Name: The Prudhomme Joke Collection on Letterman, Oct.-Nov. 1985
Uploaded: 2016-06-18T21:56:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Prudhomme Joke Collection on Letterman, Oct.-Nov. 1985' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Prudhomme Joke Collection on Letterman, Oct.-Nov. 1985' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-18. Transcript available.

something desperately wrong with my hair
we got a great show for you it's viewer mail night and just take a look at this
fistful of
viewer mail i have here ladies and gentlemen we better get right to it oh look
at that parcel of
mail uh huh vibrating with excitement vibrating yeah and a good batch tonight
paul it's a great
batch of viewer mail tonight and i'm personally excited about this thing i'm
going to dinner at
a new restaurant in town tonight that new prudome place what's it called that
the new prudome place
is that what it's called no no you're supposed to say paul prudome paul prudome
no no don prudome
how are you going with funny car veal going with ghoulet
take a look at this fistful of mail will you vibrating with excitement
funny car veal
hot fuel salmon baked in a puff pastry
what place is that huh that's don prudome's new restaurant
uh what should we even go on what's the point yeah we got great letters go
ahead letter number one
thank you
the money paul did you have a nice vacation pardon dave say paul did you have a
nice vacation vacation
yes i did a little vacation a little time off a little time off this is by the
way be our last
vacation through the 90s we got to go right through the 90s now that's right
because we feel you the home
viewer deserve it paul tonight i'd like to take you out to dinner i want to
take you to that new prudome
restaurant uh paul prudome no no the don prudome restaurant and i don't know
whether to have the
funny car veal
or the top fuel salmon in puff pastry
that's the joke that's the joke
don't you expect people to be telling that joke on buses now
well not after maybe now this is the second time i've told
yeah see and and i know it's one of your favorites don prudome don prudome yeah
funny car veal or
or the top fuel salmon
i wouldn't know either what to have if i was faced with that joke what i wouldn't
know what to have
either yeah it's all right paul no it's a good job so we'll do this joke every
night now great until
we start hearing it on buses i better come up with some music for it and you
better start riding
the bus tomorrow yes i do ride the bus actually do you really you haven't been
on a bus since you
were 12. every day i come to work on you do not no i don't how do you get here
you get here in a big
expensive limo don't you send yeah i pay for my own limo oh you pay for your
own limo all right okay
uh it's always a pleasure to welcome my first guest to this program boy i had
an awful flight from
california yesterday you didn't you know usually at the end of the flight they
bring around a hot towel
yeah for some reason they brought those stewardess brings around a hot kleenex
my first thank you so very very very much
i am especially thrilled to be here tonight and uh why is that paul because it's
going to be a fabulous
fabulous fabulous show every night on this program is a fabulous show exactly
but tonight we have an
exceptionally nice nice show now do you have a joke for us or anything no no
now see now see that's the
wrong way to approach this well here's how we'll do it boy paul i wish you
could have been with me last
night oh boy i had a had a great meal at a brand new restaurant went to that
new uh prudhomme restaurant
really uh paul prudhomme no no don prudhomme had the funny car veal yeah
that joke is going to take over soon it's going to start sweeping and the top
gas uh salmon yeah right
uh in puff pastry now see now but i think tonight we hurt the experiment
because you have to ease into
it casually well what'd you do last night for dinner dave that kind of thing
okay well we'll try it tomorrow
tomorrow night tomorrow night but i guarantee you before the end of the decade
we'll hear this joke
on the streets of new york oh look what we have here in addition to a fine show
we have a top 10 list
it's uh thursday night and tonight is the night we answer our voluminous viewer
mail let me remind
you these are actual letters from actual viewers let's get right to it shall we
and tonight since it is
kind of a special evening i'm going to ask our own director hal gertner to
enhance the viewer mail
presentation by calling out the number of the letters hal first david's uh gurney
i'm sorry gurney hal gurney
letter number one dear dave we've been watching the show since the mid-50s and
the question on our
minds is have your eyebrows been bleached and if so why
inquisitively yours jeff weaver and charles trotter
keep in mind it took two guys to write this letter this comes from los angeles
california you know paul uh
speaking of los angeles that reminds me i was in la last week you know and i
