Perhaps Katie Hopkins’ audience is already fired up after tussling with the small band of protesters, brandishing placards and leaflets, outside the comedy club.Or maybe, after years of following her – in the newspapers (before she was sacked), on the radio (before she was fired), on Twitter (before she was banned) and, more recently, on YouTube – they are just excited to finally meet their heroine.Whichever, when she strides on stage at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green, east London, the crowd goes bananas. Particularly when she cries: ‘These are tough times, my loves. This country is just about ready to say, ‘Enough’, but you are not alone!’ Cheering, clapping, they shout: ‘We love you Katie!’Many are just glad to be here. Not least because other theatres have cancelled Hopkins’ one-woman shows after claims she is spreading hate, racism and fascist bile.’She was cancelled in King’s Lynn! Morons! She’s just trying to tell the truth,’ says Julie, 62, from Bromley, Kent, sipping a giant white wine to my left. ‘Nothing is off limits.’Malcolm – a nice, quiet chap to my right – couldn’t agree more. ‘I like her take on things. The way she’s able to analyse all the madness and make sense of it,’ he says. ‘Why are they protesting outside? She’s not racist – she’s just saying it for all of us. You should watch her on YouTube. She’s brilliant.’ Katie Hopkins, former contestant on the Apprentice, media personality and commentator, speaking in a debate against the motion: ‘This House would go Vegan’ at Oxford Union  In 2020, Hopkins (pictured) was removed from Twitter for ‘violations of our hateful conduct policy’, though Elon Musk let her back when he bought the social media siteIt’s hard to imagine anyone not being aware of Katie Hopkins, 49, but just in case her relentless efforts at self-publicity have not reached you, she’s the annoying blonde from Series Three of BBC TV’s The Apprentice in 2007 – who bowed out before a final showdown with Lord Sugar, but then used the publicity to rebrand herself as a controversial hate figure.Since then, after being sacked from her job at the Met Office and pictured naked in a field having sex with another woman’s husband (who ended up hers), she has offended many by making tasteless jokes, such as about the death of TV presenter Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper, and by insulting a nine-year-old autistic girl.Sometimes it feels as if Hopkins has been working down a list: immigrants, ‘sturdy lesbians’, the trans community, Pakistanis, the physically challenged – whom she refers to often in her show as ‘spazzes’ – anyone ugly or obese. As she tells us all at least twice, ‘I’m the most banned woman in the world.’ And she probably is. In 2018, she was detained in South Africa for allegedly spreading racial hatred.In 2020, she was removed from Twitter for ‘violations of our hateful conduct policy’, though Elon Musk let her back when he bought the social media site.And in 2021, she was deported from Australia – after deliberately breaching Covid lockdown rules.She has compared African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to cockroaches and called for gunboats to deal with them. And, after the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, she called for the ‘final solution’ – thought by many to be a reference to the Holocaust.Naturally, she’s been in and out of the libel courts. After a Twitter row, she had to pay food writer Jack Monroe £131,000 in damages and costs for causing ‘serious harm’ to her reputation – and had to sell the family home in Devon. But that didn’t stop her. ‘It makes me freer to speak out. Now there’s nothing left for them to take,’ she says. On behalf of what she calls ‘the voiceless majority’, like-minded people who ‘just want to be honest and free to think what they like’. Katie Hopkins gestures as she takes part in a debate at the Oxford Union in November last year She now has her own YouTube channel where she shares her views with thousands of subscribers So she tells jokes about how ‘ginger babies are harder to love’, that Israel’s secret service Mossad is ‘totally epic’, along with a lot of unprintable things about Labour politicians, lesbians, ‘climate twats’, slavery, immigrants and Angela Rayner’s pubic hair.And the crowd roar and whoop with laughter. They all follow her online and have travelled miles to be here. One woman flew from her home in Portugal.’She’s our hero,’ says a shaven-headed chap with a Union Jack T-shirt. ‘She’s always spot on.’But being a far-Right political commentator was never supposed to be Hopkins’ path.’Growing up in Devon, I wanted to be in the Army. To fight for my country,’ she says. Via sponsorship at Exeter University with the Intelligence Corps, she signed up for 35 years. But she neglected to reveal she had epilepsy, meaning she often ended up in hospital.On parade at Sandhurst, she had a seizure and was discharged.She moved to a finance job in New York. It was there that she stole her first husband, who left her for his secretary the day after their second daughter was born.Next, she appeared on The Apprentice and, since then, has been on countless TV reality shows, has written – and spoken – a lot of inflammatory words and has upset an awful lot of people.’I like to think I am still serving my country. In a different way. I am standing up for Britain.’The crowd here love it. Especially when she uses the F or C-word, which is about every 30 seconds. I can only relay a fraction as so much is unprintable.Her spiel is shocking, which is a shame. For surprisingly, Hopkins has great comic timing, a good rapport with her audience and – when she steps away from the hatred – is very funny. She’s natural and warm – yes, really – as she interacts with the audience and jokes about the operation that cured her epilepsy and a traumatic time with a loofah in the shower. Katie Hopkins pictured leaving Australia in 2021 after she was deported for deliberately breaching Covid lockdown rulesBut then, minutes later, the bile pours out with appalling comments about the Grenfell Tower fire – ‘saddy saddy, burny burny’ – and slurs at the campaigning former sub-postmaster Alan Bates.No one walks out. No one says, ‘Too much!’ They laugh like drains as she says she’s great pals with Tommy Robinson (the former English Defence League leader, currently in custody) and talks of her support for the man jailed for stalking broadcaster Jeremy Vine and for the councillor’s wife in prison for inciting racial hatred on the day three girls were killed in Southport.Lord knows what drives Hopkins. Maybe she really does think she’s the messiah of the far-Right.As the two-hour show draws to an end, her messaging goes into overdrive as she tells us we are ‘family’ and how the Government is ‘trying to kill us with a thousand cuts’. ‘Whatever happens, you will always have me. You are not alone and we are stronger together.’And there is boisterous applause and a standing ovation.Ahead of another show, the management of the Spa Pavilion in Felixstowe, Suffolk, refused to cancel it, despite protests, saying: ‘If people don’t like it, they don’t have to come.’ So it’s up to you.But if jokes about people from Pakistan, ‘Dead Derek’ and those who have burned to death are not your thing, I’d say don’t go. Katie Hopkins won’t give two figs. Every show will be sold out anyway.