Mike Lukas: How I Went Bald While Jason Sudeikis Got Famous

Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, good night, whatever it is.

Screen Rats, how are you all?

I am here working on my Edinburgh show, trying to get it all together and deciding what to cut and what not to cut.

Sitting here sort of thinking, should I put in these bits about childhood where if my audience is very young, they might not be able to sort of link to that.

They might not have the knowledge or am I going to sound like an old bastard?

I kind of keep thinking about that, but I can't be not what I am.

Do you know what I mean?

The other night I was in bed and I came up with another great idea, which I'm putting into it.

I have to put this bit in about the year I was born, right?

1969.

And I was thinking about when I decided I would be more open and okay with it.

And it was around the Beatles documentary from last year.

And the reason for that is I kind of worked out that when they were on the rooftop in the Apple building, that was the exact moment I reckon pretty much that my mom got pregnant with me because I was born exactly, almost exactly to the day nine months later.

So it's gotta be around that time.

So I was thinking, I was sitting there in bed and I thought, you know that bit, I don't know if you all know it, but there's a bit where right at the end, they do this gig on the top of the Apple building in London after spending an entire month coming out with an album out of the air, right?

Which turns out to be Let It Be, which is an album I didn't really know until that documentary, and obviously I knew the hits, but I didn't know all the other stuff.

And they're up there playing Don't Let Me Down.

And the police are basically told to go and stop the gig because it's too loud, right?

So they get to the Apple building and they're all congregating in the bottom and they're sort of there huddled in the bottom.

And I thought, huh, that's kind of like where I would have been in my dad's balls, huddled around with a load of other sperm, right?

And then I thought, well, that's like the police, right?

They were all huddled in the basement.

And then finally they get to charge up the circular stairs all the way to the top of the roof to stop the Beatles playing the song.

And I thought, huh, I sort of like the idea that maybe when Paul McCartney first spotted that first policeman come out of that door sporting a comically large helmet, that's the exact moment that I shot out of my dad's scrotum.

Right up through his shaft into my mother's only slightly more hospitable womb, thus ending any physical contact with my father for the rest of time.

But there's a joke in there somewhere.

I don't know where it is, but if the audience hasn't seen that gig or doesn't get the reference, someone will, right?

I think there's something in that.

I like it.

I think it's funny.

Anyway, and I'll tell you who would know if it's funny.

That is Mike Lukas.

He is my guest today.

He is an American standup who's worked with all the greats.

He's been a resident for Second City in Las Vegas.

He basically, there's a video of him on Conan.

You know, he's done the whole thing.

He's toured for years and years and years, and he sort of gave it up to sort of raise his children.

And now he writes these books on comedy, on how to write comedy, how to make jokes better.

They're basically a series of books.

I bought Finding Your Funny Muscle.

I read it in a day.

There's another one called Fine Tuning Your Funny Muscle.

I mean, they're all useful tools to have in your kit if you're trying to write comedy, as I am.

And he was great to talk to.

I had no connection with him.

In his books, he said, if you want to reach out, reach out.

And I thought, well, I'll reach out and I'll invite him onto the podcast and we'll have a chat about comedy.

And we did.

And we talked about lots of other things too.

So let's get straight into it because I've got a lot on my plate.

So this is me talking to the brilliant, wonderful, and the man who basically told me my name is the greatest name in showbiz.

I can't forget that.

This is me talking to Mike Lukas.

What makes you think you're so funny?

Welcome to Television Times, a weekly podcast with your host, me, Steve Otis Gunn.

We'll be discussing television in all its glorious forms, from my childhood, your childhood, the last 10 years, even what's on right now.

So join me as I talk to people you do know and people you don't about what scared them, what inspired them, and what made them laugh and cry here on Television Times.

How are you doing?

Steve Gunn, what a great name.

Steve Otis Gunn, it's a Google Whack, and there's only one of me in the world.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're the only Steve Otis Gunn I've ever met, so I will voucher that, if you need a voucher.

You're the only Mike Lukas.

Your name, I've got a friend who is married to a Swedish woman, and their son is called Lukas, spelled the way your surname is.

So is it from that kind of background, or?

Well, my dad is of Lithuanian descent.

So they spelled, I think it was Lukas Shevitz or something like that, when they came over to Staten Island, or whatever it is, to Ellis Island.

They came to Staten Island.

But yeah, so we shortened it to Lukas, L-U-K-A-S.

And it's been, it's haunted me my whole life, because everyone spells it L-U-C-A-S.

And so I always have to say Mike Lukas with a K, and they're like, oh, K-U-C-A-S.

I'm like, no, he is the K.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have you been to Lithuania?

I've been a couple of times, it's really beautiful.

My dad's been there a bunch of times, and my sister's haven't.

I've seen slides of their trips, but I've never personally been there.

But it looks like a lot of churches and a lot of very strained people.

They've been through a lot.

They have.

Yeah.

It's an interesting area.

It seems flatter than I would have thought it would be.

A little bit hilly, but mostly no mountains.

I was thinking for some reason that the, I live where in Europe, it feels like there's big mountains in the background.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love that whole area.

I think Lithuania, I'm pretty sure, part of it was in Poland and part of Poland is in Lithuania.

So that border's been quite malleable in post-war years and whatnot.

I think they call it, it's got a funny name.

They call it something else now because of the Ukraine situation.

There's this little bit of land between the top of Poland and Lithuania, which is called like the most dangerous piece of land in Europe.

The Suwalki Gap.

Because you know, Russia's got Kaliningrad, this area that's kind of to the west of Lithuania, but it's sort of near Europe.

And it's called Kaliningrad.

It is Russia.

It's totally Russia.

They live a more European life, but there's this little land bridge that they let them go through.

And they're saying that if they ever take that, well, you know, that could be a different world we're living in.

Well, I know my dad belongs to the Lithuanian Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

And the talk there is very much worried about all of that.

They're very concerned that there's gonna be, well, and they've been through that before.

So it's not a false fear.

No, no, totally.