went to that new prudhomme
restaurant you did yeah oh it was great is that uh paul prudhomme no no no no
no don prudhomme i had
the nitro burning prawns unbelievable ah unbelievable that was good i enjoyed
that one
thank you very much hal i'm glad to be back at work i had a crazy weekend i was
looking through family
circle magazine i brought it too and it has for some reason a recipe for frank
sinatra's birthday cake
totally straight so i i spent the weekend gathering up the ingredients i'll let
you know how it comes up
having trouble getting marzipan though do you know where i can get a hold of
some marzipan david no
no i don't know anything about yeah i'll keep working on this ah how about you
though how was your
weekend i had a very nice weekend a lovely dinner a saturday night yeah is that
new prudhomme restaurant
oh you dined at the new prudhomme restaurant yeah you mean paul prudhomme no no
don prudhomme i had
the bulabase prawns whoa hey what i screwed that up i had the nitro burning bulabase
ah okay now that one doesn't count because i made the mistake there so that
doesn't count in our
little experiment i'm going to do this joke every night until i hear somebody
tell this on the street
so tonight's experiment doesn't it was a bust i i tainted the experiment i'm
terribly sorry about it
oh god are you gonna explain are you gonna explain who don prudhomme don prudhomme
is a world famous
legendary drag racer drag racing guy drag racing guy that may make a difference
as far as people
understand people know who don prudhomme is oh yeah snake everybody knows
remember the snake and the
mongoose tom mccune was the mongoose i only know mr norm's gary dyer from chicago
is that who's
the shy town hustler is that uh i don't know carl bonifetti screaming wild man
i don't know
uh see them shake hands with the devil as they roar through the gates of hell
those guys
yeah yeah okay so he's a race car driver he's a race car driver yeah so in
other words you if you
dine at his restaurant you have a dish that might be funny car veal yeah
exactly see
it's hot in here it's way too hot huh no it's not comfortable the sports guys
for some reason we
turn the studio over to the sports guys on the weekends for nfl uh 86 85 85
with our friend bob castas
and uh and uh uh it's too hot it's too hot the call has been put in we'll just
wait quietly until it
cools off uh okay we got to get to to this because we have a huge show
it's a magic night isn't it boys and girls oh brother boy i had i am still
stuffed i went out to
dinner last night yeah i went to that new prudhomme restaurant boy what a time
i had you went over the
prudhomme place yeah paul prudhomme yeah ah um
all right uh by the way tomorrow now for those of you just uh waking up or
coming to or tuning
us in for the first time this is a silly little joke we've been doing now for a
long long time
never gets much of a laugh so tomorrow night we're going to explain it in great
detail the uh paul
here's how it works paul prudhomme no don prudhomme i had the nitro burning
prawns see that's how it
works we'll do it tomorrow clear the whole thing up that wasn't the signal was
that the signal
oh it did look like it forgive me i'm sorry i don't mean to confuse you guys be
very careful
uh tonight uh before we get on with the show we're going to take a look at some
things that are on other
other channels
the sky cam ladies and gentlemen it's the miracle of sky cam something by the
way they don't have
over at abc and i would bet you that this brandon stoddard if he's got any
sense at all
he'll uh sleep in now uh you know oh paul by the way i had a great night last
night i went to that
new uh prudhomme restaurant in town you did yeah paul prudhomme no no no don prudhomme
i had the funny
car veal and the nitro burning prawns and puff pastry okay see uh for the last
two weeks ladies and
gentlemen we've been doing this joke every night and and i said i would
continue to do it until i heard
someone on the street come up to me and repeat the joke well to make a long
story short if it's
possible at this point it hasn't happened so i think what we need to do is
perhaps explain the joke
to you in depth tonight we're going to explain the joke step by step as well as
the tried and true
comedy principles behind it now the first principle involved here is contrast
this joke involves two
men drag racer don prudhomme the winningest nitro methane driver in funny car
history
and cajun chef paul prudhomme who coincidentally is a dead ringer for dom deluise
now first
a little bit of background on the name prudhomme take a look at this chart
right here we found that
prudhomme is derived from the old french prude meaning proud or gallant and
home man meaning proud man
now the cajuns are descendants of french settlers from the acadia region of canada
in the 18th century
british troops drove them southward where many eventually settled in louisiana
paul prudhomme's
