The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Gilbert Gottfried invited me into his home in 2017 so he could remind us what kind of comedian he was before 2001, why he decided to launch into "The Aristocrats" at the Friars Club Roast of Hugh Hefner for Comedy Central, and how it completely changed the arc of his career. But first, listen to the version of the joke he recorded for his 2005 special, "Dirty Jokes." This episode originally aired...

Toronto has a rich history of producing great sketch comedy performers and troupes that have crossed over in the United States. Among the TV series: SCTV . Bizzare . The Kids in the Hall . Baroness Von Sketch Show . And now the foursome from the sketch group, TallBoyz II Men, who broke out quickly from the 2018 Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, premiering their own TV show on the CBC in 2019. TallBo...

Katie Hannigan taught preschoolers and performed as a mime before embarking on a full-time career as a stand-up comedian. So far, so good. Hannigan was a New Face at Just For Laughs Montreal, made her late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert soon after. Hannigan has appeared on Comedy Central, MTV and The Travel Channel, developed a game show for the History Channel, and wrote a h...

Matt McCarthy began his comedy career as the Fordham Ram mascot, but quickly carved out a spot for himself in New York City's stand-up scene, scoring TV credits with Comedy Central on both Live at Gotham and John Oliver's New York Stand Up Show . You may recognize him from his previous sketch comedy work on Conan, or from his many TV commercials, including a long-running stint as "the cable guy" o...

Ben Rosenfeld was born in the city formerly known as Leningrad, but came to Connecticut as a toddler with his parents as the Soviet Union began to break apart. His comedy reflects his upbringing as a Russian Jewish immigrant in America. A graduate of Rutgers University, Ben entered a Ph. D. program in neuroeconomics at CalTech before realizing that his career path was meant for comedy instead. His...

Colin Mochrie is one of the most successful and best-known improvisational comedians in the world, having performed on several hundred episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? since 1991, first broadcast in the UK, then later here in America on ABC, ABC Family and since 2013 on The CW. Born in Scotland and raised in Canada, Mochrie learned his theater and comedy skills at Vancouver TheatreSports and S...

Ray Ellin has been the host with the most for most of his adult life. He started by MC'ing stand-up shows at comedy clubs in New York City. In the late 2000s, he launched a live interactive talk show, LateNet with Ray Ellin , first for his own website, DailyComedy.com , and later licensing it to air on AOL. Ellin also became the host for the official off-Broadway live edition of The Gong Show , re...

From the outside looking in, Eleanor Conway had a pretty good gig going for herself as a music journalist for Virgin Mobile, interviewing the biggest pop stars and singers on the planet. But she was miserable on the inside, and Conway had to change her life inside out. She has since sobered up and lived to joke about it, taking her debut show about sex, addiction and dating, "Walk of Shame," to mo...

Blair Socci played Division I college volleyball and went to grad school for creative writing before finding her voice through stand-up comedy. Her first break came in 2016 co-starring in the MTV sketch show, Ladylike . After becoming a New Face at Just For Laughs, Socci made her way back to California, where she became the co-host for  The Trevor Moore Show  on Comedy Central Digital, a frequent...

R.J. Fried turned down the National Hockey League first to pursue his college education, and then a career in comedy. So far, so good. Fried is an Emmy-nominated and WGA Award-winning comedy writer, producer, and performer whose credits have included Triumph's Election Special 2016 , (Hulu), Maya & Marty (NBC),  Onion Sportsdome (Comedy Central), The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC), Popz...

Al Madrigal grew up in San Francisco and worked in his family's HR business for 10 years before deciding to pursue a career in comedy. The next decade found Madrigal on the cusp of fame, starring or co-starring in a handful of network sitcoms and even more TV pilots that never made it to air. You likely first got to know Madrigal when he became the Senior Latino Correspondent for The Daily Show wi...

In the late 1990s, between the comedy booms, perhaps the hottest live stand-up show in Los Angeles happened every week on a Tuesday night. That's when Guy Torry began hosting Phat Tuesdays at The Comedy Store, introducing black comedy for black audiences into the lily-white-dominated landscape of show business — or as Torry said, he "brought the hood to Hollywood." This hip-hop comedy show was goo...

Ali Vingiano is a writer, actress and filmmaking comedian who has leveled up over the course of the pandemic. She received her first Writer's Guild Award nomination in 2022 for her work as a writer and executive story editor on Apple TV+s The Morning Show , and also stars in a largely improvised feature film, The End Of Us , which premiered in 2021 at South By SouthWest. After studying film at bot...