Yeah, I mean, it's my lifetime, your lifetime, where these things changed, right?

1989 onwards.

So yeah, it's crazy.

Anyway, why are we talking about that?

I don't know, I don't know.

Let's talk about the Canadians attacking the US.

Let's talk about that for a little while.

The Canadians attacking the US.?

There's very big breaking news here in the UK.

This will age this podcast by the time it goes out, but we're getting big news that there's gonna be an election called, like in about half an hour, which is very, very exciting over here anyway.

That is exciting.

That is exciting, because I'd like that.

Is your candidate gonna win, you think?

Yes.

Was I right or was I right?

People don't like change.

That's the thing.

It's funny how change scares everybody and it doesn't matter whether it's on a micro or a macro level.

We so fear, like, what do they say?

The devil we know is better than the devil we don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And change implies some devil we don't know as opposed to maybe we might do better with pollution.

We might do better with education.

We might do better with healthcare.

You know, it might be good change and it might be money better spent, but we don't think about that.

We just think about, yeah, but if we change it, then all the interests that have their finger in the pie now no longer get pie on their fingers.

They'll be shoving money in their pockets as we speak.

We need a goddamn fucking change over here.

So, you know, we've had Brexit and all of that.

So, you know, it's been a nightmare.

So we just need some, we just need a fresh period that we can just call it a new era and then have done, you know.

It will be interesting.

I think that the whole world needs like a, almost like a control alt delete reboot, you know, where we have to just begin to think, like here in America, we are a whole infrastructure is set up around how we used to travel, which was by boat, you know, by waterways.

And so we don't do that anymore.

So why can't we begin to restructure how our country even looks so that we're not all focused in like three different cities in every state and then everywhere else is just dead land and farmland and stuff.

So I think all of that's going to change.

I think we'll be dead by the time that changes, but my kids and maybe my grandkids will be alive and, you know, during the hellfires that exist in that era.

Oh, God, I hope not.

Yeah, I mean, doom and gloom aside, there is a...

Right.

America is one of the funny ones for me because I've been there quite a few times.

I've not been to Cleveland, but from afar, it's like, oh, that's not a country.

Like, it's a place that people think it's a country.

You're like a lot of different countries.

You're 50 countries trying to sort of get on.

You're not a country.

Yeah.

I mean, we're not a country either.

We're like five, what are we, four countries trying to get on?

Yeah, it's really funny watching that from afar.

Yeah, and everyone has their own interests and everyone has their own needs and priorities.

And so it depends on where you live, you know, geographically.

It depends on where you are socially.

It depends on where you're economically.

And everyone wants, I mean, the idea of being a political leader just seems like the worst job in the world.

It's just like, because no matter what you do, there's going to be always someone that's like, yeah, but you know what, I didn't get the da-da-da enough.

Day one, they hate you.

100 days in, they're like, why hasn't he changed the entire world?

I say he because it's generally a guy.

And, you know, the Gorbachev thing of like, you know, they just didn't give him enough time, that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, I mean, all of that.

Anyway, let's get away from all that.

So I saw, guess what I watched today?

Oh, what did you see?

I watched you on Conan O'Brien in 2000.

I watched that set.

Conan's like the only guy taller than me.

Yeah.

I'm watching an Irish TV show here at the moment, and the guy in it is Irish, obviously, has got the exact same hairline.

And I said, oh my God, that is an Irish hairline.

I mean, I'm half Irish, so I've got people in my family with that exact hairline.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I have, I always say that I have like a little, what's that thing in the back of your throat?

Is that epiglottis or whatever it's called?

The little bangly thing, yeah, yeah, and that's what my hair loss looks like.

It's got a little one up here.

And I also like, I kind of equate it, like there was like a retreat of most of the hair and then this part stayed, you know, upfront.

So it was like, you know, this little patch of hair was like born and raised in the front of the forehead.

That's where we're gonna live and die.

And then this patch of hair was like, retreat, retreat, the follicles are no good in front no more.

And then there was like a war going on.

And then I tried to comb it over.

I tried to wig for a while.

And then finally now I just, I wear this hat.

This is what I do when I go out.

I just wear this hat.

And then nobody seems to really care.

I just look great, this more gups, and no one wants to really bother me.

Can I get you a cup of coffee?

Like, ah, just give me five minutes.

You look like Jason Bateman.

Yeah, right, yeah, like if Jason Bateman stopped working out and maybe started smoking dope, he'd be like, hey, what's up?

It's Jason, man.

I feel like, remember, well, you know, in your, I guess, the parliament, they have the wigs.

And then the old days in our country, we used to do the wigs, the revolutionary wigs.

And there was no shame in the wigs.

There's no, no one's pretending that it's not a wig.

We're all just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cause it's either that or you have to stare at this.

So I was thinking like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna begin to go out just like this and just like see, and there's all sorts of looks you can do with it.

You know, you can, yeah, yeah.

You can, you know, this is the new look the kids are wearing.

It basically looks like what I do with my actual hair.

My kids would be horrified if you went out with them and just like, hey, man, do you guys want to get some smoothies?

I mean, I've got my hair quite long, but this is an audio format, but we'll explain.

But when I pull my hair down, it's so malleable being the black Irish that I am, but you can literally do what you just did.

I can do beat-ups.

I can kill for that hair.

That's like killer hair.

I can do, you know.

Yes, oh, see.

Look at that, what's going on there?

That's real.

You look like totally surprised.

You look like you could be a genius.

I look like Bonnie Tyler.

Is that the whole eclipse of the heart?

Is that the bad Bonnie Tyler?

I'm growing it because I'm actually growing my hair.

I'm putting it on the show in Edinburgh, and I haven't said this publicly, but I'm so uncomfortable having this long hair, and it's going to be really hot in the summer.

Not hot.

Oh, true, yeah.

But those rooms are fucking boiling.

So on the final performance, I'm going to get someone to come on stage and shave my head.

It's going to feel so nice.

Yeah, it just happened the whole time.

You didn't expect it.

Act like this is the last thing you want.

