Today is the birthday of Rich Hall (b. 1954). Hall was one of the most ubiquitous American comedians of the 1980s, having been a regular on David Letterman’s Daytime Show (1980), Fridays (1980-82), Not Necessarily the News (1983-1990), Saturday Night Live (1984-1985), and several specials on Comedy Central. PLUS several humor books based on his most well-known comedy routine “sniglets”, wherein he would coin new words for “things that don’t have a word for them them in the dictionary”). Since 1990, he has made his home base in the U.K.
To find out about the history of variety entertainment, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
