Tom Sawyer - Cobb's Comedy Club Owner Part #1 Show #195

This was a Special interview with Tom Sawyer, who took over Cobb's Pub, and then created the legendary "Cobb's Comedy Club" in San Francisco. Starting in the early 80's, he ran one of the main independent comedy clubs for over 25 years. Tom then went on to be the Booker for "Live Nation" for another 7 years. He knows comedy, and worked with Robin Williams, Jim Carey, Dana Carvey, Paula Poundstone, Wil Durst, Kevin Pollack, and many other talents just getting started in their careers. For me, talking to a peer who helped develop such amazing talent, really made this interview fun!
Such a great interview, it lasted 90 mins, so broken into three parts for your enjoyment.

Transcript

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Announcer 0:04

This is another episode of Stand Up Comedy, your host and MC, celebrating 40 plus years on the fringe of show business. Stories, interviews, and comedy sets from the famous and not so famous. Here's your host and MC, Scott Edwards.

Scott Edwards 0:22

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's show. I am so excited to be sharing this with you. The interview with Tom Sawyer, the owner and booker for Cobb's Comedy Club for over two decades in San Francisco, is my interviewee this week. But we had so much in common and such a great conversation. Well, it took a long time. So what I've done is broken it down to three segments. If you're enjoying it, keep listening. You'll get a lot out of all three. Listen to one, see what you think, anything you want to do. But I just wanted to uh tell you I'm excited about this interview with Tom Sawyer from Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco. And here's part one. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast. We have something very fun and special for you today. You know, I say that every week, but this week it's extra special. There's a gentleman that's been in the business as long as I have. We've had kind of parallel lives. He started off as a stand-up comic, ended up being a club owner. There's the connection. But on top of that, he's uh a movie producer and currently a voice artist. It's so exciting to have him on the show, the man that brought Cobb's Comedy Club to the San Francisco area, one of the legendary clubs in the North Bay area. So exciting to have him on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Tom Sawyer. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Well, there's the audience. Thank you very much, Scott. And it's a real pleasure to be on your show and uh thank you for having me.

Scott Edwards 1:59

Oh, well, it's just so exciting because you know, we actually met a couple times, but it was back in the early 80s when you were just getting started at Cobbs. But let's kind of catch the audience up. You started off as a stand-up comic, correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Yeah, that's why I came to I actually came to San Francisco from Rhode Island to Florida to San Francisco.

Scott Edwards 2:21

And what age were you kind of dipping your toes in the stand-up comedy world?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

I did it, uh I did it wherever I could, uh in Florida. There weren't a lot of places to do it. I did a lot of theater when I was in Florida. I also hung out at uh New College in Sarasota, Florida, uh when it's getting a little bit of black and a little bit of press right now in Florida. But uh that was a great hippie school and had no theater department. I I made friends with a a student there through a play and ended up loving the plays. Though I never became a student, I started an improv group there. I did uh DJ at a college station. I put on parties, I put on I directed plays, uh, started plays over there and uh and it had no theater department whatsoever. It was just they just were very creative plays, and I took total total advantage of it.

Scott Edwards 3:16

And um well, I think it's the first time I've heard of somebody going to college that wasn't actually going to college but used it as a commercial base. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Yeah. I had a professor actually ask me what I was doing for my thesis, and uh I said, uh how to trick everybody into believing you're a student but ten people.

Scott Edwards 3:35

Well, that's great. And all that experience on the stage, you fell into stand-up comedy. I know that you uh we're gonna be jumping to uh Cobbs in a little bit in San Francisco, but you were doing stand-up. Uh, did you in, you know, was it something you were driven to? Did you just enjoy the audiences and the accolades and the laughter? Or was it kind of an extension of the improvisation you were doing in theater?

SPEAKER_02 4:03

I was always um uh, you know, I was always a class clown. So, you know, I was always a kid in the back of the room making everybody in the front of the room laugh. And uh so um, so it it was a natural transition for me to to to want to be uh to go into stand up. And San Francisco was the place where it was happening, and I had a friend that was going there, and I said, Can I tag along? And we did a cross-country trip, and I fell in love with San Francisco. Then that was like the day I got there. I knew this was my home.

