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Those of you who fondly recall Wake Up San Francisco! might have a rude awakening when the man, the legend, Bob Saget brings his X-rated act to Calgary. It’s a decided departure from his days as Danny Tanner, the straight-laced TV host on Full House.
Performing at the Jack Singer Concert Hall this Saturday, October 25, Saget will show the city his true colours and love of blue comedy. Audiences can expect a lot of poop jokes, stories of sexual encounters and, of course, some bitter banter about his glory days as Tanner and as host of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Saget can sing and make you laugh. He’ll show off his musical prowess during the show, picking up a guitar and performing his own compilation of parody songs.
Since many of us remember him as the TV clean-freak, do-gooder and father of three, it can be shocking to hear him swear, let alone joke about incest and bestiality. The character he portrayed on TV was the bizarro-version of Saget’s stage persona.
While he actually is a father of three girls, he’s swapped his Dustbuster obsession for a renewed passion for adult standup comedy. Nowadays, he’d much rather joke about former co-stars John Stamos’s homosexual tendencies and Dave Coulier’s shaved nether regions. “It’s almost like a complete 180, a character flip from what wasn’t real to what is,” says Saget. “It can definitely surprise some people at first and I think that adds to the fun.”
He remains grateful to the fans that made Full House such a huge success, but he can’t help being a little tired of the old TV character. “Whenever someone asks what my favourite episode is, I always say the last one. Eight years of that show is a long time,” he says. “One time I walked into my living room and found my daughter watching Full House. She said, ‘look daddy, you’re wearing a dinosaur shirt.’ I hated wearing those outfits. I said to her, ‘You gotta turn that shit off right now.’”
Before becoming a mainstream family figure, Saget was a regular fixture on the comedy circuit. “I started doing standup when I was 17, and eventually I was touring the country doing a lot of gigs and singing comedy songs,” he says. “I once was at a Yuk Yuks in Toronto singing the Elton John parody song “Don’t Let Your Son Go Down On Me.” It was a blast, and I would do whatever I had to do to get a laugh.”
Since returning to the stage, his show has quickly garnered a reputation as outlandish and downright dirty. In 2007, he starred in the one-hour HBO special That Ain’t Right – Good Guy Gone Wrong, which showcased his raunchy humour on the world circuit.
Of course, if you can’t laugh at yourself, you can’t laugh at all. Just this past summer, Saget was on the receiving end of the jokes for a change at the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget, hosted by Stamos. The jokes were crude, the commentary was ugly, and everything seemed in line with Saget’s comedic style.
“It was brutal,” he says bluntly. “There was a lot of nasty stuff said, but I’m pretty self-deprecating and had a lot of fun with it. My favourite joke came from (comedian) Jeffrey Ross when he said the seven words that I’ll never hear are ‘and the Emmy goes to Bob Saget.’”
More recently, Saget’s been busy filming a new sitcom, Surviving Suburbia, airing on the CW Network next spring. Although he once again takes on a father figure role, this time around his character is more like a disgruntled, edgier Tanner.
No matter how busy he gets, Saget will always make time for his true calling. “I always felt that standup was like an old friend. You grab that mike, pull it out of the stand and it’s literally a ritualistic thing,” he says. “It can’t be more fascinating to me because it’s live, in the moment, and you can’t take it back.”
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