Comedian James Gregory, known as “Funniest Man in America,” is coming to Summerville for the first time Saturday night.
“There’s two things I love about South Carolina: a) Bojangles chicken, and b) the Powerball,” the Georgia-based comedian said last week during a phone interview. “If I pick the right six numbers, that Summerville show will be my last show. If I win the Powerball I won’t need to work anymore.”
Gregory said he got into the comedy business by accident, without planning on it. “I think everybody has some degree of comic talent, because we’re all funny at times.”
Gregory started his stand-up career in the early 1980s at an Atlanta comedy club called The Punch Line, the first of its kind in the southeast.
“Prior to 1982, the only place where you could see stand-up comedy live would have been on the coast, like New York or Los Angeles, maybe Chicago, maybe Boston. Twenty-five years after 1982, comedy clubs opened everywhere. At one time there were like 400 in the United States and Canada. There’s not that many anymore.”
His friends encouraged him to do open-mic sessions on amateur night. “I just went up there every Tuesday, and one thing led to another,” Gregory said.
Gregory said he went through a lot of struggling years.
“To be a successful comedian and make a living at it is not like being an electrician or a plumber. You can go to trade school, learn about electricity, and the next thing you know is some company will hire you, put you on your payroll, and you become better as you go along.
“But when you do what I do and nobody’s heard of you, you go hungry for a while. At some point you’ll have to quit the day job and go at it full-time or you’ll never make it. For some it works out, and for some it don’t. But it’s worked out good for me.
“I’m still working at it. I’ve never had a sitcom, I probably never will. I know comedians who make $100,000 a year or more, but yet their cousins, their uncles, their girlfriends, their in-laws, will still say to them from time to time, ‘How much longer you gonna keep messin’ around with this comedy stuff?’
“I think one reason I’m still in this business and people like the show so much is it’s based on real life. It’s just based on everyday common things and common people. Weather you’re 8 years old, 18, or 80, if you’re in my audience you’ll have a good time.”
Gregory keeps his show family-friendly. “If I had foul language in there, I don’t think my following would be as good.
“I’ve always admired any type of comedian who can go on stage with just a microphone, no music, no backup stuff. Just one man and one microphone, and keep and audience in stitches for an hour and a half. It’s a rare, rare talent to do that. (Billy) Cosby can do it, (Bob) Newhart can do it, without having to go for the cheap laugh, without all the sexual stuff, or the bodily function stuff, or the ‘F’ words or the ‘MF’ words. You can go on for all the time in the world if you put that kind of language in your show.”
“My comedy is total believability. Even if I make it up, you’ll still believe it. And that’s how real I try to keep it.”
When comedians talk about strict Catholic nun teachers, or cramming for final exams and getting stoned and having the munchies are funny topics, but not everyone can relate to it, Gregory said. He calls this “limited funny.”
“If I go on stage and talk about how the news media always picks out the dumbest, ugliest guy to interview when the tornado comes through, everybody laughs, because everybody watches the news, everybody knows I’m right. I am convinced that any time a tornado comes through, the news director at the local TV station tells the reporter to go out to the trailer park and interview a buffoon. And try to find one that is married to a fat woman. They never interview anybody that’s wearing a dress shirt.”
He says he didn’t earn the title of “Funniest Man in America,” but it was given to him in 1986 by a Huntsville, Ala. newspaper columnist who saw one of his shows. Gregory was doing a series of five shows in Huntsville, and read in the paper: “I don’t know who this guy is, I’ve never heard of him, but in my opinion he is probably the funniest man in America.”
Gregory used the quote in his press kit, and in the following weeks every newspaper began using the slogan, he said.
When asked about it, he said minute for minute, laugh for laugh, he thinks he is the funniest man in America. “I’m not the most famous, I’m not the highest paid, but when I’m on stage for 90 minutes there’s nobody in the comedy business who will get more loud laughter than I do.”

Want to go?
Dec. 19
7 p.m.
Flowertown Players James F. Dean Theatre (133 S. Main St., Summerville)
Adults: $27
Seniors: $24