HERE are a lot of people I admire in comedy, but my hero would be Richard Pryor because as far as I'm concerned, he changed the face of comedy as we know it. I really started getting into comedy as a teenager, and when I was about 14, my uncle who lives in the US, sent me a tape with some bits and pieces of American comedy on it. He included Richard doing stand-up on it, and he really stood out for me - I thought he was absolutely brilliant. I'd actually seen him in the film See No Evil, Hear No Evil with Gene Wilder before that, and I think I first saw him in an early film of Lady Sings the Blues, but it was only later that I made the connection about who he was.

Richard Pryor was born in 1940 in Peoria, Illinois, and was named Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III. Apart from the fact that he became one of the most influential comedians ever, what makes him even more interesting is that he wasn't onedimensional, because he had an amazing personal life too. He was raised in his grandmother's brothel, and he watched his mother perform sexual acts with the mayor of the town, before both of his parents deserted him.

Richard used to go to the cinema as a youngster and sit in the 'black seats' and that's where he developed the desire to become a star. He was expelled from school at the age of 14 for a minor misdeed, and worked as a janitor, a shoe-shiner, a drummer, a meat packer, a truck driver, and a billiard hall attendant. He started performing in a local production of Rumplestiltskin when he was only 12, and he appeared in many amateur shows in the following years. He was in the army for a couple of years, and was discharged after a row with a fellow soldier. He got a cabaret gig in his hometown, and became a comedian when he realised that audiences preferred his jokes to his singing.

The more I got into comedy, the more I realised how incredible he was. Richard was the genuine article and he really blew people's minds, which is something that so many comedians try to do today. People might watch his stand-up routines from the '70s now, and think it's all just about black people's relationship with white people, and they've heard it all before, but what you have to realise is that it was the first time anyone had ever actually addressed any of those issues. His social commentary was pretty true and honest, and it dealt with what people thought about but had never really discussed publicly up to then. It's tremendously powerful stuff, in my opinion, and I think the incredible thing is that he had the bravery to talk about these things at that particular time.

Pryor was married seven times, to five different women, and he had six children, four with three of his wives, and two with girlfriends. To have been married that many times, and have all those children by different women, and still have people talking about you in hushed tones, means that he must have been an immensely charming man. His daughter Rain Pryor actually had a comedy show at the Edinburgh fringe festival last year - I missed it unfortunately, because I was contracted to do something over here.

Pryor was also tragic in many ways - he had a problem with cocaine addiction and, sadly, developed multiple sclerosis at the age of 50. He also had two heart attacks and quadruple bypass surgery, and there was a Tfamous incident where he set himself on fire while using cocaine and suffered third degree burns. He had flaws but his tremendous strength of character is evident in the way he coped with MS, performing gigs from a wheelchair, although I prefer to remember him when he was in the whole of his health and master of the stage. I loved the fact that when he went to live in New York in the early days, he was on the same bill as people like Woody Allen and Bob Dylan, which is impossibly glamorous really.

It is well-known that Richard was a committed animal activist, although I wouldn't particularly share his enthusiasm for all the causes he championed, noble as they were. He died last December at the age of 65, and I think you can judge how important a person was to a particular genre by the things that are said about them when they die. In Richard's case, you had people like Robin Williams and Spike Lee coming out and saying how brilliant he was, and how hard they used to find it to have to go on and follow him at a gig. He won five Grammy awards for his comedy albums, and was also a fine actor too, appearing in almost 50 films.

There are so many people in comedy who are really good at what they do, but what I like about Richard is that he talked about the things he wanted to talk about. Frank Sinatra said 'I did it my way' but actually I think it was Richard Pryor who did it his way, and that's something I would like to think has been an influence on me in comedy.

Neil Delamere presents Just For Laughs, the Irish gala night at the Montreal comedy festival, tonight on RTE Two at 10.05pm