‘You Write It for Me,’ Clay Says of X-Rated Act

So this guy, Andrew Dice Clay, stand-up comedian, right? His jokes are filthy, his mouth is foul and some cast members of this week’s “Saturday Night Live” are refusing to work with him. Dice, is this an attitude, or what?

The Dice Man ain’t Pee-wee Herman in a leather jacket, folks. Dice is an X-rated Fonzie, the archetypal corner wise guy, a lewd, sexist makeout artist for whom “broad” is a term of endearment and whose views on human sexuality verge on the anatomically incorrect.

Dice’s comedy is deep, deep blue. He evokes body fluids, orifices and how they get together on bad dates. His critics say his jokes are at best crude, and at worst angry, sexually violent, homophobic and bigoted.

Last year, MTV banned Clay for life after he delivered a monologue laced with lewd poetry and references to fat women and sex during the network’s televised Music Video Awards show.

Clay and his defenders say the comedian is only “acting” Dice, that his humor mocks the Dice Man’s attitudes and has enough truth in it to attract an audience of men and women who love him.

Clay, 32, born Andrew Clay Silverstein in Brooklyn, was a struggling actor-impressionist when he donned the studded jacket and combed up the ducktail. The Dice Man was born.

A successful comedy album and an HBO comedy special followed, and his first starring role in a feature film, “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane,” will be seen this summer.

“I talk about what people do, think or say behind closed doors,” Clay told Playboy magazine in a January interview. “As I tell the crowds, ‘I don’t write this material. You write it for me.’ ”

The current controversy began when Nora Dunn, a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” since the 1985-86 season, refused to perform on this week’s show because she considers Clay’s comedy degrading and repulsive.

In a television interview Wednesday on “Entertainment Tonight,” Clay said of Dunn’s withdrawal: “I think she’s just doing this because I’m the hottest comic in the country.”

Clay also said Dunn is being silly. “I’ve seen her play from hookers to just, like, street tramps. I wouldn’t look at that and go, ‘If that’s really her, I wouldn’t do the show.’ ”

Pop singer Sinead O’Conner, whose “Nothing Compares 2 U” is No. 2 on the charts, also bowed off the show after her publicist was alerted by the National Organization for Women and the singer reviewed tapes of Clay’s act.

She was replaced Thursday by Spanic Boys, a blue-grass rock ‘n’ roll band from Milwaukee making its television network debut, NBC said.

Efforts to interview Clay about the controversy were unsuccessful. “He has no statement,” said Clay publicist Susan Dubow. “He’s not doing interviews. He’s rehearsing for ‘Saturday Night Live.’ ”

He also backed out of a scheduled taping Thursday of “The Joan Rivers Show” scheduled for broadcast today. Rivers’ spokeswoman Linda Lipman said Clay’s representatives gave no reason for the no-show, other than “a lot of hemming and hawing.” Rivers was not amused.

“I’ll pick on anybody, and that’s the point,” Clay told Playboy. “People shouldn’t take it seriously. They wouldn’t laugh at gay stuff if there weren’t gay people. They wouldn’t laugh at black material if there weren’t black people.”

But even the comics are a little dicey about Clay.

George Carlin, who made a comedy breakthrough by speaking the seven little words you can’t say on television, is worried that Clay’s humor targets the wrong people.

“Andrew Clay is picking on underdogs: gays, women and immigrants,” Carlin said in a statement. “His audiences share his beliefs, so they cheer him on. But Andrew ought to remember that he is Jewish and the same people who hate gays, women and immigrants probably have Jews somewhere on their list as well.”