Is anybody funnier than G. David Howard? Not according to his loyal fans and the Guiness Book of World Records.
G. David, who has been the top comic in the Tampa Bay area since before lots of his audiences were born, was named Funniest Man Alive by Guiness after he performed for 16 hours without repeating a joke.
And you don’t have to be with him that long to laugh. G. David can also take an audience from zero to hilarity “in 30 to 120 seconds.”
You can find out for yourself this Saturday night when G. David makes his debut appearance at the Palladium’s Side Door Cabaret. He’s headlining a comic bill that includes our own Ward Smith, “Best of the Bay” winner Juanita Lolita, and Bill “Bull” Ohse, from NBC’s Last Comic Standing. For more info you can follow this link to our web site and on-line ticket site, or call our box office at 727-822-3590.
G David Howard
Back when I was writing a newspaper column in a century fondly known as “The 20th,” I wrote about G. David and about hurt myself laughing during his show at a hotel in Clearwater. G. David and his family moved here after a long run in Las Vegas. The West Coast of Florida, with lots of tourists and hotels, kept him busy with runs from a week to multiple months.
That’s because he’s just funny. From childhood.
“I was always the class clown,” he told me. “It came easy for me.”
When he was just a 10th grader, his principal at Middletown High School, in Middletown, Ohio, called him into his office. G. David was worried but the principal told him he heard he was a very funny guy.
“He wanted me to open the school assemblies with a comic monologue about what happened in school the last two weeks.”
Working a room like that taught him a lot about making big audiences laugh.
“When I got ready to walk onto the comedy stage, I felt like I was in my living room.”
So much so that years later his manager was shocked to find him fast asleep just moments before he was to open for Fats Domino in Chicago before 700 people.
“When I was supposed to go on stage, the played a big drum roll,” G. David told me. He’d nap until the drum roll, then head directly onto the stage. His manager didn’t know that and walked in to find his client fast asleep just minutes before showtime.
“Larry panicked. He thought I was drunk or on something. I was just napping.”
He started working the old Holiday Inn circuit, while still selling insurance. A friend put him in touch with the movie and nightclub comic, Woody Woodbury, and G. David’s career took off. Woodbury was working the lucrative Florida market and soon G. David was doing the same.
On Woodbury’s recommendation, he arrived at a club in Pompano Beach with a one-week contract and left 52 weeks later. His long comic trip has taken him from Ohio to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and all over Florida and plenty of places in between. He will only be on stage at the Side Door for one night, so don’t miss him. And bring some tissues to wipe your eyes – you’ll be laughing so hard you might cry.
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