A Comedian Cleans Up His Act : Entertainment: A printer by trade, he gives up X-rated act for the persona of a hobo clown, making children laugh with his magic tricks.

Robert Nebel, 51, happily believes he has a split personality.

Once, for instance, he walked around dressed as a parrot to advertise an Anaheim nightclub called Crackers. On weekend nights he worked there as an X-rated stand-up comedian.

His risque act made even hardy audiences wince, so he assumed another persona: Garbi the Hobo Clown, who specializes in children’s birthday parties.

“I’m a different person in my day-to-day ordinary life,” said Nebel, who lives in Anaheim and has a night job at a printing company in Commerce. “The guys would ask me to tell jokes, but I told them I don’t mix the two jobs.”

It is a different story when Nebel puts on his hobo clown costume and makes kids giggle, often using magic to make doves and rabbits appear and disappear.

“I’m out there to make people happy,” said Nebel, an Air Force veteran who has spent much of his life as a drive-in theater manager.

His entrance into show business came eight years ago, when “an agent friend of mine was looking for a monthlong clown act in Japan and I said I could do it, so I put together the hobo clown outfit.”

Unfortunately, the Japanese were not interested in that kind of clown.

But, said Nebel, “since I invested a lot of time and money on the hobo character, I started doing it on my own.

“It became a great source of happiness for me. Once a little girl came up, put her arms around me and said, ‘Mr. Clown, that was so nice.’ I’ll never forget that moment.”

As a young man, he said, “the three things I wanted most in life was my own home, a nice car and a family.” He has the house and car, “but my marriage didn’t work out, and I never had a family.”

But he has clowning and magic to make him happy. “I enjoy it, and it helps me carry on my life.”

Nebel is a member of the Magic Castle in Hollywood and, he says, “one of these days I’m going to be a performer there.”

However, he already has something like it at his home in Anaheim. One room is decorated with photographs of hobo clowns, a pool table and a make-believe electric chair from a film studio.

“They said it was used in the movie ‘Bird Man of Alcatraz,’ ” Nebel said. It makes an electrical buzzing sound when someone sits in it.