Mini-tour for 30 Rock Star

30 Rock star Tracy Morgan has announced a UK tour – despite getting a critical drubbing in Australia.

The comic will play Nottingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and London this October – with tickets going on sale on Friday.

He is currently touring the world with his Excuse My French show, after the much-lauded 30 Rock came to an end in January.

But his Australian dates were dogged by controversy, with dozens of people walking out of his shows amid a torrent of filthy material, widely deemed to be misogynistic.

At the Melbourne Comedy Festival last weekend, Chortle said his show was an ‘unpleasant, graphic, charmless 45-minute tirade... sharing his baser instincts in putrid detail, and very little humour.’

Herald Sun reviewer Megan Miller said the show was ‘truly awful’ and full of ‘old lazy jokes’, adding: ‘ I'm up for crass and non-politically correct, but this was just disgusting and not at all funny.’

Meanwhile The Age conceded there was some hearty laughter ‘but it shifted to uncomfortable’, adding: ‘It was slick and sick but it wasn't dangerous.’

However, 44-year-old Morgan was unrepentant, telling any disgruntled audience members at his subsequent show in Perth: ‘Go home and blog some shit 'cause you ain’t gettin’ any… I don’t give a fuck what you think.’

And once he got back to the States, he asserted he wasn’t sexist by saying: ‘You don't know how I treat my bitches. When I talk about bitches, I talk about bitches I know. And you don't know them.’

Other Australian comics defended Morgan against the barrage of criticism, with Tommy Little saying: ‘People walked out of Tracy Morgan's show because it was sexist - that's like walking out of a musical because there's too much singing.’

In 2011, Morgan was under fire for a homophobic rant, too, for which he later apologised.

Click here for Morgan’s UK schedule... and our review of the Melbourne show.

Published: 23 Apr 2013