Scott Edwards 4:36

Yeah, it it used to be such a beautiful, wonderful city. And the fact that you were absolutely correct, back in the uh 70s and early 80s, a real hotbed for uh stand-up comedy, it was just becoming an emerging art form. Uh there was a few clubs in LA, uh, a few in San Francisco, a couple in Boston and back in New York. But as you mentioned, even in Florida, there wasn't a lot of comedy club exposure in let's say 79 to 82, which I think you you started getting involved with Cobbs, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yeah, it was uh yeah, it was uh very it was like 80, late 81. I actually started as producer in 82, but um at like 81 I was out there and basically went to the went to the good round of the clubs, realized everybody was packed, you know, it was so difficult getting stage time. And there was this little place on Chestnut Street uh in uh in the marina district in San Francisco that was trying to do standing at Cobb's pub, and you'd go there and you'd get like crazy stage time, but you know, no audiences. Everybody else is packed. There's like 20 people half asleep at the at Cobb's pub, but you'd get a bunch of stage time. In fact, you'd get stage too much stage time sometimes because uh you'd be on stage until another's comic showed up. And you you you'd go on stage and the same thing would happen again, and then you're 10 minutes into material that you don't have anymore, and you're going, Hey, where are you from? And and the audience is all like, Hey, the last guy just did the same thing. We everybody knows where everybody's from here, so why don't you come up with something else?

Scott Edwards 6:21

That is so funny, and yet at the same time, I bet it was a great uh crucible for building yourself as a comic, learning who you were. Uh, that whole part of learning to interact with an audience is so important. What type of comedy were you doing? Was it uh uh perspective, self-deprecation, prop? I don't I don't know anything about your comedy.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

I was just trying to fit in. I was just trying to fit in. So most everybody at that point was trying to be Robin Williams and being esoteric. I'm gonna be esoteric. I'm gonna say things that don't make sense. Um so so everybody was trying to be like goofy and esoteric, which is kind of against my government, more sarcastic and you know, observational, and but I wanted to fit in. So that's what I was doing. And, you know, um, as I say in the documentary, uh The Comedy Club, which is on Amazon and Tubi and Flex, all those places, I was not a good comedian. In fact, full of pound subs that I sunk, and uh she was right, it was really bad. But I was really bad because I wasn't trying I wasn't being myself. I was trying to fit in, I was trying to uh I was trying to get appreciation from the other comedians, and I wasn't being myself. And that became my mantra later on when I was mentoring comics, be yourself, because they nobody can steal that from you, nobody can take that from you. And uh, you know, that's where you're gonna that's where you're gonna find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in truly being yourself.

Scott Edwards 7:56

No, and that's such great advice, and I'm glad that uh you learned it, and then as a club owner, you pass it on many, many times, I'm sure. Uh I used to do the same uh when I was helping young comics. Uh being yourself is truly the way to find your comedic voice and and uh relate to the audience. If you're yourself, the audience will accept that and work with you. And yes, we'll be doing some uh good size plugs for your movie. But if you didn't catch it, ladies and gentlemen, it's called the Comedy Club. It's out on Freezy, Amazon, several other places. But the Comedy Club is a great uh documentary on uh a tragic time for you. But before we get to that, let's go back to you getting started. So you're stand-up comic, you kind of suck. You're you're hanging out at college.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

No, no, no, I think kind of suck. I suck. I'm trying to be polite. So I I had a I had a couple good sets. I you know, I I uh I I bombed quite a bit.

Scott Edwards 8:58

Well, that's how I tell everybody that's the best way to learn if you don't bomb, uh, or much like in business, if if you don't go bankrupt, you're not really successful. So it's eight late 81, 82. Uh, what came about that uh you started, did you actually take over Cobbs or just started booking? Tell the story.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Well, um, I was, you know, I I basically hung out at Cobbs the most because that was the most stage time you could get. So it didn't make any sense to me to play to a similar size crowd that at one o'clock in the morning at the punchline, I mean at the at the punchline or the other cafe or the Holy City Zoo. It made a lot more sense to be, you know, prime time with uh smaller with the same size crowd, you know, at but at Cobb. So I spent a lot of time there and got to know the owner and you know, because to know everybody that was hanging out. Uh the producer at the time was John Canto. And and no offense to John, but John was very like um he had his crew, um, a small group of comics that he would book repeatedly over and over again. And I just kept telling the owner what was gonna happen before the show started, you know, and how it was gonna fail. And then talking to him late at night if, you know, we're hanging around saying, I think I could do a better job. I think I could bring in comics in here that nobody's bringing in. We can really make this place happen, you know, and without without really putting any extra expense in the club. And you know, he said, How are you gonna do that? Well, I said, Well, give everybody a percentage of the door, give them you know, give them a chance at the brass rank. You know, if they put asses in the chairs, they'll be rewarded for it. And that's what we did. You know, when I when I when he the when the owner, Ron Kikiki, or the former owner, let me take over, we put that into into action.

