PACKED HOUSE. SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE VIC. WE GO GANGBUSTERS. I’M REALLY LOOSE AND THE MATERIAL GOES VERY WELL. WE SLIP IN AND OUT OF SKETCHES AND THE AUDIENCE JOIN IN LUSTILY ON THE SING-ALONGS. I OUGHT TO DO MORE writing for my stand-up bit, but most of my writing time is taken up with my diary. Writing comedy one-liners is what I started out doing way back in the sixties for the legendary David Frost, a great appreciator of comedy and someone who made a career from using other people’s jokes. Usually he paid very well for them, but apparently at the beginning of his career he didn’t, so that Peter Cook called him “the bubonic plagiarist” and “the thief of bad gags,” and said that his only regret in life was saving David Frost from drowning. But David is still going strong, while Peter is sadly in the great Footlights Club in the sky. I used to impersonate David on TV. This was sheer ingratitude on my part, since he gave me my first TV writing job, and I ought to feel bad, except that soon after I played him interviewing Dan Aykroyd as Richard Nixon on Saturday Night Live he came up and said to me, “I loved your Frost.” I think when people can refer to themselves in the third person you don’t really have to worry about their feelings. Last year on his radio show I thanked him for giving me my start in TV and he was very sweet. He embraced me, and he almost wept.
Last night was great for me because Tania and Lily arrived from L.A. I was sitting in the hotel contemplating the view when in walked my girls. My heart lifted.
“Group hug,” said Lil. “Come on, parentals.”
I hugged them both and held them close.
Later, Lily rode with me to the show and we both did our makeup backstage, an unusual father-daughter thing. More of my in-laws came to the show, including my father-in-law, Alex, who is ninety-one, and my ma-in-law, Algea. Joyce, my sister-in-law, brought her two grown-up daughters, Kris and Kim (with their husbands, Victor and Bob), and my brother-in-law Mark, who is a cop in Hillside, was sitting right down front with his wife, Lori, beaming away at me. In act two I introduced all my folks to the audience. Afterward we popped out for pizza.
Near the end of the show during “Bright Side” I turned around, and there to my surprise and delight was Lily onstage singing away. Peter brought her on again for the “Lumberjack” encore. She’s an old pro by now. Her debut was three years ago at the Chicago Theater on my last tour, at the tender age of nine. She also did the Toronto shows, singing backup with the girls, before capping that with two nights live at Carnegie Hall! Not a bad career start for a fourth-grader.