And then the crowd will love it.

Get it, shave him.

Have them tie you up and go for the whole thing.

Maybe like a heckler who's wearing like a barber outfit just happens to be wearing a barber outfit.

He just happens to see your show.

I'm just, I'm on my break.

Well, when did you do the shave?

Because it's quite trendy now.

I truly had a hair piece for a week.

I went to, in America, they call it the Hair Club for Men.

What they do is they have you, like they shave off the top of your head, and then they get this wig that has clips in it, that kind of clip into the hair you've grown on your own, and then they glue the rest of it down.

So you're wearing this like glued on wig, and then you're having every month to get it read adjusted for the new length of hair you have and trimmed.

There's glue you wear, and there's a spray you put on.

So I had this thing for a week, and I was like, there is no way that this isn't gonna look like a rat's ass by the time, like in a month.

It's just gonna be horrible.

I'm not the kind of guy that's gonna maintain anything like this, let alone, I was with a woman, this was before I was married, and we're making out, and she wanted to rub her hands to my hair, and I kept pushing her hand down like a teenager, like didn't want to get felt up.

And I was just like, no, no.

We don't know each other well enough for that yet.

And I was like, I can't do this.

So I was on a gig and I used a trimmer.

I just had a small, like a Cybertrimmer, and I just pulled this thing off.

I ripped it off and I just, and I had long hair.

I had like Mel Gibson, Mad Max, no, not Mad Max.

What's the one where he's-

Braveheart.

Rigs!

Oh, the lethal weapon.

Lethal weapon.

Yeah, the lethal weapon.

I had the Mel Gibson lethal weapon here.

So I had to shave all of it down, and I had a show that night.

So I was able to get most of it down, but I just, it looked horrible, but then I got it.

Now I just wear it like this, and I'm like, what are you gonna do?

Now you just draw it on with a fucking Sharpie like Travolta does and Steven Seagal.

I've seen people with tattoos.

Yeah, and it looks horrible still, or they get the plugs, and the plugs aren't quite perfected yet.

And if you wear fake hair, there's certain things you gotta be willing to give up, like direct eye contact, because everybody's just like, they stare at your head, it's kind of like figuring out what you got.

They're trying to do your hairline math.

They're going like that, what is he?

It's funny, isn't it?

Because when I was a kid, like in the 80s and stuff, there were people just wandering around with these, we call them syrups, it's a London thing, like syrup of figs, wigs is a rhyming slang.

So there'd be people walking around, look at the fucking syrup on him.

And he'd be like a guy with like a ginger rat's ass on his head.

And it's like, you know, we know that that's not real, right?

I mean, are you fucking kidding?

He's like, yes.

Imagine how bad it looked.

It's like, if I wear this hat, no one's going, hey, you know, that's not hair.

That's not hair.

That's not hair.

I know it's not hair.

This isn't either.

This is just a wig, man.

It's just your hair hat.

I'm the lead singer in a band.

What do you want from me?

You look like any indie band from the 90s touring now.

Right.

We don't like to be called grunge because that's like too mainstream now.

So we'd like to be called unge.

I'm still working that in.

I've got to figure out how to get the hair hat, you know, like, and that's the other thing that's fantastic.

If you wear a wig and then you add to that a hat, it really like sells the whole look because now it's kind of like, you know, you don't even suspect that that's fake hair in there and you're just like, you know.

Now he looks like a Dutch Peter Fahm.

So I look like I should be pulling crabs out of the North Atlantic Ocean, you know.

Yeah, but get away from the rail.

You're about to get your hand chopped off.

Are you crazy?

Ah, these new kids on the boat.

It's just ridiculous.

That's a good look.

That's a good look.

But now of course, bald is in.

So, you know, with the Jason Stathams and all of that kind of stuff, people love all that, don't they?

I would know.

I would just say, if I could have hair, I would have it.

And because I don't, I just adapt, you know, but like your hair, I would, that would be cool.

Like, it'd be cool, like for a day to just have that and then get really bothered by it because I'm not used to having all that hair.

And then I could like, after the day of it go, man, I'm glad that crap is gone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's nice to shave your head.

I shaved, me and my whole family shaved our heads during COVID because I had young kids.

And do you call it lice over there?

The same thing?

When they get nits in the house?

Oh yeah, my kids, yeah.

The schools are like lice magnets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's a fucking nightmare.

There's only one option because it was COVID and everyone was locked down.

I says, well, even my wife who had long hair, we just shaved all our heads.

It's like, we just need this out of the house.

We can't have this in lockdown.

That's great.

That's family unity, man.

I like that.

We could have started a GoFundMe.

And did you, did you take a picture of all of you?

Like a little fester tribute?

Yeah, yeah, we look like coneheads.

Yeah, coneheads.

It did.

That's exactly what it looked like.

You don't know what your hair's gonna look like.

I tell you, I always said before you shave your head, you're not sure, like you don't know if there's bumps or bruises or a third eye.

Like you could have an eyeball that you didn't know about.

You know, blink, blink.

You know, I can look at you while I'm reading the paper.

You look harder, don't you, when you've shaved it.

People don't fuck with you quite as much.

That's what I noticed immediately.

Exactly.

I've already got like resting grumpy face.

Like I've got my, this might be like the grumpy Irish side of my mom's side, but it's like, she always has like that look like, well, you know, mama, you okay?

Yeah, I'm feeling great.

This is, I'm having the best day I've ever had.

Tell your face.

It looks good.

It looks really good.

You know, it's just like, well, tell your face.

So now I have to like, I kind of walk around and I kind of have to do like this.

And then it looks so fake.

It's just like, you know, well, that dude's on crack.

I'm not grumpy at all.

Stop talking to those kids, sir.

Can you talk about your books, your Funny Muscle books?

How many are there?

Is there three?

Well, there's gonna be three.

The third one is on its way.

When you're producing your own books, you're kind of a victim of finances.

So the first one is Finding Your Funny Muscle, How to Create Laughs Like a Pro.