Scott Edwards 10:47

Well, it was a good move because Cobbs became a uh premier comedy location for many uh decades. Uh, but it was you mentioned a couple things. First off, the owner was um Ron Kiki, and you he ended up working with you at that point, hired you to book, and you replaced John Can too. And for those that uh don't know the history, John was a big time booker in the Bay Area, but he and I butted heads. We uh he wasn't the easiest guy to get along with.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

John butted heads with everybody.

Scott Edwards 11:19

Yeah, yeah. And so I I was not a fan of John's, but I wasn't in uh uh San Francisco, so I didn't have that uh need to be his friend or or worry about what he booked or what he did. I think what you brought to Kiki really uh gave Cobbs an opportunity to make its uh itself the foundation of of stand-up in that area. Now you were just booking in the beginning. Didn't you become a co-owner?

SPEAKER_02 11:50

I became well, I can became a co-owner with my uh with my ex-wife.

unknown 11:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

It wasn't my ex-wife at the time. So we um what happened was um we bought the we bought the club from the owner. It was burnt out and had enough. Uh, this didn't want the night the nightclub life anymore. And we purchased the club from him and the name. And then we moved and the basically the club was losing its lease on Chestnut Street anyway. It was being sold to the Kowalo Inn. And uh so our spot was gonna be knocked down, our building that we were in was gonna be destroyed. So we bought, you know, we bought the name and and the liquor license, and then proceeded to look for a new location and found one in the cannery and fishman store. And and it was uh it was a perfect spot, it was just a great location, not only because um, you know, it's uh we had parking and which in San Francisco is a is really rare, and um we also were able to team up with uh um ice cream polar, which became a restaurant uh shortly after, uh and so we could have miners in and uh expand our audience that way as well. So we had more seats, twice as much as many as we had, uh twice as many as the capacity was on Chestnut Street. We had we're allowed to have people younger than 21 in the building. It was uh it was a magical place. It really extended and we exploded. You know, it was just right.

Scott Edwards 13:25

How many seats did uh Cobbs have when it moved to the cannery?

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Uh 200.

Scott Edwards 13:31

Yeah, that's like the perfect size room. Because um I had a chance to visit uh Cobbs on Chestnut once, but the place that I went more than other, and this was back when I was trying to find axe and and kind of learn my way in the business, but it was the cannery row location. And it was, like you said, it was the perfect size room, it had great ambiance, there was some history in the building. And really what made it a success in my mind for you and your ex-wife was you, as a stand-up comic and starting at the original Cobbs on Chestnut, started building relationships, and you ended up uh being an important part of the career of so many uh comics that uh people now know, you know, somewhat famous, you know, the Dana Carveys, Robin Williams, uh Arj Barker, Bob Cat Goldthwaite, it it goes on and on. Yeah, there's been so many. So, but I I think that uh what you and your ex-wife got to bring to the Cannery Row location really set Cobb's Comedy Club at this point. It wasn't Cobb's pub, you changed it to Cobb's Comedy Club, and really became one of the uh Hallmark clubs of Northern California. At what point did you decide, you know, that I mean you ran it differently. Instead of a um uh three-act format, you were doing still more of a showcase club, correct?

SPEAKER_02 15:13

No, it was it was a it was a three-act format for the most part. Um our we did we we only only had one showcase night a week that but we weren't an open mic club. I I kind of detested open mics. I did them at uh the um Chestnut Street location, and I just had you know didn't have much tolerance for people who would go on stage and not know what they were doing. So we made a I I made a format called the Ultra Comedy Showcase. We later extended that to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But um so uh that's where that might be where you're thinking of the club was a showcase. Because it was a showcase club for three nights of the week and four nights it was a it was just a regular uh headliner room. Yeah, headliner. Okay, so in our peak, we in our peak was we you know when we had Jim Carrey and Brian Rudigan and James Bold and um God knows how many George Wallace and all these people at their peaks, you know, uh we were we were going six days a week with a headliner show and doing three shows on Saturday, so it was like nine. That was about nine shows uh a week uh that we were that we were doing.