birthplace let's now put paul in louisiana others joined the westward expansion
to the 19th century of
california where don don prudhomme right here was actually born and dom deluise
coincidentally or
incidentally was born in okay there's okay now we have two men both of whom are
44 years of age both
certainly proud men but in all other respects totally different here's some
footage now of paul prudhomme
in action there he is that's paul on the left okay now here we have some
footage of don prudhomme
in action there he is in his car the quarter mile okay both men of course have
nicknames don prudhomme
is known worldwide as the snake paul prudhomme is called the guru of gumbo or
less frequently and
usually by accident mr deluise now both these gentlemen of course wear hats paul
prudhomme
wears the traditional chef's hat look at this handy visual aid
don prudhomme wears this it's the racing helmet bearing the snake emblem there's
don's racing helmet
right there uh both of these gentlemen are the subjects of very successful
books here's paul prudhomme's
book the louisiana kitchen and here's don prudhomme's six seconds to glory
now obviously both of these gentlemen drive cars don drives a pontiac firebird
trans am
right here this has a 480 cubic inch 2500 horsepower engine which burns up the
quarter mile
at a world record 5.6 seconds at a top end speed of 265 miles per hour that's
right paul prudhomme on
the other hand drives a 1968 dodge dart
it has power windows and a top speed a law-abiding 55 miles per hour
so in short don the snake prudhomme is the last man you would expect to run a
restaurant which brings
us to our next comedy principal the old switcheroo now you see if you went to
paul prudhomme's
restaurant you would expect a delicious cajun dish such as the award-winning
crayfish etafé or crawfish
depending on what part of the country you're from or what time you got to
rehearsal now
now if don prudhomme ran a restaurant see he doesn't know anything about gourmet
cooking he's
probably going to serve something like this oh wait a minute more visual aids
good lord
okay back up just a second here's the etafé okay now if don prudhomme ran a
restaurant you'd probably
get something like this veal in the shape of a funny car
oh shut up we're all enjoying it okay there you have it all the background
information you could
possibly need to enjoy this fine joke okay here we go oh paul paul you know
last night i had a
wonderful time i ate dinner at that new prudhomme restaurant really paul paul
prudhomme no no not
paul prudhomme don prudhomme i had the funny car veal and the nitro burning
prawns and puff pastry
ah yeah i think we're finished paul you can take the expression off your face
yeah play some music now
we got a great show here let me tell you who's on martin short is here you've
already met
stand guest with the band and we'll have a uh food sculpturing demo so please
come on back as soon as
you possibly can

The Prudhomme Joke Collection on Letterman, Oct.-Nov. 1985

something desperately wrong with my hair
we got a great show for you it's viewer mail night and just take a look at this
fistful of
viewer mail i have here ladies and gentlemen we better get right to it oh look
at that parcel of
mail uh huh vibrating with excitement vibrating yeah and a good batch tonight
paul it's a great
batch of viewer mail tonight and i'm personally excited about this thing i'm
going to dinner at
a new restaurant in town tonight that new prudome place what's it called that
the new prudome place
is that what it's called no no you're supposed to say paul prudome paul prudome
no no don prudome
how are you going with funny car veal going with ghoulet
take a look at this fistful of mail will you vibrating with excitement
funny car veal
hot fuel salmon baked in a puff pastry
what place is that huh that's don prudome's new restaurant
uh what should we even go on what's the point yeah we got great letters go
ahead letter number one
thank you
the money paul did you have a nice vacation pardon dave say paul did you have a
nice vacation vacation
yes i did a little vacation a little time off a little time off this is by the
way be our last
vacation through the 90s we got to go right through the 90s now that's right
because we feel you the home
viewer deserve it paul tonight i'd like to take you out to dinner i want to
take you to that new prudome
restaurant uh paul prudome no no the don prudome restaurant and i don't know
whether to have the
funny car veal
or the top fuel salmon in puff pastry
that's the joke that's the joke
don't you expect people to be telling that joke on buses now
well not after maybe now this is the second time i've told
yeah see and and i know it's one of your favorites don prudome don prudome yeah
funny car veal or
or the top fuel salmon
i wouldn't know either what to have if i was faced with that joke what i wouldn't
know what to have
either yeah it's all right paul no it's a good job so we'll do this joke every
night now great until
