Wayne Cotter Found Himself a Big Hit in O.C. Because of Hosting ‘Comic Strip Live’

When Wayne Cotter took over as host of the Fox network’s weekly “Comic Strip Live” show nearly two years ago, his biggest fear was “I’d be this master of ceremonies, that I’d just introduce people and not be given time to tell jokes.”

He needn’t have worried.

“So far, nobody is playing Herb Alpert music when I come on,” he joked last week, on the phone from New York. Indeed, “Comic Strip Live” not only allows Cotter to do an opening monologue, and comedy bits during the show, but it has boosted his name recognition dramatically, as he found out last summer when he appeared at the Orange County Fair (an engagement he’d plugged on the Fox show).

“I’d have to say the Orange County Fair was the single place where I was more recognized from ‘Comic Strip Live’ than anywhere,” he recalled. “I did two shows on a Sunday night and both were packed. It was really just phenomenal. I said, ‘You really know ‘Comic Strip Live’? ‘Yeahhh, we do!’ ”

An added benefit of the television exposure, noted Cotter--who is headlining at the Improv in Irvine this week--is that club audiences “are predisposed to enjoying what you do.”

What Cotter does is examine what he calls “the paradoxes, inconsistencies and peculiarities of life.” Why, for example, do hotel guests take an elevator to reach the exercise room to use a Stairmaster? Why does your mom speak so slowly when she leaves a message on your answering machine? Does she think the machine needs time to write it down?

And what about Cotter’s kid brother taking his pet hamster to the vet when it got sick: “A hamster! That’s like bringing a disposable lighter in for repair.”

Growing up in the Bronx, Cotter devoured Alan King, Bob Newhart and other comics on television, and memorized his parents’ Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks “2,000-Year Old Man” albums.

“I also made funny faces and thought I looked like Jerry Lewis. I’m sure it was an indication of some sort of severe pathology in the family but nobody treated it that way at the time, so I sort of ran with it.

“It became so much a part of my personality that if I didn’t become a comedian, I’d just have become some sort of really annoying person. So I had no alternative.”

Actually, he did have an alternative. Good at science and math, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and landed a job in the early ‘70s as a computer programmer.

But after four years with a computer company in New Jersey, he concluded that “I ought to try to do something that means more to me personally.”

After a few false starts, he found a style of comedy that he is comfortable with--”sort of this observer of life, trying to look at things that are just so stupid nobody pays attention to them.”

Such as:

* “Why is it when you go to a restaurant and you can’t pay the check, they make you wash dishes? How does a restaurant get its money back by making you wash dishes? Fire the dish washer? Guy goes home, ‘Honey, I lost my job. Some guy couldn’t pay. But don’t worry. I’ll take you out for dinner, not pay; I’ll be working again!”

* “I like to barbecue in the summertime. You like that? Sure, it’s 100 degrees, it’s humid, let’s build a fire! . . . “

* “He’s always handing out advice, my dad. ‘You’re throwing away that chair? All it needs is four legs and a back.’ . . . ‘Dad, it’s a tray.’ ”

* “Got a mouse in my house. My dad starts in, ‘A mouse? Find where it’s coming in, put poison down.’ No problem. I can find a mouse hole. I’ve been watching cartoons for years; I’ll just look for that gothic mouse arch--a little door and a knob and a sardine can bed with the covers down, I’ll know I’ve found my man.”

* “Boy, we had the stupidest toys as kids. Play money! Looked nothing like real money. Giant bills. They’re purple. There’s a chicken in the middle. Then in little letters, ‘Not legal money.’ Yeah, you might bring one of these in a store, they’re gonna notice the fine print after they missed the purple chicken!”

Who: Wayne Cotter.

When: Thursday, Oct. 15, and Sunday, Oct. 18, at 8:30 p.m.; Friday, Oct. 16, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.

Where: The Improv, 4244 Campus Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and head south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The Improv is in the Irvine Marketplace shopping center, across from the UC Irvine campus.

Wherewithal: $7 to $10.

Where to call: (714) 854-5455.