Beth Lapides is an actress, writer and comedic performer who has appeared on Will & Grace , Sex & The City , and Politically Incorrect . But she is best known for creating the alternative comedy show UnCabaret , which has been running off and on and mostly on since the late 1980s in Los Angeles. Lapides turned UnCab into a Comedy Central special in 1997, and then four more specials in 2012 for Ama...

Nick Vatterott grew up in St. Louis but discovered his comedy voice in Chicago. You may have seen him perform on Conan , Late Night with Jimmy Fallon , or his own half-hour special for Comedy Central. Or you may have heard him on his podcast series, Get Rich Nick , in which he and fellow comedian Nick Turner attempt every get-rich-quick scheme under the sun to teach us and themselves about capital...

Justin Spitzer is a television writer and producer who worked as a writing assistant on Queer as Folk and Grounded for Life before breaking into the writers room on The Office , where he worked for seven seasons and received three Emmy nominations. Spitzer went on to create, executive produce and showrun his own beloved NBC sitcom, Superstore . In 2021, he signed a new four-year overall deal with...

It's time once again for Jason Zinoman, the comedy critic for The New York Times , to sit down with me as we deconstruct the year that was. This time we're taking our best cracks at 2021. Was anyone bigger in comedy than Dave Chappelle? Was anyone better than Bo Burnham? We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of everything in comedy worth talking about in 2021. Was there a Most Valuable Perf...

Russell Howard is one of the UK's most successful comedians, the writer and star of  The Russell Howard Hour  on Sky and  Russell Howard's Good News  on the BBC network. After releasing his first Netflix special, Recalibrate , in 2017, Howard prepared to embark on a world tour in March 2020, with a documentary crew filming his preparations and family life. Instead, his new wife went back to work a...

Mary Elizabeth Kelly is an actress who studied musical theater at Northwestern before moving to New York City. She didn't quite land on Broadway, although she did rack up TV credits performing on Law & Order: SVU , Alternatino with Arturo Castro on Comedy Central, and Netflix's Master of None , where she went on a date with Aziz Ansari's character. Kelly and her husband moved to Los Angeles thinki...

I first met Alex Edelman when he was just a teenager, aspiring to become a stand-up comedian while already scoring a lucrative internship with the Boston Red Sox. He achieved much throughout his 20s. A New Face at Montreal's Just For Laughs. Multiple performances on Conan . Co-founded the Off The Wall Comedy Club in Jerusalem. Wrote on The Great Indoors on CBS. Opened on tour for the likes of Beck...

Carole Montgomery racked up dozens of TV credits as a stand-up comedian during the 1980s comedy boom, with her first big break coming on Showtime's Comedy All Stars hosted by Don Rickles. After giving birth to her only child, she began a 10-year stint in Las Vegas, initially hired by Steve Schirripa at The Riviera, then eventually over at The Luxor. After returning to New York City in 2006, she pe...

Lukas Arnold is an actor and voiceover artist who graduated from Northwestern University in 2017 and decided to pursue stand-up comedy after taking a class at Carolines on Broadway. He was just starting to get gigs around New York City when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. On March 18, 2020, Arnold posted his first TikTok video. A year and a half later, he had amassed 2.2 million TikTok...

Jenny Zigrino first hit my radar in 2014 via the Marlon Wayans comedy contest on TBS, Funniest Wins . Zigrino didn't win the contest, but much like her colleagues who didn't "win"  Last Comic Standing , she may just be winning the long game. Wayans cast her in his parody movie,  50 Shades of Black.  She also won a supporting role in the big-screen sequel,  Bad Santa 2 . She performed stand-up mult...

As befits her name, Joyelle Nicole Johnson is a comedian and writer who brings joy to the stage. She made her network TV debut in 2018 on Late Night with Seth Meyers , but it was her May 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that made such an impression that Fallon decided to executive produce Johnson's debut stand-up special for Peacock. Her previous credits have included writ...

Ricky Velez grew up in a blue-collar family in Queens and started living a blue-collar career before he discovered comedy, roomed with Pete Davidson, and won the New York's Funniest stand-up competition. In that order. After winning that contest in 2014, Velez rose quickly through the ranks, earning a gig as a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and appearing on V...