we start hearing it on buses i better come up with some music for it and you
better start riding
the bus tomorrow yes i do ride the bus actually do you really you haven't been
on a bus since you
were 12. every day i come to work on you do not no i don't how do you get here
you get here in a big
expensive limo don't you send yeah i pay for my own limo oh you pay for your
own limo all right okay
uh it's always a pleasure to welcome my first guest to this program boy i had
an awful flight from
california yesterday you didn't you know usually at the end of the flight they
bring around a hot towel
yeah for some reason they brought those stewardess brings around a hot kleenex
my first thank you so very very very much
i am especially thrilled to be here tonight and uh why is that paul because it's
going to be a fabulous
fabulous fabulous show every night on this program is a fabulous show exactly
but tonight we have an
exceptionally nice nice show now do you have a joke for us or anything no no
now see now see that's the
wrong way to approach this well here's how we'll do it boy paul i wish you
could have been with me last
night oh boy i had a had a great meal at a brand new restaurant went to that
new uh prudhomme restaurant
really uh paul prudhomme no no don prudhomme had the funny car veal yeah
that joke is going to take over soon it's going to start sweeping and the top
gas uh salmon yeah right
uh in puff pastry now see now but i think tonight we hurt the experiment
because you have to ease into
it casually well what'd you do last night for dinner dave that kind of thing
okay well we'll try it tomorrow
tomorrow night tomorrow night but i guarantee you before the end of the decade
we'll hear this joke
on the streets of new york oh look what we have here in addition to a fine show
we have a top 10 list
it's uh thursday night and tonight is the night we answer our voluminous viewer
mail let me remind
you these are actual letters from actual viewers let's get right to it shall we
and tonight since it is
kind of a special evening i'm going to ask our own director hal gertner to
enhance the viewer mail
presentation by calling out the number of the letters hal first david's uh gurney
i'm sorry gurney hal gurney
letter number one dear dave we've been watching the show since the mid-50s and
the question on our
minds is have your eyebrows been bleached and if so why
inquisitively yours jeff weaver and charles trotter
keep in mind it took two guys to write this letter this comes from los angeles
california you know paul uh
speaking of los angeles that reminds me i was in la last week you know and i
went to that new prudhomme
restaurant you did yeah oh it was great is that uh paul prudhomme no no no no
no don prudhomme i had
the nitro burning prawns unbelievable ah unbelievable that was good i enjoyed
that one
thank you very much hal i'm glad to be back at work i had a crazy weekend i was
looking through family
circle magazine i brought it too and it has for some reason a recipe for frank
sinatra's birthday cake
totally straight so i i spent the weekend gathering up the ingredients i'll let
you know how it comes up
having trouble getting marzipan though do you know where i can get a hold of
some marzipan david no
no i don't know anything about yeah i'll keep working on this ah how about you
though how was your
weekend i had a very nice weekend a lovely dinner a saturday night yeah is that
new prudhomme restaurant
oh you dined at the new prudhomme restaurant yeah you mean paul prudhomme no no
don prudhomme i had
the bulabase prawns whoa hey what i screwed that up i had the nitro burning bulabase
ah okay now that one doesn't count because i made the mistake there so that
doesn't count in our
little experiment i'm going to do this joke every night until i hear somebody
tell this on the street
so tonight's experiment doesn't it was a bust i i tainted the experiment i'm
terribly sorry about it
oh god are you gonna explain are you gonna explain who don prudhomme don prudhomme
is a world famous
legendary drag racer drag racing guy drag racing guy that may make a difference
as far as people
understand people know who don prudhomme is oh yeah snake everybody knows
remember the snake and the
mongoose tom mccune was the mongoose i only know mr norm's gary dyer from chicago
is that who's
the shy town hustler is that uh i don't know carl bonifetti screaming wild man
i don't know
uh see them shake hands with the devil as they roar through the gates of hell
those guys
yeah yeah okay so he's a race car driver he's a race car driver yeah so in
other words you if you
dine at his restaurant you have a dish that might be funny car veal yeah
exactly see
it's hot in here it's way too hot huh no it's not comfortable the sports guys
for some reason we
turn the studio over to the sports guys on the weekends for nfl uh 86 85 85
with our friend bob castas
and uh and uh uh it's too hot it's too hot the call has been put in we'll just
wait quietly until it
