to take control of me and the voice that politeness usually suppresses to take the reins".

"Jerry likes to be a Scrooge but I'm sure he enjoys the fact that he influenced me," remarks Godley. "Whenever I've done shows with him, he's always been very supportive, told me how proud he is and how he really appreciates what I do. He's my hero and he'll hunt me down and punch me in the face for saying that."

Murray frequently quotes his former best man in the stand-up courses he runs, and likens the Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated sketch trio We Are Klang!, whom he directed, as the revival of "idiots just being stupid" that they tried to pioneer with Bib and Bob.

Greg Davies, Marek Larwood and Steve Hall "are very clever blokes," he maintains, "and I think they would have arrived at this structure naturally. But I was pushing them to follow what we did, which is hit the audience hard at the start and prove you have a perfect right to be there, bang, bang, bang, bang. Grab them by the throat with one game, then another, one type of laugh, then a different one, until you have them. Only then can you take your foot off the pedal a bit and muck around."

A broadcasting pariah who refuses to compromise artistically, "for all the bloody good it's done him" Murray semi-jokes, Sadowitz hasn't fronted a television series since 2002 – "Nothing to do with Jerry's talent, everything to do with Jerry," maintains Godley.

Regardless, he appears set to record his first DVD next month, a significant development for a comic who fiercely guards his intellectual property and has YouTube videos of himself removed within minutes of their appearing online. The blurb for these recorded shows steals Lynx deodorant's commercial's tagline, threatening "Angels Will Fall".

Perhaps it does so because no other living stand-up conveys quite the same satanic struggle of inflamed intimidation and wounded vulnerability.

As Murray reveals: "He'll kill me for saying this. But his mum is a very nice woman, raised him well and to be polite. In the early 1980s, he was coming down to London from Glasgow over a couple of months, doing the card magic and working in some company, when he came to the realisation that good guys always come last.

"Everything he'd been taught was wrong, being nice, holding doors open, it was all bollocks. The scales fell from his eyes and he made a pact with this particular demon that 'I'm just going to say what I f***ing want onstage. Don't get mad. Get even.'"

• Jerry Sadowitz's Scottish tour begins at Falkirk Town Hall tonight, and continues until 28 March. Richard Herring: Christ On A Bike: The Second Coming, is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, 26 March. Janey Godley: The Godley Hour is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, 10 April, both as part of the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival, which begins today. www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com