Fully loaded with a licence to roast; Nothing and no one is safe from the barbs of the Roastmaster General (The Province)

Have you always wanted to feel like a celebrity? Jeffrey Ross is here to help. But be careful what you wish for.

Dubbed the Roastmaster General for his brilliantly scathing work aimed at the rich and famous on Comedy Central Roasts, Ross is now reaching out to the common herd. The author of I Only Roast the Ones I Love now sees potential subjects everywhere, from dudes in the airport to whole cities.

"Roasting for me has gone beyond celebrities and tuxedos," he said on the phone from the Jersey Shore, prior to heading west to host Just For Laughs' Nasty Show at the River Rock Casino Resort on June 10 and Red Robinson Show Theatre on June 11. "Now I can roast people, places and things, adapting it to the world. The world is my dais, if you will."

Ross will act as MC for the standup spectacle, introducing fellow comics Ari Shaffir, Thea Vidale and Big Jay Oakerson. But he'll also make time to put us in our place, both collectively and individually.

First off, the Lower Mainland is on notice. "Before I get to Vancouver I'll start writing jokes about the city. I'll do an opening monologue about Vancouver."

And then?

"I think I'll just start ripping into people just because it's the Nasty Show. I feel like this is a license to kill if there ever was one. It's finally a chance to break down my wholesome image."

That wholesome image has been slamming celebs since the mid-'90s but it was the Pamela Anderson roast in 2005 that sealed his reputation as one of his generation's top comedic feather rufflers. Who can forget his cringe-inducing zinger, "How is it possible that Courtney Love looks worse than Kurt Cobain?" directed at Cobain's widow sitting but a few feet away? And that's the only line that can be repeated in a family newspaper.

With jokes like that, you'd think he'd be making enemies all over Hollywood. But that's not the case. At least that he knows of.

"I feel like I haven't really hurt anybody," he insists. "But then again, the great Buddy Hackett once told me that if you hurt somebody's feelings, they'll probably never tell you about it."

So now's your chance to get that special warm feeling of being publicly humiliated by one of the industry's best.

"I'm going to try an experiment at the Nasty Show, which I don't think has ever been done before in Vancouver," he says. "I'm going to try speed roasting volunteers from the crowd, whoever wants to come on stage to get ripped on. Fifteen seconds of pain."

But fret not, Ross, at the age of 45, is a master craftsman. There is an art to a comedic undressing. Nothing is off-limits, he claims, if delivered right. But there must be genuine affection for the subject matter, too.

"You don't want to be a bully," he says. "You don't want to pick on people that aren't up for it. You want everyone to leave the show going,

'That was so much fun. I wish I'd been roasted.' To me, that's the key, is to have everybody think of it as a party and not as competitive or mean. You want everyone to feel like they're Frank Sinatra surrounded by the Rat Pack. You don't want them to feel like a deer about to get shot."

This isn't the first time Ross has taken roasting to new environments. He's lambasted the contestants and judges on Dancing With the Stars, where he himself was a contestant ("I danced so poorly people thought it was a telethon and sent in money"), recently did a part on Family Guy roasting one of the characters, and on Monday night gave a crash course to the men on The Bachelorette.

"It was really fun," he says. "I actually coached them beforehand on tips for making a woman laugh. If you can make a woman laugh at herself, you can virtually make her do anything."

And that's not the only practical reason for embracing the roast ethic in your everyday life. Ross has no option. It is his calling and everyone expects it from him. "Every guy in the airport wants me to rip into them," he says.

But we can learn from the art of dishing it out and taking it, too. "I feel like it's a good self-defence mechanism. If you read my book, chances are you're not going to get picked on. I recommend it as a textbook for children."

Note to parents: Not so much. He is the host of the Nasty Show, after all.

"I don't consider myself nasty; I consider myself classy," he says. "But maybe a little nasty."

