"Well, I won't miss the smoking," says non-smoker Chas Early as he gears up for the final English run of his award-winning one-man show, Bill Hicks: Slight Return.

The British actor has now impersonated the legendary American comedian and committed libertine through three sell-out seasons at the Edinburgh Festival and two sell-out West End runs, and the 12 cigarettes a night are starting to take their toll.

Hicks himself, meanwhile, appears to be even more pro-puffing than ever. As he says in one of the show's oft-quoted punch-lines, "It's easier to ignore the health warnings on the packets when you've already died of cancer".

Slight Return, you see, is no traditional tribute. Written by Early and director Richard Hurst in 2004 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Hicks' death, the script instead sees the famously satirical stand-up return to Earth in angel form for one final gig. From the state of America to the state of the music industry, he is, unsurprisingly, unimpressed by what he finds.

"Nothing seemed to have moved on since Bill died," says Early of the decision to bring him back. "In fact, if anything, we'd regressed. As Bill says in the show, Bush in the White House, war in Iraq, it's like nothing's changeddid I actually die or was it just one long bad night on mushrooms?'

"Also there aren't enough people doing satirical, political stand-up comedy in that truthful but still really funny way. There are people who are outspoken, libertarian, but they're not as sharp or as topical. No one's telling it like it is in the way that Bill did at his best."

The decision to write a whole new Hicks set was audacious to say the least. "We hadn't realised," comments Early, "how many sacred cows we were potentially booting in the udder."

But Slight Return has won over the nay sayers with its new-minted yet authentic sounding swipes at terrorism, the internet, reality television and the smoking ban.

"We've not stopped updating it" says Early. "We tried very hard to get into his Bill's headspace and adopt his take on things. I've watched hours of video tapes to get his gestures and vocal ticks."

Early's impersonation is now in high demand: he recently played Hicks in a Radio 4 sci-fi comedy in which the main character came across the stand-up getting off an alien spaceship in the middle of the desert. But these will definitely, he's decided, be the show's last English dates.

"Part of me that says it would be fun, lucrative and not in itself uninteresting to keep updating the show indefinitely," he says. "But I don't think it would be in keeping with the man."

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