And then, yeah, there it is, yeah.

And then the second book is Fine Tuning Your Funny Muscle.

And that's How to Practice Creating Laughs Like a Pro.

And that gives you more sort of day-to-day guidelines of how to use the tools in the first book.

And those tools are real basic.

It's just like everyone who's a comedian needs to figure out what their comedy lens is.

That's sort of the first step of kind of figure out why you're funny as opposed to why, like instead of why a dog is funny, but why is a dog funny to me?

Why does Mike Lukas think that having a pet as a dog is a funny thing as opposed to just in general?

Otherwise, you're kind of a generic corner quipper, like a kind of a guy who does a lot of puns or dad jokes or kind of corny jokes because they're not really based on your personality, yeah.

And so then once you figure out your comedy lens, then you really have to just figure out how to tell a joke.

Like what is a joke?

And the joke is a little bit of a magic trick because it involves misdirection.

You sort of get a premise, an idea of what you're gonna try to make funny.

And then you kind of set them up with a misdirection that makes them think of an obvious conclusion.

And then you surprise them with a different conclusion that still relates to the setup, but not in a way that they expected.

And you do that with my book tools using the humor blueprint.

And that blueprint sort of outlines how to use your comedy lens with the premise setup and punchline, and then how to heighten those ideas.

And I've got 36 humor heightening devices.

These are all different ways to take an idea and make it bigger, better and weirder.

Things like cut forward to.

So we would do a joke and then we would cut forward to afford some futuristic time and place that resulted because of that joke.

And so those are kind of called act outs and stuff.

We can cut back to, you can do an extension where like if this happens, then maybe that will happen.

You can do a contrast where you say, well, it goes like this in the past and it goes like this in the present.

Or it's like this in Europe and it's like this in the US.

So there's a whole bunch of ways to begin to utilize those heightening devices to begin to create a whole sort of farm of punchlines based on that premise.

And then you can begin to pick and choose based on your lens, which ones work for you.

And then you form that into a five minute set and then bang, you're on stage and you try it out.

And that's the only real way you can find out if what your ideas are funny is strangers who are drinking.

You know, like they're so kind.

I've already used it to enhance a couple of jokes of my own.

I was testing it a couple of weeks ago just to see if it would work for me because I've been doing quite, I wouldn't call it abstract, but long form, probably wouldn't work in America comedy.

And my big problem I found is the audience age has been one of the issues because I'm older than I look and my references, a lot of my references, I still think are very funny, are very fucking dated.

And I don't want to change them because I'm not gonna just change it for a TikTok generation into something else.

I've still got to use it, get it to them, deliver it to them in a different way, or maybe just slightly tweak it to something they might just have heard of.

You know what I mean?

That's funny.

And the great way to do that is real simple because your references are for you very obvious, but part of the humor can be the idea that it's not obvious to them.

And so, you know, almost built into your act or your humor could be the explanation, sort of the meta explanation of, you know, like how you consistently have to explain to this younger generation the things that we all know and take for granted, you know?

So it's kind of funny because then it brings people in and there's a reckoning.

I like your idea of like a metaphor or a simile of what they can relate to that says like, okay, so the band Kiss is like the modern day MGT or whatever, like you begin to give them a crossroads into your world and then they're like, oh, I get it, so they suck.

They go, no, they wear makeup or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

When I first started doing stand up, which wasn't a million years ago, I sort of created a character based on what I thought a stand up should be and part of my act now in all the thing I'm doing, not to give it away, is to start with that character and then the voiceover comes over and explains, what the fuck am I doing?

This isn't who I am.

And then basically the character breaks and it actually is me.

Like you say, be sincere, tell the crowd who you are.

Yeah, yeah, that's fun, yeah.

Then you're playing with the, yeah.

Yeah, because it's just like, it's just so easy to go up there and start talking about the expensive price of hinds soup.

I mean, who cares?

It's enough already.

Right, yeah.

I was doing that for a while and it was funny.

And I did a time machine thing where I go back in time and fucking Marty McFly was there with his coat and then sort of links to the Kardashians somehow.

People just looking at me like, what the fuck is he talking about?

You know, Back to the Future 2, 1988, 89, whatever.

Nobody, nobody, don't you remember that?

No, I'm Back to the Future 9.

I'm looking at a sea of 22 year olds going, Back to the Future 2, this is the second one?

Aye, aye, aye.

I went off stage, I retired to raise my two kids in 2014 when they got old enough where they realized that I was leaving the house often to go work.

And so I'd come home and I'd be like, it's me, dad.

And they were like, remind me?

So it was like one of those things where you could tell like they were physically changing in a couple of weeks out of the way.

So I just, I retired and stopped.

And now I'm thinking about going back on stage.

What age were they when you did that?

If you don't mind me asking.

They were zero and three to maybe like two and five.

Like now they're 11 and 14.

So now they're kind of at that place where they're like, dad, it'd be really cool if you weren't around a lot more.

Remind going away for a bit.

You're really cramping our style, my man.

So you did a John Lennon.

So yeah, I'm kind of nervous about like the woke audiences because like my sense of humor is, it's not that it's outdated in any way.

It's more like it pushes these envelopes and you really, you know, it's difficult to push that.

You don't know where people will, I think they're funny.

Like I remember one joke I did.

I referenced the National Stutterers Association, otherwise known as the NSSSSSA, right?

That might be getting people mad.

See, I think that's okay, but I've got one friend who would find that really, really, really troubling.

So it's that whole thing of...

Isn't it just always, it's the Jimmy Carthing, I'll go back to him again, but it's a joke, it's a fucking joke.

It's not, as long as there's no hate in your heart, if you're not going out there to actually hurt people and punch down deliberately, I think the woke thing is probably, I won't, should I say this?

I just think sometimes people live through wars.

Do you know what I mean?

There's wars going on in two different places right now.

Could you just get over yourself worrying about being offended by a fucking joke?

Seriously, where were you watching Friends and everybody has a problem with Friends?

I can't see anything wrong with it.

