Carrot Top on The Strip

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 6th, 2005

We’re a little late to the party, but Mike Weatherford of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Sept. 22 that:

It’s official. The Luxor pyramid will have a Carrot Top for the next three years.

The red-headed prop comic (aka Scott Thompson) will take a three-year residency at the hotel starting Nov. 24, after nine years of periodic engagements headlining the MGM Grand’s Hollywood Theater. […]

Carrot Top will share the Atrium Theater with the topless revue “Fantasy,” and will open after the current early show, Toxic Audio, wraps its engagement Nov. 16.

“Scott doesn’t have an ego. He just wants to do a good show. It doesn’t have to be a ‘Carrot Top Theater,’ ” Propper says. Besides, sharing expenses with “Fantasy” helps keep the ticket price down to $42.

Propper, who also manages comedian David Brenner and hypnotist Anthony Cools, also says he prefers a rental, or “four-wall” deal to a guarantee because with the latter, “someone else is in charge of your destiny” and “everyone gets greedy,” driving ticket prices up.

Carrot Top’s low-dough show debuted on the Strip in 1996, making the comedian, now 38, an early draw for the younger demographic so prized by casinos. But his real fame came four years ago when he began doing TV commercials for AT&T. The comedian did 53 spots for the just-concluded series, filming 12 of them in Las Vegas

Emphasis ours. Once again, fame is solidified or augmented by television, specifically by a television commercial.

On the road for a decade (and getting ink just because his show took up two tractor trailers), it was inevitable that The Top would take up residence on The Strip eventually.