Scott Edwards 16:26

So wow, that's a lot of comedy, ladies and gentlemen. I uh tried to limit my shows to uh keep them fuller, but when you had the audience base of San Francisco, you could do that. And I think my confusion, Tom, was that I was dropping in to find talent and meet people on the showcase nights because those were the nights I wasn't working my club. And so and I got to see a lot of great people there. But the uh headliner format, which I think is the most successful for a business, where you have an opening act, feature act, and and a name headliner usually, it really is is one that lends itself to the business side. Now, one of the acts that you had that I never got a chance to work with was Jim Carrey. What was he like as a young comic?

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Uh well, Jim was like a, I think he was well, Jim was a family man at the time. You know, he was just uh actually it's what's amazing to is that uh uh he's just a regular guy. I was just on Adam Corolla shirt when he goes, Oh yeah, Jim Carrey, was he crazy? You know, was he like a crazy person? I don't know. He's like a regular dude. You know, he's just you know, we we just talk and chat and have a great time. And and I remember the first time I saw him, uh who recommended him to me. And I uh talked to his manager, Jimmy Miller, who man now manages like you know, Judd Apatow and you know, a ridiculous amount of crazy talented people. But you know, I saw a tape of Jim and I said, I want this guy. And the first night I saw him at Cobb so doing a full set, I told him, I said, I want you to be this to be your gymnasium. I want you to be able to do whatever the hell you want because I completely trust you that you're gonna entertain the audience. So I want you to go out as far as you can. Don't be afraid to to uh to bust the windows and don't be afraid to you know just you know turn this room upside down. It's your room, have fun. I'm not even gonna I'm not even gonna worry about you on stage. And it was just amazing. The stuff he was coming out with is the stuff that led him to get in living color. A lot of those things, a lot of those characters that um he did there were invented at Cobb's just by him experimenting and playing. And yeah, so it was an amazing uh time. And for I think about three years, he was playing the club at um a month out of the year every year. Wow.

Scott Edwards 19:01

So it's well it was as a club owner, you did something unusual, which is giving uh a particular act free reign on stage be and there's only a few people, Robin is one, and and uh there's a few other that you could do that and get away with that. But giving Jim Carrey that kind of freedom on stage, I'm uh sure was uh so helpful to his career and helping him develop uh the acts and characters that, as you said, made him a huge success and a movie star. But for you as a club owner, bringing it back to you, Tom Sawyer, making those kinds of decisions are so important because you as the producer saw the talent that maybe wasn't uh uh you know viewable by everybody at the time. You mentioned two things that I wanted to uh expand on. One is that a lot of these guys that are a character on stage, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Johnny Steele, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Slayton, when they're offstage, it is so that's when I really enjoyed spending time with him because they were, you know, human and they were more themselves off stage as opposed to on stage when it was kind of a character taking over.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

I think the 80s, uh I said the 80s time was definitely character driven, the l you know, most of the 80s. And then later on, the the people who um were getting back to the same thing we were talking about earlier, which is doing yourself, a lot of these guys were completely I mean you talk to Bill Burr off stage, that's Bill Burr on stage, you know. Bill Bill Maher's attitude is the same attitude that he has off stage. You know, good or bad or indifferent, that's the guy. So um if you don't like Bill Maher on stage, you're probably not going to like him off stage. So I I think that was the to me that was like an interesting part of the of the 80s as opposed to the 90s and going further, going into where we are today, you know, is that that that idea of be yourself, be who you are. You know, to me the person in the 80s who was the most their themselves was Paula Poundstone. Paula Poundstone was amazing in the fact that she is just she's the same person she's the same person now that she wasn't back then because she's the same person off stage that she is on stage.

Scott Edwards 21:34

Yeah, it wasn't a character, it was her.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Yeah. So yeah, so the and kind of the reason I mean at the time I remember getting into a big fight with Bobcat Goldway, 'cause I was saying, dude, dude, don't be Bobcat. Be Bob Goldway. Start trying to transition away from that character because you're gonna get pigeonholed and then you know, and then it it's all gonna come down because You're gonna get stuck. Everybody gets stuck. Comedy is like a trick, you know, in and every comedian has S amount of tricks in their back. And I think one of the reasons why you see a lot of comedians who have great movie careers, eventually those movie careers start to dissipate is because we we see them, they're amazing, we laugh at their jokes, and all of a sudden we stop laughing at their jokes, or we start realizing, hey, that's kind of like the joke you did in the last movie or the movie before that. And again, that's why the people who actually transition, you know, to to become you know better than um you know, better actors or having longer careers are the ones that transition away from stand-up because man, you you eventually, when you're a character, that character goes it it just runs out of gas, you know. So being yourself is so important.

