Welcome to a preview of season 22 of Clear and Vivit. I'm here with my executive producer

Graham Shed. Hi, Graham. Hi, that good morning. We open the season next week with actor

singer writer comedian Robert Klein. Robert has had a long and extremely successful career.

His style of observational comedy made him a huge hit. Among others, Jay Leno and Jerry

Seinfeld have said he was an influence on their work. I met Robert when he was just starting out as a

comedian. We were both in the same musical on Broadway and after the show on weekends,

other members of the cast and I would go down the street from the theater we were playing in to

watch Robert try out his act at a comedy club. Before long, he was hosting the first-ever HBO comedy

special and helping launch Saturday Night Live. It interested me that as he was starting out,

he had as a mentor someone who I found surprising Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield had a completely

different personality as a performer. His signature line and the premise of a lot of his jokes was,

I don't get no respect, whereas Robert Klein was a little more cerebral. But it turned out it wasn't

the style he learned from Dangerfield. It was the dedication to the hard work of crafting something

funny. I'm interested in Rodney Dangerfield being your mentor because he was so vastly different

in style and personality. From the personality, the persona that you presented on stage,

in what way was he your mentor? Well, after he phrased me to the sky and I'd never met them

and he said, now you have to come for three years every night to get it right. What happened is I

followed him around. He was 20 years exactly older than I. I'm anyone. He would have been 101 now.

And I learned basic things. Who's in the audience? Who's paying you? How to handle the mic?

Also a very important thing. Up to that time, not many comedians wrote their own material. They had

writers. And he was a primary joke writer. And for a man with lacking certain disciplines in his

personal life, drinking too much and too much indulgence and this and that. When he had a tonight

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