Now everyone's a comedian

from the April 27, 2007 edition

From stockbrokers to firefighters, more people are pursuing stand-up comedy as a hobby – or even a second career.

By Harry Bruinius | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

JOHN KEHE – STAFF

NEW YORK - When Billy Bingo, New York's "bravest comic," took the stage at Comic Strip Live in Manhattan, his first joke went straight to his alliterative mic moniker: "Of course it's a stage name, right? What mother would name her kid Billy Bingo? My real name is Gary Bingo." Most of the 35 or so in the audience laughed and grinned – a good start.

Actually, his mother named him William Denis, and "Bingo" is simply an old softball name his former firefighter friends gave him. "And I'm known as 'the bravest' not because I'm a fireman, but because of my lousy jokes!" he later quips. (The "bravest," see, is what we call firefighters here in New York. Cops are NYC's "finest," and sanitation workers, not to be left out, are the "strongest.")

Like many of New York's bravest, Bingo has a walrus moustache, hangdog eyes, and a mischievous grin. "In the firehouse, I was a kitchen guy," he says. "If we were going to pull a stunt, I'd have to be a part of it."

Now he often wears red suspenders on stage – a comic cliché long dubbed "hacky" in the world of stand-up – but Bingo makes it part of a self-deprecating shtick that emphasizes his blue-collar profession and, when all goes well, endears his "lousy jokes" to his audience. (And they're not that lousy, actually. He headlines at the biggest clubs in Manhattan and has just shot a pilot for a TV show.) continue...