It is too late to make a bid for the White House this year but if last night’s rapturous audience had their way John Waters would be elected in a landslide.

The veteran cineaste, best known for Hairspray, would make a perverse American leader, resembling an ageing pimp in his trademark pencil moustache. Yet there was something strangely presidential about his slick, assured monologue.

Waters’s witty talk sauntered through his colourful career with occasional asides expanding on his philosophy. The two sides dovetailed tidily. His trashploitation films, such as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, were shockingly amoral and so is his worldview. His opinions on sex and narcotics are so extreme he recalled how, when he visited prisons, even the murderers and rapists were outraged.

For the broadminded there were some vintage vignettes, including the tale of Zorro, a Baltimore stripper so butch “she looked like Johnny Cash”, handy shoplifting tips and a bizarre confession that Waters is infatuated with Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Even better were the fragrant anecdotes about his films, such as Polyester, made in Odorama, the first scratch ’n’ sniff movie.

On reflection maybe he is too honest to be a politician. Discussing his sleaziest, most scatalogical projects he was alarmingly frank: “People say: ‘You must’ve been on drugs when you made them.’ Well, we were.”