Ron White doesn’t do “topical or political humour”, but he does do whiskey. Paul Andrew speaks to the Stateside funnyman famously known as “Tater Salad”.
When US Comedian Ron White was a kid growing up in Fritch, Texas,
learning difficulties like ADHD and dyslexia weren’t being diagnosed and
managed as they are today. Doctors and specialists dismissed children
like White as “profoundly lazy and stupid.”
“Yes, I was very frustrated as a child,” he admits, “but I got by. I
was lucky enough to be a good storyteller and could make a story about a
car wreck funny. My brain just processes information differently. It
functions at a high level – just not all of the time. Sometimes the
synapses don’t connect.”
The subject of early childhood and brain synapses came up during the
conversation as we delved the origins of White’s comedy writing some 35
years ago. White was 20 at the time and a recovering alcoholic. “I’d
been in the Navy for a few years and ended up with a pretty respectable
drug problem,” he admits. “When I left the Navy I went along to a drug
and alcohol rehab program and got a gig touring high schools talking
about my problems and about my road to recovery."
“I always found it very easy to speak in front of people, to groups –
as a kid too – and I also found it really easy to talk about how I got
off-centre in my life. These talks were funny for the high school
students; every incident I recounted about my own life made kids all
across the country belly raw. In fact my talks were so funny they asked
me to leave the education program forever. I began drinking again.”
It was a close friend and colleague of White’s at a window-making
business who pointed out the obvious. “My friend told me politely that
there was an open-mic night each week at a local Comedy Club, The Funny
Bone Comedy Club in Arlington Texas, and that I should go along. He told
me my stories were much funnier than anyone he had ever seen there. So I
went along, told my stories and am still telling stories almost
thirty-six years and 10,000 live shows later.”
Later White “discovered” that self-medicating with pot helped his
brain synapses to function better “to make connections were there were
none before... Living in Southern California where pot is legalised
makes this an easy remedy. It’s when you tour to the other states that
it becomes a problem. Pot is a federal issue and raids happen in states
where pot is still illegal. There is a serious drug problem in our
country, stuff like Meth. Pot is an entirely different drug.
“Whiskey also helps. Whiskey gets the electrodes that don’t fire
right to make the synapses fire. My wife Margo, a classically-trained
opera singer – who has more talent in her little finger than I do in my
entire body – has suggested yoga will help me too. ‘You can touch your
toes can’t you Ron? Then you can do yoga,’ she advises me. I keep
telling Margo the only way I can touch my toes is if someone cuts them
off and hands them too me on a plate.”
You can see Ron White in action on Saturday 18 August at the Metro Theatre.
Paul Andrew
Drum (Jul 10, 2012)
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