Comedian Takes Penis Jokes Very Seriously
APRIL 7, 2008
BROOKLYN (TNA) – Ask anyone with a penis: It’s not easy being a man in today’s world.
But if you’re Robert Kelly, 37, possessed of gargantuan man-tits, a shiny bald pate, a pseudo-Latino visage (despite being Irish) and “knees that are giving up and begging to be ankles” because he’s “so fucking fat,” it’s especially hard.
Being a man, that is. 
Robert Kelly admits he's 'a fucking mess,' but says the fact that he's funny 'makes it a little better.'
Check out Kelly’s white-knuckle, uproarious live comedy CD/DVD “Just the Tip,” released April 8 by Comedy Central, and you’ll hear all about how hard it is. And how hard “it” is, too. Much of Kelly’s act revolves around his penis and its myriad misadventures, his torturous liaisons with his wife, his struggles with food and his frequently seething anger.
Kelly’s act often feels like the spawn of a three-way between Yosemite Sam, Woody Allen and Ron Jeremy – but so funny you might not be able to breathe for hours. His delivery is wheezingly brutal, aggressively Tommy Gunned, but always completely relatable, convulsively hilarious and frequently endearing.
What’s not to love about a man who admits he accidentally shit his pants while coming onto his girlfriend?
“I’m a fucking mess, man, and I hate myself,” he says. “Except, you know, I’m funny. That makes it a little better.”
Kelly learned “the power of funny” at an early age. Though his comedic chops weren’t enough to keep the police at bay – as an adolescent he was nabbed repeatedly for a string of crimes, from federal offenses (like kicking mailboxes) to unarmed robbery (“I emptied this cash register in a pizza place to impress some big-nosed Italian chick from my geography class,” he says) – delivering chuckles kept Kelly’s face in one piece during a stint in juvenile hall.
“There were, like, three white kids in the whole fucking place, and the black kids would just go around and beat us up every day,” Kelly says. “One day, my number was up. They were bragging about beating up the two other white boys, and they asked me, ‘Yo, are you a homeboy or a white boy?’
“I told them, ‘Me? I’m a homeboy.’ And they just started laughing. ‘Aw, man, this fucker’s crazy!’” he recalls. “That’s when I learned that funny could get me out of a jam.”
It was a survival skill that Kelly, who ran with a rough crowd and careened so intensely Bacchanalian through his teen years that he landed in rehab at 15, mastered.
“The way I grew up, you were either tough or you were funny,” he says. “I didn’t like getting punched in the face that much. I hated headlocks, too. So I learned how to be funny.”
Kelly’s got his 20-year sobriety chip, and more than 15 years notched in national comedy clubs. None of it has come easy. 
Kelly says honesty is the key to good comedy, which is why one of his routines concerns the time he crapped his pants while coming on to his girlfriend.
“Those early shows were tough, man. Really fucking tough,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’d play the whole 45 minutes so I could get paid. Meanwhile, people are throwing beer steins across the bar and they’re smashing against walls and audience members are being cut open.”
The worst gig of Kelly’s career was at an East Coast beer festival. “Beer Fest. Afternoon slot. Right after a band. Outside. Next to a skydiving simulator,” he says. “Every five minutes, a jet engine would go off and some fucking kid would be screaming at the top of his lungs. Bad fucking gig, dude.”
But Kelly persevered, honing his craft, writing constantly. Three years ago, things began to change.
That’s when Dane Cook, on the verge of becoming stand-up’s white-hot phenom, booked Kelly to share his “Tourgasm” stage, which eventually was picked up as an HBO series.
“For sure, that was a huge turning point for me. It put me on the map,” he says. “But it also came with a lot of responsibility. You can afford to eat shit when you’re playing to 10 guys at the Chuckle Hut. When you’re onstage in front of 12,000 people with guys like Louis CK and Dane Cook, you’d better be fucking psychotically funny. For an hour.”
That’s also when Kelly married his longtime girlfriend, who is complicit in some of Kelly’s most squirm-inducing bits. He hasn’t done it yet on stage, but keep your ear to the tracks for the bit about the time he incorrectly used a Pocket Rocket to pleasure her – and “hit bone.”
“She was with me from the beginning, 11 years, man. I feel bad I waited so long to marry her,” he says. “But I’m not getting any prettier. I’d have to be, like, ‘Richard Pryor funny’ to get pussy at this point, so why not settle down and pay some bills?” 
Kelly says every performance is designed to make someone 'laugh until they piss.'
The final turning point for Kelly was beginning therapy three years ago.
“I was so pissed to be there. My first day, I told the therapist, ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to talk about. Don’t turn me into a pussy!’” Kelly says. “And he looked at me and said, ‘You already are a pussy. Whenever anything bad happens you eat, drink or try to fuck something. That’s a pussy. Face your fears.’”
And Kelly’s act suddenly opened up to include wincingly candid accounts of his insecurities, anxieties, self-loathing and sexual misfortunes. (Don’t miss his “Just the Tip” account of jerking off while zonked on Percocet and inadvertently ejaculating into his own face.)
“I’m not the comic that goes to the newspaper and finds the next Obama joke. There are nine other guys doing that shit by Tuesday,” he says. “But the shit in my life? That time I crapped my pants trying to be cute with my wife? That’s my story. Other comics aren’t going to tell it, and I guarantee you half the guys in my audience have lived it.”
In the end, it’s exactly that universality that connects Kelly so profoundly with his audience, and on a deeper level than mere punchlines and laughter.
“This shit is only funny because it’s so honest, and I think that’s what therapy has really taught me – to be fucking honest,” he says. “All of this shit’s OK, and talking about it is OK, and being funny is what comes from that. I’m a sad, lonely, fucked-up dude. But I can be honest and maybe make you feel a little less sad and lonely and fucked up. And I’ll make you laugh till you piss.”
Kelly, who will play several Vegas dates with Cook this summer and also appear in Cook’s next feature film, as well as delivering a supporting role in Ricky Gervais’ forthcoming feature, admits he’s still got a lot to learn.
“I’ve been doing this 15 years, but I’m just finding my voice now. I’m just figuring out what the fuck I’m doing. I’m learning,” he says. “Wait until I really know what I’m doing, we’re going all the way over the edge, dude. All the fucking way.”
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