It's a couple of things that are like, oh, that's a bit, but generally, it's still funny, it's fine.

Yeah, it's like any time you punch down, like making fun of people who have a speech impediment, that's kind of punching down.

So I don't know that people will like that anymore.

It's almost like I don't feel good about laughing about that.

And I always say, you can't make fun of, say for instance, the special needs kids that are in the little yellow bus, but you can make fun of whoever's idea it was to put special needs kids in a bus that looks like it has special needs.

Like that's, now we're making fun of the powers that be as opposed to these kids.

And so now you're kind of starting to punch up as opposed to punch down, and you're showing empathy to these kids maybe, I don't know.

Yeah, I think Ricky Gervais did it really well.

Is it in Extras?

Or maybe in Extras, it might be in something else, where he's in a restaurant and there's someone making a racket in the background.

He goes, oh, fucking hell, what's that now?

And he turns around and it's a disabled guy and he feels bad about it.

But we've all been there, right?

And that's really well presented because it's his issue.

I would feel exactly the same, but that's my issue.

I'm not saying anything negative about it.

And you're not making fun of the disabled guy at all.

It's the idea that I made a mistake.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like when he gives the beggar like 20 quid and then he goes, I'm good for a few times, yeah?

You know, it's that kind of thing.

My wife and I did a radio show in Los Angeles on CBS radio and we, a lot of times, it was a comedy show, weekly comedy show, and we would take callers and one guy called us, I mean, we were on a time slot, we called Friday night, which is between Friday night and Saturday morning.

That's sort of before midnight and after midnight slot.

So people would go out drinking and then call our show in and have fun with us and all that.

And so one guy sounded particularly messed up and my wife started commenting on how buzzed he sounded and he ended up having CP.

What is CP, can I ask?

Cerebral palsy.

Oh, sorry, yes, my brother has that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so he talked as best as he could, but he sounded, he had a slur to his voice.

My wife thought he was drunk and he wasn't.

And the guy was really funny because he knew we were a comedy show and he was busting her tops about it, but he didn't feel bad.

But so we spent like 20 minutes talking about the idea that, what do you do in a case like that?

It's like when you ask a woman when she's expecting you, she's like, I'm not pregnant.

Yeah, yeah, there's some questions you can't ask.

How's your beer intake?

I don't drink, this is a tumor.

Oh, okay, you know what, I'm just gonna leave, I'm done.

It's almost like you got to just stay out of people's business.

Yeah, it's very tricky, because I'm finding a little bit of the he, she stuff, not that I'm being sexist or something.

Like I keep finding myself thinking, what's that film with Matthew McConaughey?

It's like, now imagine that she's black or whatever it is.

It's like that.

It's like, now imagine it's a woman or now, if something happens to a kid in the news, I imagine a white kid.

And if it's someone else, I'm like, oh, I wasn't thinking that way.

Why am I not thinking that way?

That's me, that's my programming.

And if I say, you know, like I did, I said something earlier when I said he, because it's probably a he, because it always is.

And occasionally, I don't want to deliberately go he or she, or they or whatever, but occasionally, you do sort of have these sort of pre-programmed things that do sort of work your way into jokes.

You'd be talking about a pilot and you'll say it's a he, and you don't mean to, but you know, it's working all that stuff out, isn't it?

It's really tricky, I think.

I don't know how people fucking do crowd work right now.

I wouldn't even attempt it.

It'd be a nightmare.

Say nothing to anybody and just do your act.

It's like a tip toe in the grenades.

That's, yeah.

I think though, like, if you approach all of it, this is what I've discovered, at least in my experience.

If you approach all of it with a sincerity and a true yearning to understand people and a true yearning to not divide, but to unite, then I think that people cut you a little bit of slack, especially if you make fun of yourself for getting it wrong, because my kids have a bunch of, I wouldn't call them trans friends, but they're friends who, instead of a she, are being referenced as a he, and then you have to keep all that in track, and it's a lot of the pronoun stuff.

I don't understand it, but I'm all yes-handed, because my kids are a different breed as far as how they look at the world.

There's no race, there's no color, there's no sex, there's none of that stuff.

They're looking at it differently.

So I'm the antique, I'm the dinosaur, so I'm having to learn what they're doing.

So I'm trying to be a student to all of that, and they're very cool about it, as long as I have that attitude, and not like, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I have to change, oh, change is so hard.

I just let my kids watch, Is It Cake?

And all the contestants on there are either non-binary or gay.

And then my kids are like, he just says to me, is he gay?

I goes, and he asked me a question recently, he goes, can children be gay?

And I went, well, of course.

It was like, I like the way that they're so innocent, but then it's just like you tell them a few things, and they just go, oh, fair enough.

And then I said, it's fine, it's no big deal.

It's only a big deal if a parent makes it a big deal and sort of projects their own fears and insecurities and prejudices on the kid.

And that's like such a sin to do that to a kid.

They're gonna have trans friends, they're gonna have non-binary friends for sure, the way it's going, so just get used to it and it's fine.

I mean, I watched my grandparents and parents, not be anti-gay, but be, I don't know, for some reason, everyone on TV that was funny was gay and they all watched that and they thought that was fine and all the music was made by gay people, they thought that was fine, but somehow they had a problem with the actual concept, which I never did because I grew up in a time where, who cares about that, I don't give a shit about that.

So trans is our gay, I guess, for the, my parents would have, so now we've got to adapt and be careful and just not be horrible about it.

I mean, I'm surprised there's so many, I didn't know, I didn't know, I just didn't know.

I wasn't educated enough, I guess.

It just seems so rude to judge people on how you picture them having sex.

Like to me, that seems like the rudest, like you don't do that to like ugly couples.

No, no.

You know, where you're prejudiced against an ugly couple because you're picturing them slamming against each other and like, oh, that's disgusting what you two do.

I don't know Mike, I might be actually.

Right?

There's that thing, yeah, my, I think my nan and granddad used to say that exact line, what they do behind closed doors, I don't mind what they do in the privacy of their own home, but not out on the street, and I'm like, have you seen what like heterosexual people do on the street?

