She joked about her weight problem and inability to get dates . . .

The search for the funniest person in the Valley is growing serious.

It began simply enough three summers ago at L.A. Cabaret, the flashy comedy club on Ventura Boulevard in Encino. At the time, the Cabaret was our only stand-up comedy spot.

Since then, comedy has been prospering in the Valley.

First the Valley Hilton and the Sheraton Universal opened comedy clubs. Houlihan’s, a Ventura Boulevard restaurant, started a comedy night on Wednesdays, and a full-time club opened in Toluca Lake.

Then came Gallagher’s. It’s an Irish pub on Devonshire Street in what is otherwise a country-Western neighborhood of Chatsworth. Until recently, Gallagher’s had no connection with the comedian of that name.

It was just a bar where people came to drink and throw darts.

Its co-owner, Mary Ann Upton, said she decided to keep the name of the original owner when she bought the place three years ago, mainly because Gallagher was her mother’s maiden name.

“All the Gallaghers are related, one way or another,” she said. “They’re a very close clan in Ireland.”

Comedians are kind of clannish too. Sometimes they feud. Gallagher’s got into comedy through Jeff Wayne, a friend of Upton’s son and, as it happens, the master of ceremonies for the original Funniest Person in the Valley Contest at the Cabaret.

Wayne has since left the Cabaret, after a falling out with its owner, moving on to Houlihan’s just across the street.

He makes no attempt to hide his interest in Gallagher’s, which has comedy two nights a week.

“It’s revenge,” Wayne said. “It’s like Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford. What can I do to upset this guy’s apple cart?”

This summer, Wayne and Upton’s son, Paul Rambacher, concocted a rival funniest-person contest.

For several weeks, amateur comics competed in eliminations at the two bars. Four made it to the finals Sunday night at Gallagher’s.

In the tradition of neighborhood saloons, Gallagher’s is a tight and gritty place, with a long bar and several tables. A long overhang opposite the bar displays dozens of trophies for dart throwing.

The dart boards, lined up on the wall below, were covered Sunday night.

A panel of judges formed a semicircle around the spotlighted stage at the back, immediately to the right of the restroom door.

There was standing room only at 8, when the contest was to begin. But some of the comedians were late and held up the show until 9.

The master of ceremonies, radio comic Frazier Smith, discovered that a hard-drinking group in the back was from Detroit.

“I am from Detroit,” he said. “And you know? It’s the murder capital.”

“Yo,” they shouted in unison, beginning a dialogue that Smith used all night just by mentioning the name “Detroit.”

The first contestant was a tall black man named Gus Johnson.

“I welcome you to Night of a Thousand Negroes,” he began. Johnson joked mostly about being black and about the experiences of other blacks, particularly those in his own family, such as his grandfather.

“We decided to put him in a rest home,” Johnson said. “But we ran out of money, so we just left him in a rest area.”

He didn’t get very many laughs.

Next, a lawyer named Tom Shiekman began his routine by making fun of his own obesity.

“I’m getting calls at 4 o’clock in the morning saying, ‘Hey, Tom, you want to take it easy on the aerobics.’ ”

Eventually, he got around to subjects in the news, doing best with AIDS and presidential politics.

The idea was, considering that Nancy Reagan tried to solve the drug problem by going around the country telling people, “Just say no,” she’d probably attack homelessness by saying, “Just say camping.”

The third comic was a young woman who did imitations of famous performers such as Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson and Prince, writing her own lyrics to their tunes.

The fourth contestant and winner was Judy Grant, a hefty blonde wearing a white summer dress.

She joked about her weight problem and inability to get dates even more viciously than the lawyer.

She said that, back in Chicago, she wanted a man who was tall, didn’t wear a paper hat at work and had pants that covered his whole rump. Now, she said, she’ll take anyone who speaks English, likes women instead of men and can complete a sentence without calling her “dude.”

Her finale was about a woman getting a Pap test. Like most of the things that played best in Chatsworth, it couldn’t even be paraphrased here.

A professional comedian named Gerry Bednob dropped in to keep the crowd alive while the ballots were being counted.

Bednob, who wears a red turban and a white madras shirt, makes fun of poverty and death in his native Bangladesh.

“People think everybody in Bangladesh is lying in the street starving,” he said. “That’s not true. Some of them are strong enough to beg.”

It’s all in the delivery. They just loved that one.