Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho on turning rage into laughter

Margaret Cho is a big character. The 47-year-old comedian and musician has strong opinions, plenty of tattoos and, following her new music video I Want to Kill My Rapist, a new buzzcut. You’d definitely notice her walking down the street – and if you like bold, in-your-face, taboo-breaking humour, then you shouldn’t miss her Hong Kong show next month.

The makings of this colourful – we’re talking rainbow colourful – and defiant personality can be traced back to her childhood. Born in San Francisco, she grew up close to Haight Street, the centre of hippy culture in the 1970s.

“It was a very diverse neighbourhood. That’s where the summer of love was, where all the hippies were. And then punk rock took over so I grew up around a lot of drag queens and punk rockers and political people, people who were involved in early gay politics like Harvey Milk,” says Cho.

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She speaks a lot about gay culture: it’s a key element of all her shows and she is in many ways an ambassador for the LGBT community, but Cho isn’t gay. She says she identifies as bisexual. She was married – to a man, the artist/writer Al Ridenour for 11 years; they split in 2014 – and her current partner is a man, but there have been women. “My politics are more queer than my lifestyle,” she says.

It was in her childhood that she met the late comedian Robin Williams – he used to come into her father’s bookstore. Her dad was an author and wrote, among other things, joke books. See how all the comic, political and left-of-centre elements were there from the get-go? It was also as a child and then an early teen that she endured abuse - bullying at school, sexual abuse from a family friend and later rape.

All that added up to her wanting to grow up fast. By the age of 14, sheer determination and a little luck meant that she was doing stand-up comedy. She started out doing a comedy duo act with Sam Rockwell – he’s now a famous actor, but back then he was a feisty 14-year-old like Cho, their birthdays just a month apart.

“I didn’t really get on with the kids at school, I think I just wanted to be an adult. Next door to my Dad’s bookstore was a bar and they had the comedy upstairs. Robin Williams would perform there and he always made a point of going on before me so I had to follow him which was really terrifying as a kid, but it really taught me to be a comedian, I appreciated it,” says Cho.

From the comedy club, she got on to the small screen, appearing in a Golden Girls spin-off, The Golden Palace. And in 1994 she got her own TV sitcom, All-American Girl, based on her life as a rebellious Korean-American girl. It wasn’t a career highlight: better things were to come, such as the off-Broadway show I’m the One that I Want, and a regular spot on The Arsenio Hall Show.