It's incredibly, like my kids, I'm like, no, don't look.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's what's funny is they, as long as it doesn't affect me, or I don't have to deal with it, it's fine.

And that's not how it goes.

Like, this is our, all of our world.

We have to all take it all in and deal with it, however you deal with it.

And that tells a lot about who you are, is how you deal with these changes.

If you kick and scream, it says something about you.

When was your first experience of going on television?

When did that happen?

What was that like?

Well, it happened a few times, and the first time I tried out to go on TV, I was probably way too early in my career, and I was trying to get on MTV's Spring Break in Daytona.

And so I was in Orlando doing shows at Universal Studio, and I was doing comedy at night, and so I auditioned to be on that show, and then I made the mistake of taking a bit that I should have closed with.

This was a bit I used to do about a guy who got his head cut off on Space Mountain.

It was a true story of a guy who stood up and got his head decapitated.

So the whole joke was, you know, woohoo, no hands, no head.

So again, these jokes probably wouldn't do well these days, but that bit was killing.

I did a whole thing about that bit.

It wasn't just the one joke, it was the whole piece.

But I opened with it, and it did so well that I couldn't follow it.

My other material wasn't solid enough to follow that bit, and it was like a level of disappointment.

So I was too new to know how to put a set together.

Then I kind of blanked on one of the bits, and then I was like, oh, this is ridiculous.

So I waited for quite a while to try to get back on TV.

And then I was in 90, I think it was 95 or 96, in Chicago in Zanies, the Jay Leno's Tonight Show was coming to town, and what they would do is they would set up in the theater, and they would record their show live in front of whoever, whatever citizens show up to the show.

And then a lot of times they would send out their booking agents to get local comedians to do that show.

So they sent their team to Zanies, and which is, I was my home club.

And so there was about 10 or 12 of us, it all got up and did five or six minutes of time.

And my set went really well, I just killed.

And so a guy, Jimmy Brogan, who was the broker at the time, he called me aside and he was like, hey, we wanna use you on the show.

And so then this was like on a Tuesday or whatever, and he wanted me on a Friday.

And so I was like, oh great, I'd love to, this is wonderful, thank you.

And so then on like Wednesday, he called me up, he's like, bad news.

We got a different Michael to show up on the show on Friday, Michael Jordan.

And I was like, remind me of who this guy is, who's the, you know, I was like, I get that.

If you got Michael Jordan, I get where, and they were like, but we'd like to fly you out to LA to do the show anyways, you know, in a couple of weeks.

So they ended up flying me out to LA, put me up in a hotel, had me do the Tonight Show.

The set went really well.

I went back and did another set.

Then that got me into the Montreal Comedy Festival, which got me that Conan O'Brien set.

And yeah, so those TV sets are really interesting because what ends up happening is you try, you have to put together five to seven minutes of real clean material.

And it's, it had to be almost like a pause break level material.

And so what you end up doing a lot of times, especially if you're new at it, like I was, is you pick and choose out of your act.

So I had maybe an hour and a half of material and I would, I picked the best parts of it out of there to get these two sets that I made.

And then I had nothing left.

So then I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to write new material, which I wasn't very great at.

I was good at improvising and good at coming up with material on the spot, but in stars like sitting at my computer and coming up with funny stuff, I wasn't good.

And that's why I ended up writing the books is because I was trying to, the books help someone who was in the same position that I was in, which is you're having to come up with material and you have to understand how jokes work so you can begin to kind of grind them out so you can try them out and then work and hone them to a higher level.

So that's sort of the story of when I first got on TV, but it was wonderful.

The audience was pumped up.

I got to meet a bunch of celebrities, Anthony Edwards.

The stars that go on these talk shows are usually pretty, oh, Mr.

T, that's who it was.

I was gonna say Mr.

T, I couldn't remember.

Yeah, you know, I pity the fool.

Like talk about old reference.

But Mr.

T was the big deal back, well, not even in the 90s.

He was more of an 80s guy.

So in the 90s, he was kind of like a funny reference.

But anyway, so it was fun.

And then the second time I did the Tonight Show, someone showed up there and had an air horn, like they had snuck an air horn in.

So during my set, they're like, oh, and they couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

So someone was just trying to get on TV so they could hear themselves.

You never know what you have to deal with when you're in front of the cameras.

It's kind of intimidating.

Did they go through your jokes and tell you what you could and couldn't do?

Did the writers get involved or did they leave you to it or how was that?

Well, the writers don't really get involved, but whoever books the show, what they do is they approve of your set.

And typically what happens is you go in LA and you run the set a bunch of times in front of them at the different clubs.

And they tell you, I like that joke, that joke, lose that joke, because we do, one of our sponsors is blah, blah, blah, and they'll get offended by that.

Or they'll have reasons that have nothing to do with whether it's funny.

And then they'll hone it together.

And with mine, it just was a set that I just happened to put together because it was like all my biggest bits.

And then it's like, ah, you know.

So they didn't really go over a lot of those.

He was like, I like it how it is, just keep it that way.

But typically they'll kind of pick at it and try to make it perfect.

Because they want you to do well.

If you do well on the show, it looks good for them.

Yeah, yeah, of course, and how did that lead to you doing a run in Vegas?

Any of that kind of clout just puts you at a higher level in the eyes of the people, of the powers that be.

But the show in Vegas was a direct result of, I went to the Second City Conservatory, which is in Chicago.

I studied with them for several years and you go through a program with them and you are trained by their directors and their professional actors.

And then they bring you through this program to teach you how it's done there at the Second City, which is improv that they use to, improvisation that they use to turn into sketches.

And now it's a little bit more complicated than that.

It's kind of like what Quentin Tarantino uses, which is like, it's called like a frozen herald, which is, it's a story that's sort of rearranged.

And then by the end of it, you get all the details, but it's not a linear story anymore.

They're all kind of jumping around.

And it used to be sketch, sketch, and now it's like piece, piece, piece.