cools off uh okay we got to get to to this because we have a huge show
it's a magic night isn't it boys and girls oh brother boy i had i am still
stuffed i went out to
dinner last night yeah i went to that new prudhomme restaurant boy what a time
i had you went over the
prudhomme place yeah paul prudhomme yeah ah um
all right uh by the way tomorrow now for those of you just uh waking up or
coming to or tuning
us in for the first time this is a silly little joke we've been doing now for a
long long time
never gets much of a laugh so tomorrow night we're going to explain it in great
detail the uh paul
here's how it works paul prudhomme no don prudhomme i had the nitro burning
prawns see that's how it
works we'll do it tomorrow clear the whole thing up that wasn't the signal was
that the signal
oh it did look like it forgive me i'm sorry i don't mean to confuse you guys be
very careful
uh tonight uh before we get on with the show we're going to take a look at some
things that are on other
other channels
the sky cam ladies and gentlemen it's the miracle of sky cam something by the
way they don't have
over at abc and i would bet you that this brandon stoddard if he's got any
sense at all
he'll uh sleep in now uh you know oh paul by the way i had a great night last
night i went to that
new uh prudhomme restaurant in town you did yeah paul prudhomme no no no don prudhomme
i had the funny
car veal and the nitro burning prawns and puff pastry okay see uh for the last
two weeks ladies and
gentlemen we've been doing this joke every night and and i said i would
continue to do it until i heard
someone on the street come up to me and repeat the joke well to make a long
story short if it's
possible at this point it hasn't happened so i think what we need to do is
perhaps explain the joke
to you in depth tonight we're going to explain the joke step by step as well as
the tried and true
comedy principles behind it now the first principle involved here is contrast
this joke involves two
men drag racer don prudhomme the winningest nitro methane driver in funny car
history
and cajun chef paul prudhomme who coincidentally is a dead ringer for dom deluise
now first
a little bit of background on the name prudhomme take a look at this chart
right here we found that
prudhomme is derived from the old french prude meaning proud or gallant and
home man meaning proud man
now the cajuns are descendants of french settlers from the acadia region of canada
in the 18th century
british troops drove them southward where many eventually settled in louisiana
paul prudhomme's
birthplace let's now put paul in louisiana others joined the westward expansion
to the 19th century of
california where don don prudhomme right here was actually born and dom deluise
coincidentally or
incidentally was born in okay there's okay now we have two men both of whom are
44 years of age both
certainly proud men but in all other respects totally different here's some
footage now of paul prudhomme
in action there he is that's paul on the left okay now here we have some
footage of don prudhomme
in action there he is in his car the quarter mile okay both men of course have
nicknames don prudhomme
is known worldwide as the snake paul prudhomme is called the guru of gumbo or
less frequently and
usually by accident mr deluise now both these gentlemen of course wear hats paul
prudhomme
wears the traditional chef's hat look at this handy visual aid
don prudhomme wears this it's the racing helmet bearing the snake emblem there's
don's racing helmet
right there uh both of these gentlemen are the subjects of very successful
books here's paul prudhomme's
book the louisiana kitchen and here's don prudhomme's six seconds to glory
now obviously both of these gentlemen drive cars don drives a pontiac firebird
trans am
right here this has a 480 cubic inch 2500 horsepower engine which burns up the
quarter mile
at a world record 5.6 seconds at a top end speed of 265 miles per hour that's
right paul prudhomme on
the other hand drives a 1968 dodge dart
it has power windows and a top speed a law-abiding 55 miles per hour
so in short don the snake prudhomme is the last man you would expect to run a
restaurant which brings
us to our next comedy principal the old switcheroo now you see if you went to
paul prudhomme's
restaurant you would expect a delicious cajun dish such as the award-winning
crayfish etafé or crawfish
depending on what part of the country you're from or what time you got to
rehearsal now
now if don prudhomme ran a restaurant see he doesn't know anything about gourmet
cooking he's
probably going to serve something like this oh wait a minute more visual aids
good lord
okay back up just a second here's the etafé okay now if don prudhomme ran a
restaurant you'd probably
get something like this veal in the shape of a funny car
oh shut up we're all enjoying it okay there you have it all the background
information you could
possibly need to enjoy this fine joke okay here