Stand-Up Jokes That Triggered Attacks On Stage

To the uninitiated, being a standup comic must seem like ... well, like a barrel of laughs. To get paid actual money to get up in front of a bunch of appreciative fans, crack wise for a while, and soak up the applause and laughter before peacing out back to your tastefully appointed hotel room, ready to hop on a plane and repeat the whole party the next day sounds pretty sweet, right? Sure it does. Heck, even if you're not a household name making thousands for each gig, making strangers crack up for a living on their hard-earned nights out must be incredibly gratifying. 

Well, as it turns out, there is a dark side to the profession that non-comedians (who actually make up quite a bit of the population) are probably not very aware of: the fact that standup comics sort of regard getting assaulted onstage as a standard occupational hazard. After all, most of the best comedians have their share of material that somebody is going to find offensive, and on those occasions when that somebody happens to be in the audience and in a mood or has imbibed too much, heckling escalates to full-on fisticuffs just a bit more often than you might think. It happens so often, in fact, that we made a list. Here are stand-up jokes that triggered attacks on stage.

Scottish comic Jerry Sadowitz, who made his name banging around comedy clubs in the '80s, is a guy who really does not give one single heck who he rankles. For evidence, just look at one of his more famous routines from that era, which he opened by leveling an unprintable smear at beloved (and, at the time, imprisoned) South African president Nelson Mandela. Then, the punchline: "You lend some people a fiver, and you never hear from them again." Sadowitz was of that special breed of comedian who will pretty much say anything to get a laugh, and at the 1991 Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, this got him into a wee bit of trouble.

In a 2011 interview with the Guardian, Sadowitz remembered how he opened his set with a typically pleasant salvo: "Hello, moose-f***ers. You know what I hate about this country? Half of you speak French, and the other half let them." A (presumably French-speaking) member of the audience promptly took umbrage, and — according to event promoter ATP's website — climbed up onstage and knocked the comic right the heck out. If the incident prompted Sadowitz to tone down his material, it hasn't been evident; in his conversation with the Guardian, he said, "Who's to deny anybody their comedy? You can't say that one person's strand of comedy is OK to laugh at, but this person's isn't. There's a great quote that Steve Martin said when he was doing standup, 'Comedy is not pretty.'" Maybe not, but it sure can get pretty ugly.

Greg Fitzsimmons has a pretty deadpan style, so while the onstage assault that took place during the veteran standup's early years was probably terrifying to witness, it's pretty hilarious to hear him describe it, which he did for YouTuber Chris Minyen (via YouTube) in 2020. Apparently, it was singles' night at a Boston comedy club where Fitzsimmons was performing, and one particularly rude fellow was not having any luck with the ladies. He decided to ease his own pain by posting up in the front row and giving Fitzsimmons the business, to which the comic (of course) responded in kind. Fitzsimmons says that when the guy ordered him to shut his mouth, he replied with one more gentle barb — "Yeah, let me know when your friends get here" — and all hell broke loose.

Fitzsimmons describes how the guy jumped up onstage and rushed him with clenched fists, prompting the comic to bop him on the head with the microphone. The dude then proceeded to get Fitzsimmons in a headlock and sort of just start swinging him around: "My legs are kicking tables, people are diving out of the way," he remembered. The bouncers finally intervened at this point and dragged the dude outside, and a brief intermission followed during which tables were righted and spilled drinks were refreshed. Then, the club's management added insult to injury (literally, Fitzsimmons says he couldn't move his neck at this point) by telling the hapless comedian that he still had five minutes left, and sending him back up onstage to finish his set.

Capital Pilcrow, is a funny man who has undoubtedly gotten a lot of mileage out of his unusual name. In video footage of one of his performances at a San Francisco comedy workshop, Pilcrow can be seen verbally tangling with an audience member just after telling a joke which, according to SFist, is a regular part of his set and goes like this: "People ask me if it's is my real name, and it's definitely my realest name. Definitely realer than anything my mom came up with. I don't know why you've got questions. Would you have questions if your boss paid you more than you asked for? This is a blessing. You should have questions if this dude comes up and is like 'My name is Jeff.' You satisfied with that? You just gonna roll with that your whole life?" It doesn't seem like the kind of bit that would lead to a physical assault, yet here we are.

A guy in the audience, who apparently was named Jeff, took offense, and asked if Pilcrow knew who he was; when Pilcrow answered in the affirmative (and asked the gentleman to kindly stop talking), the guy leapt up and shoved Pilcrow off the stage, then began raining blows on the comedian. The video (via YouTube) is genuinely scary, and even though plenty of people came to Pilcrow's defense, one gets the idea that the assault could have been even worse. The out-of-control patron continued to talk smack and struggle with Pilcrow's valiant defenders, and the guy even broke a window on the way out the door. SFist reported that Pilcrow declined to press charges against the man who has got to be the least chill dude named Jeff in the entire world.

And now, we come to an attack that straddles the line between "totally provoked" and "actually well-deserved." Don't get us wrong; we would never advocate using violence in response to mere words, at any time, ever. There are simply better ways to resolve disputes, kids. However, when the mere words in question are blatantly, brain-searingly racist, we can at least understand why one might give in to the temptation to start throwing hands.

This is to say that if you are triggered by jaw-dropping racism, you would do well not to watch that video of New York "comedian" Brett Eidman unleashing all of the most absolutely exhausted Asian stereotypes that the 1960s had to offer, after just completely bombing with his other material. If nobody was laughing when he was blathering on about his wife's standard excuses for avoiding sex (and we can't imagine why she would want to do so), they certainly didn't start when he inexplicably threw on a pair of "Jerry Lewis in Yellowface" glasses and started babbling racist-ly at an Asian couple in the audience. A very worn-out, very familiar phrase from the film "Full Metal Jacket" (yes, really, that one) was about halfway out of his mouth when the male half of said couple — identified by Australian outlet 9News only as George — decided he'd had enough bigotry, and served up a freshly-made knuckle sandwich. 

Now, again: We're not saying Eidman got what was coming to him, but we are saying that if he expected any other response to his "bit," then he must be as oblivious as he is unfunny. And racist.