"Page one in comedy" according to Bill Burr

Accidentally repeat a joke? Burr tells Bill Maher his way of turning that around.

Jun 03, 2024

This might be my fave pod of the year so far, just Bill Burr calling out Bill Maher on his “pompous professor” shtick for 90+ minutes. Killer stuff.

Along the way (~44mins in), there’s a good bit of standup wisdom from Burr.

They get into talking about that nightmare feeling when you’re doing multiple sets in the same night and you tell a joke that you’ve already said in the same set. Maher talks about how awful that feels: “There's, like, this dead silence where there was laughter at your other jokes.”

Burr says his approach is to just be real with them about it:

I would just always ask them. “Have I told this one yet? I've done three shows. I don't even know where I am right now.” And I would just say that and then they would laugh. And then even if I did repeat a joke, they thought it was funny…
[It’s like saying,] “No, this is just like when you're at work and you don't know what's going on and you're just kind of faking it. Like, that's that's what I'm doing right now.”
That's actually, in a weird way, a way to bond with the crowd. [The crowd is like,] “Alright, this guy's f-ing up at work right now. I can relate to this.”
I always thought page one in comedy is addressing it. If you just said like, “I already told that joke, didn't I?” then they would have laughed. “Oh my God I'm a f–ing idiot. It's my third show.” And that woulda been fine.