Remember when Andrew “Dice” Clay was the biggest name in late ‘80s comedy? And the dirtiest?
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The Dice Man’s raunchy reign didn’t last long. It unofficially ended with The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, the 1990 big-screen bust meant to shoot him into the stratosphere.
Seems nasty nursery rhymes had a short shelf life.
Clean comedy, mocked in select circles for being edge-free and bland, is another story. It’s neither hip nor applauded by snooty critics, but audiences can’t get enough.
And we’re living in the golden age of clean comedy, with giants including Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld, Brian Regan and (mostly) Sebastian Maniscalco cleaning up at theaters large and larger.
Think arenas, too.
Dry Bar Comedy, a YouTube channel advertised as “stand-up comedy for everyone in the family,” is a boon to many stand-ups, exposing their clean sides to a wider, online audience. Even comics who don’t work clean happily tidy up their shtick to access the platform’s audience. Some Dry Bar routines have eclipsed 10 million views.
Even clean sitcoms are proving timeless. Netflix just re-upped with Seinfeld to stream the classic sitcom for another five years.
The show has been a steady draw on a streamer loaded with R-rated comedy options. Nearly 60 million Americans reportedly watched the NBC show in the first half of this year.
Ray Romano, star and co-creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, reportedly earns $18 million a year from the show’s residuals.
And then there’s Nate Bargatze.
The King of Clean Comedy has been the top road draw on the stand-up circuit for a while. This month, he set a new benchmark that might be tough to top.
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He secured a Guinness World Record for selling the most tickets for a stand-up comedy tour. That’s north of two million tickets sold—2,045,040 to be exact—from April 6, 2025, to Aug. 16 in Toronto via his Big Dumb Eyes World Tour.
He unseated Jeff Dunham, the previous record holder, in roughly half the time.
Bargatze’s self-deprecating brand is his secret sauce. He’s polite, apolitical, and eager to please without leaving anyone out of the fun. He understands the daily rhythms of married life and sees the funny in the most benign shared experience.
The Left tried to drag Bargatze into a culture war fight earlier this year when he appeared at the White House/UFC event. A few woke scolds, like fellow comic W. Kamau Bell, tried to pin the comedian as pro-MAGA, but the efforts failed.
Bargatze doesn’t engage in political banter on or off stage. The attacks didn’t hurt his ticket sales, apparently.
Bargatze does have one thing in common with Clay. They both bombed with their solo films. Bargatze’s squeaky-clean comedy The Breadwinner couldn’t draw a crowd earlier this year, earning a tepid $20 million at the U.S. box office.
The Breadwinner found Bargatze in his element, an overwhelmed dad trying to keep his family together when Mom struck gold on TV’s Shark Tank.
Ironically, Ford Fairlane earned $21 million in 1990, but the film’s expectations were sky-high at the time.
The failure of Ford Fairlane coincided with the public’s growing disinterest in Clay’s bad-boy routine. Bargatze may not be a snug fit for movies, but he’s right at home at an arena near you.
