Uncle Buck Stops Here for Meaney

He may have starred as the obnoxious-yet-lovable freeloading relative in the CBS sitcom “Uncle Buck,” but Kevin Meaney insists that the short-lived series had no effect on his draw at comedy clubs.

“My stand-up is one thing and ‘Uncle Buck’ is another thing,” Meaney, who will headline at the Irvine Improv tonight and Tuesday, said on the phone from his home in Los Angeles last week. “People don’t come out to a comedy club to see TV’s Uncle Buck. It never happened and it never will.

“Kids loved the show,” he added. “But they can’t get into a nightclub.”

Meaney doesn’t really need the pull of a TV series to attract a club audience, though. Over the past five years, he has amassed an impressive string of credits ranging from numerous guest spots on “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night With David Letterman” to starring roles in two HBO comedy specials.

One of his most popular routines is his lip-synched rendition of “We Are the World” in which he mimics Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and the several dozen other stars on the recording. His blend of lunacy, physical humor and impersonations of his relatives has prompted some critics to liken him to a cross between Steve Martin and Jonathan Winters.

“To have somebody say that about you is really a compliment,” Meaney said. But “I really don’t compare myself to Steve Martin or Jonathan Winters. I’m pretty much myself on stage, though it’s exaggerated to the hundredth power.”

When Meaney started out in stand-up in 1979, he experimented with a caustic Don Rickles approach, but “I got in trouble on that,” he said. “I was very young and I thought that was the approach (to take): Somebody comments and you immediately attack them. That didn’t work for me, but there are different styles you have to try out.

“You copy people you think are funny at first, but eventually you find your own style and you become comfortable as yourself. I’m not your typical set-up/punch line guy, so it’s very easy for me to get up and just be me,” he continued.

“The way I interpret (stand-up comedy) and perform it, it’s mostly driven by characters. Whether I become my mother, father or my Aunt Rose, I go up as myself, Kevin Meaney, and turn into all those different people for the audience to witness.

“It’s fun for me because I get a big kick out of describing my family. I’m exaggerating it a little bit, of course, but basically it’s really true.”

Indeed, the bits do have the ring of truth. Take the story of his mother, lining up her five children before a visit by a Mr. Rictor, who has just returned from Sweden, where he had a sex change operation:

“‘I don’t want any of you kids to say anything about him being a woman. And if you’ve got something to say, you just tell him how pretty he looks.”’

Now that he lives in California, Meaney--a native of Valhalla, N.Y.--said he doesn’t see his parents as often as he used to but he does visit them on the holidays, which produces fond memories. Such as:

“Every year my mother gets a huge turkey. Last year the turkey weighed 185 pounds. It had a tattoo. It was riding around on the front lawn on a Harley and it took my sister hostage for 24 hours.”

Kevin Meaney, Doug Benson and Dave Goodman perform tonight and Tuesday at the Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. Show time: 8:30. Admission: $10. Information: (714) 854-5455.