Fleeing a Michigan nightmare; Popular Ottawa comic looks forward to Canada -- anywhere in Canada (The Province)

Since his series stopped production in 2008, Jon Dore has started making a name for himself south of the border. After starring for two seasons in one of the funniest Canadian series of all time, the aptly named The Jon Dore Television Show, which still airs on the Comedy Network, Dore uprooted himself and started anew in Hollywood.

But it's a slow process, he admits, even though his hilariously outrageous program is running on the IFC in the States and he had a guest-starring role as a mugger/ zookeeper on an episode of CBS's How I Met Your Mother. Touring comedy clubs across the U.S., he estimates that over the course of a typical weekend, eight to 10 people might have seen him on TV and come out to see him for that reason. The rest are just out for a night of anonymous comedy.

"It's kinda fun," the 11-year comedy vet says on the phone from his home in Los Angeles. "In a weird way it's kinda like headlining for the first time again."

It may be fun but it's not always easy. Last weekend in Michigan, for example, was the worst experience of his standup career.

"They were probably the most unruly crowds that I've ever performed in front of in my entire life," he says. "I almost hit my breaking point. Every show had a stagette that had something to yell out. They were texting, yelling, there was music blaring in. Michigan nearly broke me. It was a genuine nightmare. I just couldn't believe the disrespect these human beings had. Just unbelievable."

So you can bet Ottawa native is looking forward to coming home this weekend. To Canada, that is. It doesn't matter where. In a special Global ComedyFest Encore presentation, Dore plays the Cultch tonight then heads to New West for four shows over two nights at Lafflines on Friday and Saturday.

"There's good and bad with everything, but yeah, Canada's definitely a more comfortable place to perform," Dore says. "Don't get me wrong; I love performing in the States but it just feels like this is home. You go to Vancouver, it's a familiar scenario, you know anything you say isn't going to be misconstrued and fans of the TV show seem to want to come out."

Besides, he says, "I really like the venue. The Cultch? I mean, it's a cultural centre! People are coming because they want to see culture."

Not that he won't bring a certain class to the Cultch or Lafflines, but like his persona on stage, Dore is a master of the earnest poker-faced lie. In fact, he himself will admit to a crowd that the first lie he ever told was on board the Space Shuttle. Some of his jokes are harmless ditties like that one while he can also get quite dark ( "I treated my grandfather like royalty. Which means, yes, I killed him in a car crash"), but for him the joke, not the truth, is always king.

While a movement is afoot in comedy for personal, raw storytelling, Dore refreshingly keeps us at a distance. We never get to know the man behind the beard.

"My beard has nothing to do with comedy," he deadpans. "It has something to do with the fact that I'm hiding something. Oh yeah, there are secrets that I'll go to the grave with, for sure. Pardon me, I'm going to be cremated. Go to the urn with."

But, he isn't as cocky as he appears. He admits he's an over-thinker, constantly concerned about the expectations of the crowd.

"I want the show to go well," he says. "If they get unruly, I get worried. Then it's like, okay, how do I control this crowd? If the middle act does really well and they're in love with them, how do I change the pace a little bit?"

He might have reason to torment himself this week when his opener will be fellow Canadian and former Vancouverite Lynn Shawcroft, who, despite having done standup herself for over a decade is probably best known for being the widow of the legendary Mitch Hedberg.

Cook finds right recipe for success; Determined to succeed in a career of telling jokes, Dane is feeling fortunate (The Province)

Russell Peters' fans might disagree, but Dane Cook is arguably the biggest name in stand-up comedy. The 37-year-old Bostonian is a tireless workhorse whose skip-the-media approach to his fans has turned him into a megastar.

For years, Cook appealed to his fans directly via an impressive online presence on the social networking site MySpace (2,581,756 friends and counting!), allowing him to steer clear of the ink-stained wretches.

"I had this fan base that was so tenacious and so on the pulse of what I was doing that I didn't feel at that time that I really needed to do very much press," he said on the phone from his home in Los Angeles yesterday, one day ahead of his show at GM Place. "I could get on MySpace, I could put out one note and places would sell out."