Scott Edwards 22:55

Well, I think a good example of that is Kevin Pollack. You know, he really uh recreated himself from the impressionist stand-up comic into the actor. It all kind of melded, but it was it was uh a good process. And you mentioned Paula. Uh it's coincidentally, you mentioned how you gave uh Jim Carrey freedom of the stage. Uh I didn't have her, I didn't quite give her that freedom, but Paula was the only act in my 20 plus years running a club that I let work multiple weeks in a row so that she could find herself and find her act. Now this was back in uh 8081, but it was still uh just a coincidence, I guess. You did it with Jim Carrey, gave him the freedom of the stage. For me, it was Paula letting her just work over and over and over. And people like uh um uh Dana Carvey and Gary Chanling uh were giving her advice and helping her to find the taking who she was and turning it into an act. I noticed uh you did a lot of work with uh people that we both uh spent time with, Tim Bador, uh Joe Classic, uh Will Durst, uh one of my favorite, favorite people in the world, Arge Barker. Uh you were talking about people that were the same offstage and onstage. How about Bobby Slayton?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

I mean, uh Definitely off the same guy.

Scott Edwards 24:19

Same guy, same guy. And and even Johnny Steele, you know, uh he's got uh an energy that just doesn't stop. Uh these are all really good people that you helped get them going. Uh Dana Carvey, for example, uh started back in those days and ended up with a great career.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Well, it was me and Dana Carve. It's like me, me and uh Kevin Pollack. I I when I was doing when I was starting out in standup, I also did a lot of impressions, impressions, and those are actually the best part of my show because I've been doing impressions since I was a kid, and it was really fun, especially with with Dana and Kevin Pollack, and then later Frank Caliendo to, you know, kind of jam and do our you know, do our weird impressions, the ones you can't do for audience because you have to spend so much time explaining who this guy is. Now he played the senator in Godfather, he was a third character in uh McDonald's 40. Uh we still don't know who he is, you know. But we all knew who those guys were, and and it was always fun. I was so the like jazz musicians jamming, you know, and even Dana, Dana uh Carby every once in a while. When I run into him, he's like, Who's who's who are you doing that's new? You know, he always wants to know you know what what new voice you picked up on. And uh um so it's it's and it's fun doing the weird impressions, the ones the audiences don't get, don't um don't know right off the bat. So that's what it was that's what we'd always share. We'd always share our our new impression or something we're working on.

Scott Edwards 25:50

Well, I I think that is so fun because uh first it explains your relationship with uh Dana Carvey and Kevin Pollock because two great uh people that do impressions. And if you were following in that ilk, obviously you'd you'd gravitate towards them and and spend time with them. But I totally understand that backstage or after hours hanging out, uh playing with each other to find the characters, to work on them and and get them sharp. Was there an impression that uh you can still do that was one of your early ones? You want to share with you what else?

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Okay, I'll give you well, I'll give you a I did a little bit of it before, but um, I'll give you a story to do with this one. I was you know, Robin Williams was a regular um showed up regularly at the club. We probably played a month's worth of sets every year for good for almost 30 years. And one day I figured out how to do Robin's voice. So I was so excited to do Robin for Robin, you know, because I wanted it would be fun to, you know, to do it. And so he comes to the club and he's like, Hey Chief. And I go, Hey, how are you doing? And he goes, What? I go, Yeah, it's really good to see you, man. I'm really enjoying. I'm really enjoying looking forward to seeing you tonight. And he goes, Don't do that. I go, don't do what? And he goes, Don't do that. And I was like, Okie dokie. Okay. And even the my old old doorman Pete Russell, he was we both looked at each other like, holy guy, like both are uh the way he said it was like deadly serious. And and it was like, okay, all right, Mr. Williams. Yeah. So I found out later on, interestingly enough, when I started uh taking classes to be a voiceover actor, um, I took a class with uh um uh somebody from Disney named Ned Lott, and he specializes in sound alike and he works with Disney and he's done like you know, Captain Sparrow, uh, you know, Jack Sparrow and finding a voice for Johnny Deft and other characters and Disney films, and when it came the time for to find a somebody sound alike Robin to do Aladdin, um guy that was perfect and he presented it to Robin and Robin rejected it. And then they had of course they had a couple other actors that that sounded pretty good, you know, pretty close to Robin. Again, presented those two guys, Jeff and Rimbo. They said, Is there anybody you like? He picked somebody that sounded nothing like him. They had to can all the sound alike of Robin, all the projects they had signed up. He don't he doesn't like his voice. He doesn't like he uh you know, some people think it's kind of an insult, uh, you know, that you're making they that you're making fun of him. And I think Robin thought that, you know, it's uh you know, it was very odd because he's the nicest guy. Nicest guy, great guy, amazing person. And I think that's one of the things that uh you know always remember about Robin, his ridiculous generosity, how he helped comics when they were ill, when when they were in bad shape uh financially. He helped us when we moved to um uh uh uh Columbus Avenue. Uh he helped us out financially in that location as well. Just ridiculously generous and caring. Uh wonderful person.

