COMICS OF A FEATHER : Ventriloquist Ken Lucas Is Glad to Share the Bill With a Duck Named Casey

They’re billed as “Ken and Casey--a man and his duck.”

“I know it’s rather unusual for a full-grown man to be working with a duck,” ventriloquist Ken Lucas concedes to his audience as Casey the duck stares at his partner.

‘Well, hey,” the canary-yellow fowl says in his nasal voice, “George Bush works with a Quayle. . . . Frankly, between you and Bush, you’ve got the better deal.’ ”

That could very well be the case.

For the past decade, Lucas and his Muppet-like duck have been successfully plying the comedy club circuit around the country. On Friday and Saturday they’ll be perched at Comedy Land in Tibbie’s Music Hall in Huntington Beach.

In fact, Ken and Casey made their professional comedy club debut 10 years ago this month--after Lucas was fired from his job as an Ohio disc jockey.

Speaking by phone from his home in Woodland Hills last week, Lucas explained that he used to do character voices on his morning show on a country-Western station, and “one of the characters I came up with was Casey the duck. He’d come into the studio and come in on the records I was playing or sports or the news or weather.”

That was in the late ‘70s. About the same time, Lucas said, “I was watching the TV show ‘Soap’ and I was fascinated by Jay Johnson, the ventriloquist on there. Of course, he was a total schizo; he thought his dummy was his brother.”

Thus inspired, Lucas decided to learn ventriloquism and create a puppet duck so he could do promotions for the radio station. So he signed up for a 30-lesson home correspondence course in how to become a ventriloquist. (Jokes Lucas: “The final exam was kind of weird. They ask you to send in a picture of yourself not moving your lips.”)

It took him about a year to master the techniques to the point where he felt comfortable. “It’s a very difficult art to learn,” he said.

But then in 1982 the radio station made a change in format and he and the other on-air personalities were fired. For Lucas, however, the timing couldn’t have been better for a career change.

“I had always told myself if I wasn’t making good progress in radio by time I was 30 I’d find something else to do for a living,” he said. As it turned out, “I was fired two weeks before my 30th birthday.”

Lucas says being a comic-ventriloquist has been both a benefit and a handicap to his career in stand-up comedy.

“I’ve called up clubs and tried to get booked there and have had them tell me, ‘We had a ventriloquist here and it didn’t work.’ There seems to be a bit of stereotyping. The one comment I’ve heard a number of times in my career is, ‘I usually don’t like ventriloquists, but you were really good. I really enjoyed what you do.’ ”

As a comedian, Lucas says, there are advantages to working with a partner on stage--even if he is made out of balsa wood, papier-mache and fake fur.

“Every once in a while when things are not going well, it’s nice to know I’m not up there by myself,” he said. “A lot of ventriloquists look at their dummies as if they’re a dummy: It’s a traditional ventriloquist-dummy relationship. I look more at my act as a partnership, where I’m the straight man and he’s the comedian.”

Lucas describes his occasionally smart-billed duck as “lovable in his own way.”

“He gets away with a lot more than I can, let’s put it that way,” he said. “He’s very blunt and he’s not the most tactful at times. If he sees somebody who’s bald in the audience, he has no reservations in pointing it out. Or if somebody’s dressed a way he doesn’t care for, he’ll say, ‘Ooh, nice outfit. Let me make you feel at home: Attention K mart shoppers!’ ”

Lucas said it’s hard to categorize the act’s humor, which borders on slapstick.

“I try to take a variety approach to my comedy,” he said. “It includes talking to people in the audience. And Casey does a number of impressions. One of Casey’s best impressions is of opera singer Luciano Pavarotti and Elmer Fudd doing ‘To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.’ ”

Plus, there’s the duck’s “quickie” impression of a canary on steroids:

“TWE-E-E-E-E-E-T!”

Who: Ken and Casey.

When: Friday and Saturday, July 24 and 25, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.

Where: Comedy Land in Tibbie’s Music Hall, 16360 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach.

Whereabouts: Take the Seal Beach Boulevard exit off the San Diego (405) Freeway and go west, turn left on Pacific Coast Highway. Tibbie’s Music Hall is at Peter’s Landing on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Anderson Street.

Wherewithal: $5.

Where to call: (714) 979-5653.