Not that he needs help putting bums in seats these days. It's just that his plan backfired somewhat. While his legion of fans swear he's the best thing to ever happen to comedy, his success saw the inevitable backlash that comes with crazy fame.

"There was a lot of misunderstanding about me and who I was and my passion for stand-up comedy. The rumour mill and innuendo kind of became the truth on the bathroom wall," he says. "So I found it was a bit of a disservice to not get out there and talk to people like yourself and let them know what I'm really about."

He claims he expected the adverse reaction since it had been years since the likes of Steve Martin and Andrew "Dice" Clay were performing comedy on that kind of level.

"There's nowhere to go when you hit that upper echelon, especially when you're exposed to that many more people that truly just don't find you funny," he says. "The more people find you funny, the much more people that don't find you funny. So you just kind of roll with those punches."

Cook received an unexpected punch back in 2006 at Yuk Yuk's on Burrard Street. While in town shooting Good Luck Chuck, he dropped into the local comedy club to do a guest set -- a huge surprise for the crowd. As reported in The Province at the time, Cook performed for 35 minutes ahead of headliner Peter Kelamis before the club decided he needed to get off the stage. They cut his mic and blasted music from the speakers, a fine how-do-you-do for someone of his stature.

"What I thought was kind of a cool little pop-in, after the fact I learned it turned into a bit of a debacle locally," he says. "But I gotta tell you, from my perspective, I walked into the club and was welcomed with open arms. I had no clue at the time of performing that I was going to be ruffling any feathers. I just went in to give some comedy to that great club and learned after the fact that it was a bit of a fire storm once I left."

Cook says he was certainly "a little miffed," but it was just one of life's interesting moments.

"No harm, no foul. The fans got a cool show," he says. "And to the other comics that were talking smack, I can't tell you how many nights I got bumped in New York City by the Chris Rocks and the Ray Romanos. It goes with the territory. But, yeah, that was a bit of a strange night, but it would not deter me from wanting to come up and give a small show again for those great fans."

No small show this time around, though. His arena shows are an event. It's theatre in the round, and it works, he says, because of his amazing light, sound and camera crew.

"It's almost like going to a baseball game where you get to look at the field and see the game, but then you get to see perspective on a replay that you might not have seen before."

One of his openers, Al Delbene, has been a friend since the two were 14 years old and had stars in their eyes. "He was the first person I ever told outside of my family that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. He actually said back to me, 'Wow, that's funny because I want to be a stand-up comedian.' Here we are now, gosh, 26-27 years later still performing together."

Cook has always been driven to succeed. He has set attendance records left and right, holds the endurance record at the Laugh Factory for performing seven straight hours, did the longest monologue in Saturday Night Live history, and sees his albums consistently on the Billboard charts. But, he says, he doesn't set out with records in mind.

"I'm not an outwardly competitive person. I really am not," he claims. "But I am very competitive with myself, which means pushing myself beyond being derivative of what I've done before and wanting to mail it in or repeat myself just to make a few dollars. So I guess by continuing to expand my repertoire, get better and continuing to push myself further, I've had some nice dalliances with some historic moments. And I attribute that to the fans. I really do. All of those successes come to great comedy fans who allow me to still come into their homes, into their lives, and they listen to my random thoughts and my point of view. It really is all about the fans. So those things say more about my fans than they do about me."

With his single-minded determination, it's really no surprise he's scaled the heights he has.

"I was pretty much driven from the beginning," he says. "I started stand-up when I was 19 and I told my folks, 'Listen, this is what I'm going to do. This is where I want to be.' My mom embraced it. My dad, it took him a little bit longer. What I told my folks was if you support me on this, I won't be just a kind of funny guy. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to take this to hopefully an upper echelon that you will be proud of and that I'll be proud of. So I didn't set out to do this just to sling a couple of funny jokes. I wanted to make a mark somewhere, and I feel very very fortunate that things worked out that way."

