Kel Mitchell Quotes

When I started performing, there was no Internet; I didn't really have anything to copy. I kind of had to just make up what I thought burlesque was, based on photographs of Sally Rand or whatever.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.

Dealing with sketch comedy and buddy teams like Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby - I just loved buddy comedies.

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

I love Buster Keaton. I was a big fan of the stunt shows at Universal Studios. I'm a huge Cirque du Soleil nut.

As a kid, I remember wearing a checkered suit and appearing on-stage in the routines worked out by the 'baggy pants' comedians.

I feel like I've been watching Irwin Corey forever. I saw him in the 1950s, and I thought he was old then.

It never became an act in the sense of an act. It was always, no matter where we worked, little revues.

If you want to see what stage comedians did to get laffs a century ago, watch the 1910 'Wizard of Oz.' I hope you have a high tolerance for pratfalls.

I grew up with music hall and revue and was used to filling in the little gaps here and there to get bigger audience reaction.

I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.

I've always been a cabaret-vaudeville artist - an hourlong cabaret and a floor show in a hotel - somebody like that. That's my main forte.

I come from a very vaudevillian family.

I used to do cabaret as a kid and always wanted to pick it up again.

If you look at vaudeville in theaters vamping between acts, it was always jokes written and banter in the moment.

In the early days of the Libertines, we used to put on Arcadian cabaret nights. There'd be some girl climbing out of an egg; we'd try and get a couple of mates to tell a few jokes, performance poets, and then we'd play in the middle of it all. More people were on stage than in the crowd.

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way.

Whatever happened to a good pie-in-the-face joke?

I never went to acting school. I started in the circus, music hall, I was in a group, did kids' bits. I've always had this kind of insecurity being uneducated.

I like the idea of being out there regularly with an audience and with a funny gang of people. That's what I grew up with - doing television, doing shows every week.

When I first started doing comedy years ago, I used to be the biggest Michael Richards fan. I used to love this dude. He was on a TV show called 'Fridays,' and man, he was tall and lanky - and I was tall and lanky. I love physical comedy, and he was a physical comedian, and I said, 'Man, I love this guy.'

When I graduated from college, I moved to New York and started doing improv because I read all about the early 'Saturday Night Live' guys having come through Second City and learning how to improvise, so I wanted to get immediately into that.

Me personally, I want to entertain people above all. When you look back at burlesque in history and the real golden age of burlesque, those entertainers were there to entertain, and there wasn't usually some big political message behind what they were doing.

I really do not see why there is not a splendid field for good work on the music hall stage, and if I did not have my own theatre taking up my time, I should rather like to go into it.

I've seen other comics, with great pleasure, watching their own specials, and I don't know how or why they do it.