And they're all like, you don't understand something.

And then it makes sense later.

And then you call back to it and then it completes the story.

So it's a lot more complicated the way they're the kind of scripting it.

A guy named Adam McKay, who's a great writer and director.

So he's the one that sort of came into Second City and shifted the way they did the type of shows they did.

And so I was hired by them then to do their touring company.

I'd also done Improv Olympic, that conservatory there, which was Del Close, who was a very famous improvisation kind of guru.

And so I got to take a class from him.

I mean, he's since passed.

And so through that, I got to be on tour with them.

One of my touring partners was Craig Kikowski, who does Drunken History.

And also another guy, John Farley, Chris Farley's little brother, was one of my, he was my roommate, because we were the weirdest of the crew.

And so we toured for a year.

We went to Europe.

We went to all over America.

And we would do theaters and colleges.

And we would just perform to people who wanted to see improv.

And then because of that experience, the producer, Kelly Leonard at Second City in Chicago knew of me and liked me.

And he used me to understudy the main show there in Chicago.

So I filled in for Jim Zulevich, who was out quite a bit, because he liked to go watch the Cubs play and drink.

And so I would be in there working with Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch and Kevin Dorff and Scott Adzitt, all these people who are now kind of big from 30 Rock and all those other shows.

Yeah, so it was a real great experience.

And I went out to LA to try to get acting work.

And that's when Kelly called me up and he said, hey, I'm throwing this show together in Vegas.

Do you want to come in and be in the show?

And so I was like, of course.

I wanted to be on one of their main stages.

And so that was my chance to do it.

So Mick Napier was our director.

I got to work with Jason Sudeikis, was my roommate.

Kate Cannon, who's a big kind of producer and writer now.

She was also my roommate.

Those two were dating and I was sort of, the three of us lived together.

And that was in 2001, that was when the 9-11 hit.

So we were in Vegas when 9-11 hit.

So that was an awful, awful time, obviously for everyone.

But in Vegas, particularly, everyone got grounded in this weird town.

So, and then we had to try to be funny during a time that everyone was anything but funny.

The Second City show was pretty, it was at the Flamingo, and it was right on the strip, and we stayed in these corporate apartments.

And we were like kind of like these fish out of water, because we were these comedians that were all living in these corporate apartments.

And so the first week we were there, I remember Jason, we sat up all night, and we were doing these flyers that looked like the flyers from the apartment complex, but we did our own.

Instead of like, they would do stuff like, a chess tournament on Sunday.

Thursday, a talk on stocks and bonds by a local expert.

I've heard this story before.

That was you guys.

And then, so Jason and I would come up with these other things that would say like, ever wonder if you could battle an NBA superstar?

A former NBA star, Julius Erving, will be here taking on all comers, Kirkman residents only.

See if you can dunk on the superstar.

You know, we did like a stunt driving for seniors, you know, in the parking garage on Thursday mornings.

Kirkman residents only, you know, we were just, and we just kept putting them up over and over again until finally the manager of the apartment complex talked to our director and said, please tell whoever is doing that, please stop.

Jason was going to Kinko's and getting them copied and putting them everywhere.

He just like took it to the end.

But anyway, so needless to say, Vegas was a lot of fun.

Okay, now that's amazing.

I'm going to just ask some format questions.

Is that all right?

I lost a couple.

Let's do it.

If you give me a number between one and 22.

13.

13.

What is a late night television show that you're allowed to stay up to see as a child that you probably shouldn't have been?

Oh, well, I remember Saturday Night Live was, you know, I was born in 65.

So in 74, 75, 76, when it just started out, you know, I was like, you know, what, eight, nine, 10, 11, in that age bracket.

I remember that was like, boy, there was, that show was so groundbreaking because they were, like the stuff they were doing was just different.

It was kind of like an edgy Carol Burnett.

I always liked the Carol Burnett show.

I liked, you know, the Tim Conway, Harley Corman, Carol Burnett.

They were kind of real clean cut and sort of like Sunday night material.

And then Saturday Night Live was sort of like this weird edgy stuff.

And I was like, whoa, you can do this on TV and live.

And then Bill Murray came out and I just thought Bill Murray was the best.

And you know, he was, he just like grabbed my attention.

And I found that he was what he'd been at Second City.

And then I found that a lot of the other actors had been at Second City.

And so that got me to start going to see those shows in Chicago where my uncle and my grandparents lived.

And so I got to see a lot of those shows.

I got to see Steve Carell and Steve Corbett.

So I got to see them when they were nobody, like just on the regular Second City stage.

And you get to watch these guys and they're just really raw, but you can already tell that they're really talented.

So I guess that, See Inside That Live was the first TV show that really got me, and Steve Martin was on that show too.

And they would do The Wild and Crazy Guys.

He would do his sketches and he'd take the banjo out and play and get everybody going.

So yeah, I love that.

I loved all those Man with Two Brains and Roxanne and mostly.

It was just so the joke.

I don't think you can make the joke now.

I really don't think so.

I don't know.

That was like, yeah, the whole opening line was, I was born a poor black child.

So right away, everybody's gonna be like, what?

But there was no disrespect at all in it.

It was a real sincere journey.

And it was coming of age sort of a story of Finis-Gatty.

It was funny, but he's not carnival personnel.

What is a TV show that you would erase from history, if you could?

It's funny, one TV show, I probably would think is so weird to me that this show was ever popular, but Hogan's Heroes to me was always so offensive.

Like a show about prison camp just, like to me, showed a lack of respect for the entirety of that thing that went on.

But then there's a part of me as a comedian that says you should be able to have, make fun of anything, and as long as you're not punching down, as long as you're not making the prisoners look bad, then and you're making the staff look bad, well, then you're doing the job of a comedian, whatever.

So I get that there's like sort of that battle in that idea, but just the idea that you would have a show about a prison camp.

If you know any of the history of any of that stuff, if you've seen any pictures, if you've watched any documentaries, if you've visited any of those sites, and like the somberness of it is just so like untouchable.