Snowy road to Kaml . . . oops!; Duo still sees funny side of missing out on gig (The Province)

Back in June, when comedians Dan Quinn, Ed Byrne, Craig Campbell and Glenn Wool met in Wool's North London home to discuss a January tour of B.C., they thought it would be funny to play up the cold Canadian winters angle.

Now not so much.

So it was that the Snowed In Comedy Tour was literally snowed in. At least on Day 1 for two of the comics. Calgary native, and former Vancouverite, Campbell was eager to play tour director for Irishman Byrne and his wife, along with Campbell's British partner and her son. Their mission: to get from Nelson to Kamloops. Easy enough for someone who's done many a drive between provinces in his 19 years on the road.

Mission impossible, it turns out.

Waking up in the little B&B on the shores of Kootenay Lake to no power and rainfall on top of gooey snow, the road warriors made a go of it anyway. They piled in to their rented 4x4 and set off on their journey. Showtime at Sun Peaks was at 9 pm. Lots of time.

"An incredibly picturesque dawdle is what I had in my head," says Campbell, who has carved out a very successful comedy career in Europe after playing second fiddle to a sock for seven seasons on Ed's Night Party in Toronto. "I was hoping to be pointing out bald eagles and talking about Kokanee salmon and their unique properties in our world. And we get onto the main road and it's very nearly carnage."

In Slocan, they were met with avalanche bars across the road. Thinking laterally, he thought of the Creston-Radium Hot Springs-Golden route on to Revelstoke, but Highway 1 was closed from Golden to Sicamous.

"I started to realize how really socked in we were," he says.

The only option was to cut down through the U.S., which is easier said than done with passengers holding three different passports. But where there's a will, there's either a dead person or a way. Thankfully, it was the latter.

"Luckily we get the nicest guy we could ever hope to meet at the American border. He's really quite charming to deal with. He sees the Conan O'Brien credit on the poster and asks Ed if he's met Conan O'Brien," Campbell laughs. "He's not sycophantic but he's really keen and interested. It wasn't a butter-up; it was a real wonderful, sincere conversation with the guy who really wanted to know stuff about the show. I felt there were all sorts of things he could have done to us but he just fast-tracked us."

Not fast enough, however. Despite only an hour's drive through the States, they didn't arrive to their 8 o'clock gig until 11:45, fifteen minutes after Quinn and Wool finished the show on their own.

"We just missed it. It just wasn't to be," he says philosophically. "It was frustrating but it couldn't have been funnier to be snowed in on the Snowed In Comedy Tour."

If there's anything to be gained from this experience it's that Campbell, who's known as one of the best storytellers in the business, will come away with tons of new material.

"It was actually on so many levels a great experience to have with people in the car that aren't from here because it underlines what's a pretty normal Canadian experience is quite abnormal in many parts of the globe," he says.

Byrne won't make the last leg of the journey, which stops in Vancouver at the Rio Theatre. But Campbell, Quinn and Wool, three headliners in their own right, can more than carry the load.

"I'm very, very happy to be playing Vancouver again. I've not been there for so long," says Campbell, who last was here about five years ago. The wild-haired 39-year-old has been living in England, as has Vancouverite Wool, for years and fits right in to the southern England rustic lifestyle. He's in no hurry to move back.

"I love Canada," he says. "It's my favourite holiday."

D-List helps put Kathy Griffin on A-List; Griffin now an Emmy winner and YouTube hit (The Province)

Kathy Griffin is on a roll. At least a Kathy Griffin kind of roll.

Last week, on a New Year's Eve telecast with Anderson Cooper on CNN, Griffin used a squelch made popular by nightclub comedians from time immemorial that features some salty language. Going to commercial, Griffin shouted good-naturedly to a bystander, "I don't go to your job and knock the d---s out of your mouth."

Perfectly acceptable in a comedy club. But on the venerable news station? Turns out that's OK, too.

