Gilbert Gottfried’s dirty jokes, unmistakable delivery and twisted world views take center stage in Manchester

April 24--When Gilbert Gottfried first took the stage during an open-mic night at a New York City comedy club, he was a brash 15-year-old, too young and naive to worry about whether members of the audience agreed he was funny.

While Gottfried's comedy developed significantly, he has remained every bit as audacious as the teenager from Brooklyn was that night in Greenwich Village more than 44 years ago.

"I seem to have a career in spite of myself," said Gottfried, who formed his own niche in the comedy world with an unmistakable loud, grating voice and some remarkably twisted world views.

Seth MacFarlane introduced Gottfried at a roast for David Hasselhoff as "America's Creepy Uncle," which Gottfried acknowledged with a hardy laugh as he made his way to the microphone. The description was just wrong enough to fit right in with Gottfried's own twisted sense of humor, which has made him a champion of the roast circuit.

Gottfried's tendency to push has gone too far at times. He was the voice of the Aflac duck until the insurance giant fired him after a series of jokes Gottfried Tweeted after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011.

Gottfried's jokes can be crude and raunchy, but not quite offensive enough to drive away the following he has developed over the decades and new fans who file in to clubs when Gottfried takes his act on the road.

"I often say part of my success, especially in the beginning, was a lack of reality," he said in a telephone interview from his home in New York. "I didn't know if I did well or if I bombed and was too stupid to know the difference."

Gottfried also was a bit fearless, a trait that has stayed with him since he began imitating characters he watched on television in his youth. He said he doesn't recall the reception he got from his first stage appearance at a Greenwich Village club, where he said the only requirement was signing up for a time slot at the door.

It was years before Gottfried started using the over-the-top voice and combined it with a cadence that complements his off-color brand of comedy. That approach took off with a series of MTV ads he did in the 1980s. He had actually spent a season on the cast of "Saturday Night Live" in 1980-81, but had a bigger impact later in the decade when MTV viewers could not escape the loud, rambling improvised bits the young comic was shouting through the TV screen.

It was a very PG-rated introduction to Gottfried, whose stand-up appearances included language and topics that would not have been deemed appropriate for basic cable.

Tickets to Saturday's show at Headliners Comedy Club are $25.

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