CHAPTER 177

Judy Gold: That kind of material sometimes gets … You know, if I mention the Holocaust … It’s getting worse and worse. It’s really bad. And it’s upsetting.

Author: Do you change some of the jokes that you’re going to do?

Judy: No, never.

Author: Have you ever been telling jokes at the Cellar and people heckled?

Judy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know what, I think more in the old days. Now, you fuck with a comic, you’re out of there. That’s the other thing I love about that club.

Author: What sort of stuff did people complain about? Did anyone complain … I know that you didn’t talk about being gay, onstage, for quite a while. I think you started talking about it in the Nineties?

Judy: Right, the mid-Nineties. I sort of came out as a gay parent. Once I had kids and I had all this material and I was like, ‘Come on, I’ve got to talk about my family in my act.’ I was gay, but I didn’t want to be pigeon-holed as a gay comedian, I didn’t really have anything to say about it in my routine. And here I am, I’m a mother, and what does it tell my kids if I say, ‘Listen, I’m not going to talk about this onstage’? It’s like there’s something wrong with that. But any comic who starts a family, their material changes. Their point of view changes. What they talk about changes. And what they think about changes. And the way they see the world. Their point of view changes. You see it from another person’s eyes.