Griffin, who performs two shows at the River Rock Show Theatre on Saturday, insists she thought the program had already gone to a break. When she found out otherwise, she immediately turned to her co-host and said, "Are you in trouble? Am I in trouble? Are we fired? Are you fired?" Cooper was nonplussed. "He acted like it was nothing," she says on the phone from her home in Los Angeles. "He said, 'No! It's cable. The FCC doesn't govern it.'"

Still, it got people talking. Which is something the self-proclaimed D-list celebrity covets. She also revelled in her 2007 Primetime Emmy win for her reality series Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List when she accepted the award saying, "Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now." That bon mot got her condemned by the Catholic League. All well and good for the lapsed Catholic. But the joke on CNN has made her an instant splash on the Internet.

"You have no idea how excited I am at the age of 48 to be a YouTube sensation," she says. "I have never in my whole career had what they call the YouTube moment and now it's had something like a million views. I am absolutely in heaven. I live for this s--t."

With all this publicity, it's only fitting that in her fifth season, which airs on Bravo in the U.S. and the Comedy Network in Canada, the theme is that she's an A-lister in training. So she gets advice from the likes of Bette Midler, Rosie O'Donnell, Gloria Estefan and Lily Tomlin. In fact, Griffin is coming up a day early just to catch Tomlin, who's appearing at the same venue on Friday. (See story on opposite page.)

"When I talk to Lily Tomlin," Griffin says, "I'm sure that she will be one of many, many Oscar nominees and Grammy winners that will say, 'Maybe you shouldn't say things like that.' But I can't help myself!"

She dishes it out and her fans eat it up. Griffin draws from all quarters but is especially popular in the gay community.

"I call them the unshockable gays," she says. To her, they're the ideal audience because they're an oppressed minority who have real world problems they are confronted with daily.

"Who knows if somebody used a slur or if in any way they had to deal with any kind of anti-gay sentiment in their day," she says, "so by the time they come to a comedy show they're just willing to go there with me. They want to laugh. Gay audiences are the very least likely to walk out in shock at anything I say. I mean, what haven't they heard?"

If there happens to be a dissatisfied customer or two, though, she doesn't sweat it. On the contrary, she welcomes it.

"I like to think I haven't really done my job until at least one person's walked out," she says.

Finesse your way through comedy; Team of Just For Laughs packs theatres across Canada (The Province)

When Saturday Night Live alumnus Finesse Mitchell agreed to host the cross-Canada Just For Laughs comedy tour, he had no idea Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee for president. So he jumped at the chance to perform standup in packed theatres from Hamilton to Victoria (the tour makes its Vancouver stop tomorrow at the Centre).

"Had I known he was going to win, I would have probably not done the tour because I wanted to be in the States," he says on the phone from a stop in sunny Saskatoon. "I thought Hillary was going to win. I'm like, 'I'm outta here. I'm going to Canada!' "

Obama's victory was an emotional time for the 36-year-old former University of Miami football player. "I cried and I cried watching other people cry," he says. "Every time I stopped crying, they showed somebody who was crying and then I started crying."

And then there were the missed social events. Mitchell was a frat guy in college and obviously still likes a good party. "Just the other day in Miami they had a Barack Obama bikini contest. It was like 80 degrees. So they gave me a call. They were like, 'Hey, Finesse, we want you to come down and be a judge. You in town?' I'm like, 'I'm in Saskatoon!' They're like, 'Where is that?' 'Somewhere very cold.'"

But Mitchell is having a blast criss-crossing his northern neighbour with a coterie of international comics featuring Canada's Pete Zedlacher, Ireland's David O'Doherty, Britain's Hal Cruttenden, with special guest Danny Bhoy from Scotland.

"We've become a small little family now," says Mitchell. "It's so funny because they're always talking about their history and who invaded who and who owes who what, who's in debt to who and all that type of stuff. Everywhere we go we're cracking jokes."

His three seasons on Saturday Night Live were two-thirds a joy. His last year was, he says, "a bit of a struggle and challenge. The cast was huge and it was hard getting my sketches on. I started losing confidence in what I thought my funny was."

