He’s dangerous, unpredictable, ‘would slit your throat in a second’ and is an avowed Christian. Mark Shenton from The Stage meets the master of bloodthirsty rock theatre ALICE COOPER, and discovers there’s more to the man than meets the eye.

In 1987 David Blunkett called for Alice Cooper’s live show, inspired by the Friday The 13th series and Nightmare On Elm Street, to be banned, stating: “I’m horrified by his behaviour - it goes beyond the bounds of entertainment.” And 15 years earlier, Mary Whitehouse had the BBC ban the video to his chart hit 'School’s Out', and MP Leo Abse had petitioned the Home Secretary to have him banned from performing in the UK.

Cooper has always deliberately courted controversy, but the quietly courteous and thoughtful man sitting opposite me in a suite in a discreet London hotel seems positively benign. There are, however, welcome signs of the mischief-maker when he reflects on Whitehouse: “It was the greatest thing that ever happened to us. I sent her flowers - she couldn’t understand why I was being so nice, but she was the ultimate help for me.”

Besides, Cooper - who is an avowed Christian - takes a distinctly moral position regarding his creation. “There’s a certain moral high road to Alice - Alice will slit your throat in a second, but he would never swear at you. He’s too much of a gentleman. He would never allow anybody to swear onstage, or allow any nudity onstage - he’s quite a gentleman, but he’s dangerous and very unpredictable about when he might get you. But the moral standard is that in the end I knew Alice was always going to get executed. As great as the bad guy is, there’s something satisfying about him getting it in the end - no matter what he does, he’s not going to get away with it. Alice is ceremoniously and publicly executed for what he does, but then he comes back in white top hat and tails and says, ‘I’m not done yet’.”

It is clear from the way that Cooper discusses Alice that he’s very much a distinct creation to himself. “I always speak of Alice in the third person,” he agrees. “Even my kids, when Alice was on TV on The Muppet Show, said, ‘Look, there’s Alice Cooper’, they’d never say, ‘Look, there’s dad’. They know that I just play Alice.”

Read more here.