Scott Edwards 29:21

Yeah, but it it's so funny. Uh that's a great story, Tom, and thanks for sharing it. That it is no, you know, it's it's been known in show business that imitation is a compliment. And yet, in the case of Robin, and I've I've heard this about a couple other people, they they find it insulting or they just are annoyed by it and don't like it. You know, then there was others like Johnny Carson that kind of thrived on it and loved people doing him. So it I I think it takes uh it it's their perspective of what they're hearing first. But the story about Disney and him turning down everybody until they found somebody that didn't sound like him is hilarious. Now you've worked with a lot of the what turned out to be some of the biggest names in comedy, and some of them were coming to the club when they were big names. Uh both of us had a good relationship with George Wallace, who is like Mr. Vegas, and uh a couple other people that uh were already pretty well known from the 70s. Was there anybody you had at the club or got to work with that you were maybe a little awestruck or or you know had that star feeling? Um, you know, I I for some reason, for whatever reason it is, I don't really have that gene.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

And I think that I think um actually going back to Robin, he he cut out of me in a weird way because when he started showing up at Cobbs, uh, you know, I was trying to, you know, you know, make him feel comfortable or make him feel welcome. And he was treating me like a shit, right? So I was so I went to uh Michael Pritchard, who was everybody would go to in those days if they had an issue a problem, because he was like, you know, you know, he was like everybody's uh uh priest that would go see if uh we had a comedy issue.

Scott Edwards 31:07

Yeah, he was like the godfather of the Bay Area. Everybody, Michael Pritchard, look him up, you'll uh you'll see he was a very funny guy.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

Yeah, and uh so I said, Mike, you know, he's always I got a problem, mom shows up, he treats me like shit, blah, blah, blah. He says, What would you do with anybody else? I I told him, I said, I would go tell him to go fuck himself. And uh he said, Well, tell him go fuck himself. And I went, Really? That's okay. And I went, okay. So next time he comes in, my hat my go fuck yourself hat on already. And um I didn't say it, but I was I was in that place, you know, where I could say it. And he treated me wonderfully. And then I realized that from that moment on that I was kind of awestruck, and that was probably annoying the shit out of me, you know. Uh and and so I kind of kept that hat on for the rest of my life, which is like the you know, um nobody's nobody's above being made fun of or poked fun at, or you know, I want to make people feel welcome, but I don't want to do it in a way that's condescending or uh kiss assie or anything like that. And uh so I think the only person I really got awestruck with was um uh I had uh Robin brought down uh Eric Idle, and I was a gigantic Monty Python fan. And um and I was I was a little w wobbly in the knees when I met him. So man, that would have been that's awesome.

Scott Edwards 32:39

Eric Idle, yeah, a legend. Uh and Monty Python was so important to our generation as a as a comedy team. Uh just I'm not competing, but I once uh talking about being awestruck and starstruck, I once had on my stage Graham Chapman.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Oh wow.

Scott Edwards 32:57

Right. And it was literally it was literally weeks before he passed, sadly. But we had a chance to have him at the club for a week, and he told amazing stories. And and just being a uh a Monty Python fan, it was uh um uh incredible for me. But Eric Idle, I think I would have been the same way. Okay, before I roll the closing credits, just a quick reminder: there's three parts to this interview. Part two is coming up next. And uh thanks for listening. Be sure to rate us and share us. Bye.

Announcer 33:34

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