After being let go, he suffered the usual actor's insecurities. "I thought the phone wasn't going to ring," he says. "You get terrified when you leave a show like SNL: 'Man, what's going to happen next?'"

Luckily, the phone kept ringing and he booked two movies, Who's Your Caddy? and The Comebacks, as well as signing a book deal, which became Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much, a dating advice book for African-American women. "I just basically took all my experiences and the experiences from my boys, who were thugs, professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, teachers and unemployed PlayStation dudes and put them out in one book and made a hit, man," he says.

On stage, Mitchell covers relationships, politics, pop culture and enjoys playing with the crowd.

"I'm always messing with the front row," he says. "So Vancouver, if you don't want to get messed with, don't sit in the front row. Especially with the wrong type of shirt on."

The show runs like clockwork, with Mitchell doing 10 minutes off the top and 10 more in the middle, but he freely admits he likes to talk.

"Sometimes I run long. It's hard for me to stick to my time. I've got a lot to say," he laughs.

Because, hey, sometimes you need a little Finesse; sometimes you need a lot.

Just letting the funny out; No parody of Match Game, more like the real thing (The Province)

Forget The French Connection, Farrah Fawcett-Majors or the Fonz, the real cultural icon of the 1970s was ________.

If you said, Match Game, ding-ding-ding! You win.

The game show featuring the blankety-blank questions has had several incarnations over the years, but the version hosted by Gene Rayburn from 1973 to 1982 was the perfect fusion of comedy and competition, becoming, for several of those years anyway, the highest-rated program in all of daytime TV.

Marcia Wallace, best known for her role as Bob's receptionist Carol in The Bob Newhart Show, was a regular panelist on many a game show back in the day. But her favourite remains Match Game, where fun was the order of the day.

"Are you kidding me?," she says on the phone from her home in L.A. "It was as close as you get for being paid for going to a party as you'll ever find. It was wonderful."

Party indeed. "People drank in those days," she says. As is the schedule with all game shows, numerous episodes are taped on a given day. The first two or three were fine. "Then we had some lunch where there was definitely a couple of drinks. Nobody was ever falling down but certainly things got looser. They absolutely got looser."

The camaraderie and looseness was a big part of its success. And it couldn't have worked without the right emcee to bring those personalities together.

"There was no better host in the world ever than Gene Rayburn," says Wallace. "He was funny, he was sassy, he was naughty, he kept the game going, he made the contestants feel good, he set up the celebrities. He was perfect."

Which is no knock on Jimmy Pardo, the L.A.-based comedian who has been hosting a live version of the game for three years. Pardo, who once hosted National Lampoon's Funny Money on the Game Show Network, brings the same dynamic to the live show, which will play the Firehall Arts Centre this weekend as part of the Global ComedyFest. Panelists like Wallace, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Richter and Brian Posehn will be on hand to supply answers for a lucky audience member.

Make no mistake, this is no ironic alternative comedy lampoon of the game show.

"I think the trick was not to do it as a parody," says Pardo, no relation to the occasional Match Game TV announcer, Don Pardo, although he gets asked that question about 500 times a day. "Just play the game and the funny will come out."

Getting his comedic peers to join in was half the battle, too.

"Every time they tried to bring Match Game back on TV," he says, "they put six people on the stage and then they tried to recreate or force this chemistry that doesn't exist. And it just doesn't work. Whereas the one that we bring up to Vancouver, we all know each other. And we're able to laugh at each other. If somebody tells you your answer sucks, you're able to laugh about it as opposed to going, 'Why is Jim J. Bullock telling me I'm not funny?'"

Even the 65-year-old Wallace is right at home. "Boy is she great," says Pardo. "She fits right in. She's sharp, she's funny and she brings a little bit of history to the game. And she's not afraid to go a little blue if she needs to. She's just a joy to be around."

With a renaissance in TV game shows hosted mainly by comics, is there a place for Pardo back on the tube?

