Who was that 1980s stand-up comic?

January 19, 2012 6:29 PM

Who was that 1980s stand-up comic?

Back in the mid-1980s, I had the Showtime cable channel, and I saw a comedian on there several times who was very funny but I can't remember his name. He was a white guy, medium brown straight hair worn fairly short, kind of a long face and long, maybe Roman nose. I guess he looked a little like Bob Saget. The only bit of his I can remember is about contact lenses -- he made jokes about the dumb questions people asked him about his contacts, particularly if they got lost in his eye. "Oh, yeah, I got two or three of them floating around back there! Sometimes when I sneeze, I get one back!"

I saw him do several stand-up bits on Showtime, and I'm pretty sure he also hosted some sort of comedy show on there. He had a fairly mundane WASP first name, like Joe or Steve or Bryan, but it's not Brian Regan.

posted by JanetLand to media & arts (15 answers total)

David Brenner?
posted by kbar1 at 6:45 PM on January 19, 2012

Or Richard Lewis?
posted by kbar1 at 6:51 PM on January 19, 2012

I don't recognize the joke, but maybe Fred Stoller?
posted by Sys Rq at 6:53 PM on January 19, 2012

Jake Johannsen?
posted by theredpen at 7:18 PM on January 19, 2012

Was it Steven Banks?
posted by xedrik at 8:31 PM on January 19, 2012

I'm guessing Jake Johannsen as well, though he doesn't do that exact bit in the clip.
posted by rhizome at 9:19 PM on January 19, 2012

No, I'm sorry, it isn't any of those guys. David Brenner and Richard Lewis are much too famous. The guy I'm thinking of wore his hair much shorter than Johannsen or Banks or Stoller. He had kind of an intense vibe, not as much as Dennis Wolfberg, but his voice would squeak a little when he was talking about something annoying.

It probably won't help, but in the contact lens bit he also talked about putting both of them in the same eye -- "Gotta have NO short-term memory AT ALL to do that!"
posted by JanetLand at 5:39 AM on January 20, 2012

jimmy brogan?
posted by davidmsc at 7:00 AM on January 20, 2012

Nope, not Brogan either.
posted by JanetLand at 12:29 PM on January 20, 2012

I may be wrong, but I think that is an old Brian Regan bit.
posted by wittgenstein at 1:07 PM on January 20, 2012

Of course, Regan is quite successful, so maybe I'm wrong.
posted by wittgenstein at 1:08 PM on January 20, 2012

No, really it's not Regan that I'm thinking of. Regan does not look like the guy I remember, or sound like him either. They may of course still have done the same jokes.
posted by JanetLand at 3:39 PM on January 20, 2012

Evan Davis?
posted by buzzkillington at 8:10 PM on January 20, 2012

I don't know if he was on TV that early, but Marc Maron definitely fit your description back then.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:56 AM on January 21, 2012

No on the last two as well, darnit. I appreciate everyone's attempts here.
posted by JanetLand at 3:35 AM on January 23, 2012