When he’s finished, staring back at Knipp from the mirror is the blackface mask of a modern-day minstrel, and the character known to Knipp’s legions of cult followers as Shirley Q. Then he smears his doughy face and neck with chocolate-brown foundation, rainbow-hued eye shadow and garish red lipstick. First, he puts on a giant housedress and a pink, curly wig.
Once a month, Chuck Knipp (pronounced with a hard K, like “Knievel”) transforms himself into a living taboo. He’s a fat, gay forty-five-year-old white man, a part-time nurse, who lives alone with two cats and who believes he’s on a mission from God. Backstage at a gay bar in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, on the same block as the fountain square where slaves were sold, sits America’s most appalling comedian.