My mom wouldn't let me watch the show as a kid.

Like she wouldn't even allow me to see it.

Was it set in World War II?

Was that what it was?

Yeah, it was a sitcom set in one of the prison camps in World War II, and it was Jim Crane, I think was the actor who was the main prisoner.

And then they had a staff of German soldiers that were sort of nincompoops.

And so it was always about, they weren't trying to escape, they were trying to spy.

And so they had all these contraptions set up in their camp in order to do that.

So it would be like having a sitcom about slavery.

Like I know, I guess you could do it, but it's like, there's not really a lot of fun, especially to anyone who's been through it or who knows people who have been through it or like, it's just not, I don't know how they got an audience to buy into Hogan's Hero.

It was only 20 years after World War II.

So that's like doing a comedy set, I guess, in the Twin Towers on 9-11 or something.

It's like, hey, I got a great idea for a sitcom.

We're gonna do this about child trafficking.

It's hilarious.

Oh my God.

It's like, what?

No, no.

A comedy set in Baghdad in 2003.

Yeah, just there's certain things.

And again, as a comedian, I really believe that you can make just about anything funny to somebody, but the question is why?

What's your purpose in getting a laugh with that?

Because if you don't have a larger reason to poke fun of, say, prison camp or slavery or that, because there might be a black actor and cast and crew that want to do something about that and to sort of grab their own strength in that sort of horrible situation and try to find the humor that would make people like them laugh.

So in that case, it would probably work.

If you say Richard Pryor might be able to pull something like that off.

Eddie Murphy might be able to pull something.

I don't know.

But the idea that anyone else would come in and do that.

Yeah, it's a dances with wolves territory.

Yeah, right, yeah, exactly.

Coming in and becoming, you know, just so you know, you're not Native American, but I'm wearing the outfit.

What is the funniest thing you've ever seen on television?

Oh, let's see, the funniest thing I've ever seen on television.

Huh, that's a good question, man.

I gotta be honest, there's not a lot of funny things I've seen on television, but I'd say, so like in terms of a sitcom or whatever, or a show, I'd say the ones that really used to make me laugh was Cheers.

Cheers, I always thought, Coach was always really funny, and Woody Harrelson was always really funny, and I thought that they wrote some stuff that was just really kind of ground breakingly funny for that kind of humor.

And now I watch, I don't watch a lot of TV, so when I go back and see TV with the laugh track, I can't take it.

I'm just like, you haven't heard it for a while, but then you hear it?

Because now they're like, they put it to 11, right?

Like a spinal tap, they turn it up so high, so it's like, do ba do ba do ba, do ba do ba do ba, do ba do ba do ba, do ba do ba do ba, and nobody would laugh that hard at any of these jokes.

What are you doing?

When a famous person arrives on the set, like Bruce Willis walks into Friends and everyone screams like Char-Che's walked in, you know that thing?

I hate that.

It just takes me completely out of it.

It's just, oh yeah, okay.

I get what's happening.

Yeah, yeah.

I like when comedians do like a meta joke about that.

Like Ryan Reynolds was in the audience at Saturday Live and Will Ferrell noticed him and they did a whole bit about, oh my God, Ryan Reynolds, is that my show?

And then he mumps about, he messes up his words and he's like, oh my God, is that really you?

So you can have fun with it in a way, but you have to be making fun of it anyway.

Yeah, I'll have to watch that.

Oh well, Mike, thanks for coming on Television Times Podcast.

It's really nice to speak to you.

Nice to meet you and chat heavily about comedy and stand-in.

Me too, Steve Otis Gunn.

Steve Otis Gunn.

The best name in show business.

Oh, thanks, man.

Is there anything you want to plug at the end?

Sure, well, funnymuscle.com is my website and we always have new content on there.

That's where you can find out about my books.

I also have a short story book.

They're Twisted Short Stories by my pseudonym Max Gore.

Those are a lot of fun.

And I do my own podcast.

I do the Funny Muscle podcast and we do a weekly podcast for any comedian who's kind of new in the business and wants to sort of get used to how it goes.

And so we really try to cater to people who are trying to learn and to be funnier for a living and make drunk strangers laugh.

What can we do?

It's an honorable trade.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks so much, Steve.

So that was me talking to Mike Lukas, a comedian from America.

We don't get to talk to too many people from America, do we?

We gotta get more on, gotta get more.

It was nice to chat to him.

He was really easy to talk to, and very, very useful to read his books.

You should too, if you are in any way interested in writing comedy.

If not, just enjoy his standup.

Now, for today's outro track.

Today's outro track is a song called New York Ending.

Now, I'm only putting that on here because obviously New York is full of standup, Mike's obviously done loads of standup in New York.

It just kind of gave me that feeling to put that song out.

I really like this song.

It's from an album called After The Fireworks in 2008.

A lot of my friends were singing on this song, my mate Desi, my friend Hanan El-Sharif.

And yeah, I just really love this song and I've just slightly, slightly remastered it and added a few little bits that only people that have heard the original would spot.

Anyway, I love this song.

It's about my experiences in early 2008 when I was on my own in New York, feeling pretty lonely, staying in absolute shit holes, little tiny room with no, well, you wouldn't even call it a room, it was a cell.

It had no roof.

It was like a sort of box with, I can't even explain it.

Like as if everyone was staying in one room and you just had like segregated walls, like in an office, really weird.

But yeah, like I say at the time, I was feeling pretty low.

The tune itself is a reused tune from the 90s.

So I wrote a different song and it was knocking about and I liked it.

So I thought let's reuse it and turn it into this.

So this is New York ending from the album After The Fireworks, which was recorded back in 2008.

We've got long and great music coming up for you in just a few minutes.

That was New York ending from the album After The Fireworks, which I recorded in 2008 in various locations, Ireland, Canada, New York, all over the place.

I really enjoyed making that album.

It was the most real album I ever did.

All real instruments all the way through.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my chat with Mike, and come back next week when we'll have another great guest for you here on Television Times Podcast.

But for now, bye bye.