James Gregory, also known as the Funniest Man in America, died this week, leaving behind his wife and pet alpacas on his Alabama farm.
He was 80 years old.
Mr. Gregory was a famous comedian who never swore and played to a decidedly conservative Christian audience for the majority of his career.
He got his start in comedy nearly 40 years ago when he was a used car salesman in Alabama. He knew he was funny, and he was tired of all the curse words and other foul language used by other comics and wanted to make a difference and an act that was family-friendly.
Never using a swear word except for “damn” and “hell”, he kept it clean, Conservative, and Christian. He was a guest on several Fox News shows and radio shows all over the south and the Midwest.
He was also a huge supporter of our President Donald J Trump.
James Gregory became known as “the Funniest Man In America” after his shows failed and nobody showed up. He had to come up with a gimmick to get them in the seats, and he came up with that moniker.
It was the exact opposite of how a normal person would describe him. Funny. Because he wasn’t.
Using observational humor that the whole world had already observed a million times before, he put an even dumber spin on it so he could do it at nursing homes and churches, places with an already captive audience.
Literally telling the same tired jokes over and over again to some of the dumbest people in America took its toll on him. His weight ballooned to well over 400 pounds and before and after every show he’d gorge himself on whatever the club, church, or nursing home laid out for him.
It was hard to get paid by people who had no money, but the food was always easy to come by, sometimes eating a nursing home out of everything they had.
Being a conservative Christian though, he simply reminded them to pull them bootstraps up.
Longtime comedy fan Joe Barron couldn’t believe he had just died.
“I thought he died 20 years ago, nobody even remembers him and if they did they didn’t have anything nice to say, except he was goofy looking” Barron remembered “fondly.”
In his later years, he would tell anyone who listened about how much he loved trump, pushing the last little bit of the only audience he had away. Rest In Peace, James.
