Y-Town comic: "I want to bring stand-up back."

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on December 13th, 2007

We were wondering who was going to save standup comedy, who was going to “bring it back.” We have been waiting for someone to restore comedy to its rightful place among the performing arts.

Tony Hinchcliffe is such a performer. Just ask him.

There were so many juicy quotes to choose from in the recent interview in the Youngstown Vindicator, it was hard pick just one. We may have settled on our fave:

“They liked me, even though it was my first night,” Hinchcliffe said. “They said I’m better than some people who have been doing this for 10 years. And I’ve never seen it since or before. They have 15 [open-mic-night performers] every Sunday and Monday, and I’ve never seen it done.”

Perhaps it’s a tie. While the above quote is certainly interesting, this one is good, too:

I did a show in May when I was only a month into my career and I killed the joint for an hour and 10 minutes.

Then, of course, there’s the title of this very posting (see above).

That is an actual quote from the interview. We’re not making this up.

Perhaps it was Hinchcliffe who was making it up. We can only hope.

Maybe the reporter for the Vindicator was an unwitting accomplice to this bombast gone horribly out of control. That’s the only thing that can make this less than nauseating.