"Sadly they're famous comics," says the self-deprecating Pardo. "They're taking my job and I'm going to have to whack Howie Mandel in the back of the head with a two-by-four."

***

Match Game isn't the only show in town. Other festival highlights include:

- Asssscat, Firehall Arts Centre, tonight at 9, tomorrow night at 7: New York's Upright Citizen's Brigade brings its acclaimed one-hour long-form improv show to Canada for the first time. One word from the audience sends a guest monologist (tonight it will be Andy Richter) off on an improvised monologue, which in turn sets in motion a series of scenes from the rest of the cast, including Saturday Night Live alumnus Tim Meadows.

- Charlie Murphy, Lafflines Comedy Club, tonight through Saturday: Murphy isn't just the older brother of superstar Eddie Murphy, he's a stand-up comedian in his own right, best known for his supporting role on Chappelle's Show. Depending on the night, you'll see a combination of Brent Weinbach, Ian Bagg, Ryan Belleville, Peter Kelamis and Jeffery Yu opening the show.

- Rockomedy, Firehall Arts Centre, tomorrow and Saturday, 11 p.m.: If music be your bag, this is the show for you. Brian Posehn of Just Shoot Me and The Sarah Silverman Program hosts. Guests include the Andy Kaufman Award winner Reggie Watts, the musical duo Hard 'n' Phirm, and Howard Kremer's rap alter ego Dragon Boy Suede.

- Best of the Fest, The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, Saturday, 8 p.m.: If you can only get to one show, this one encapsulates the highlights of the past two weeks. Hosted by the hugely popular Ron James, it features a star-studded cast, including Janeane Garofalo, Todd Barry, Stewart Francis, and Jon Dore among others.

Do you know Who in the Hell is Todd Allen?; Comic wants it more up close and personal (The Province)

Pity the lot of the working stand-up comics. Out in the trenches killing people with laughter from town to town, working their way up to theatres and national television exposure. Do they get stopped on the street? Does anyone remember their name? Not so much.

Todd Allen knows this all too well. The 29-year-old comedian has played the prestigious Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, had his own Comedy Now! TV special, and earlier this year became the first Vancouver-based comic to appear on a U.S. late night talk show when he guested on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

"I'm no different than any other comedian in Canada trying to carve out a career," he says. "Some of my credits are pretty fancy-dancy but nobody knows who the hell I am."

And that's the premise of his new one-man show, premiering at Studio 16 during the Fringe Fest. Who the Hell is Todd Allen? allows the Victoria native to tell stories about his life without the rat-a-tat delivery that is often expected in stand-up shows.

"It's still very funny but I don't feel the pressure right away to have to give a really quick dumb joke so that they know I'm funny. You have a little bit more leeway with a show like this. It's not so much, 'What have you done for me in the last four seconds?'"

Allen says that much of the show will be based on his stand-up act and characters he's developed over the years, admitting that the difference between his club act and the one-man show is maybe imperceptible.

"It may be more for the performer than the audience what the difference is. It's kind of self-indulgent doing a one-man show. Even stand-up itself is quite self-indulgent, I think. 'Who the hell is this guy to be doing this?'"

He got the idea when he started experimenting with using no microphone doing his act. As subtle as that may seem, he felt he was able to better communicate with the crowd. And the idea cemented when he saw Henry Rollins perform.

"I was blown away," he recalls. "His stories are very engaging and very funny. And he's obviously trying to communicate his thoughts and feelings to an audience as opposed to just trying to get a reaction out of them like stereotypical stand-up comedy does. I still like stand-up, obviously, but I find that there's some meaning in trying to communicate with people."

It's all part of his love-hate relationship with his chosen profession. In his eight years of stand-up, he says he's quit probably 17 times. What keeps him coming back?

"It's just better than everything else, you know?"

ON STAGE

Who the Hell is Todd Allen?

Where: Studio 16, 1565 W. 7th Ave.

When: Sept. 6-14