Stars Still Shine
By Sibyl Farson

If true comedy is seeing two sides of a situation, then Carol Hughes, 67, was blessed with eyes in the back of her head. She never realized she could share this gift with others until age 40. That is when she started using her comedic muscles to reach new heights as a stand-up comic.

Q: When did this appreciation of humor begin? I asked during our recent interview.

A: Recalling her father’s storytelling and practical jokes, she said, “He was so awfully funny, we’d just howl with laughter. And growing up I guess I inherited a way of storytelling… (with Irish brogue) ‘it being in the Irish genes’.” Later, as Carol moved on to teaching adult education and taking writing classes, she eventually sold a piece on collectible tobaccoc containers to Antiques Magazine. She was first in her class to become a free lancer. She attended antique shows, talked to dealers, took her own pictures. She even met her husband in a comedy class.

Q: How has your husband viewed your success, such as sharing with audiences the comparison of husbands with brassieres?

A: “Sometimes you just want to be rid of them and go free! But you can’t because you need the support”—this line is an audience howler, and it led to establishing a line of “According to Carol” greeting cards that sold in 100,000 stores and gift shops. While she seriously describes her husband as supportive, she admits he initially thought comedy would be like the afghan she started. “I’d work on it for a while, lose interest, and stick it up in the attic with the exercise bike.”

Long before Carol ventured out on her own, she heard Phyllis Diller saying on the Merv Griffin Show that she started doing comedy at age 39. Carol felt she could do that too...Although, she didn’t think about it again until she was 40 and met the comedienne Candy Carrat at Weight Watchers. “I asked her how to get started, and she told me to write five funny minutes and go to the Improv.”

Which Carol did and remembers the MC saying: “Go for it, Mama, you’re funny.” Two things got her involved for good …and good it certainly became for Carol.

She received a huge ovation and encouragement by Merv Griffin, who cast her as “Mrs. Hughes,” where she soon became the comedy star of his revues in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Merv described her as his new favorite funny star.

“When I put together what I thought was a great 8-minute act on the internet,” she told me, “I learned there were a couple million people already on the internet. But exposure helped, being in the right place at the right time and acquiring a new manager and agent.”

Money was never an issue, she said, “but learning how to entertain was… getting people to come back and have fun, nine years ago working on cruise ships, now doing stand-up comedy at Pasadena Ice House Club.” She also mentioned her surprise upon receiving a request for 2 of her CDs all the way from the public library in Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Born in Miami, Florida, she now resides in Southern California. As for family she feels fortunate to have “two beautiful daughters and a son she describes in her act as “a surfer dude.” Her older daughter is a Senior Unit Leader for Creative Memories, her younger one, a cosmetologist, and her son, a drummer in the rock band “Pus.” She also has three adored grandchildren about whom she claims: “I just don’t have any jokes about them ‘cause they live with us and it’s not funny.” However, when she does talk about it, you realize she’s actually being funny about not being funny.

Looking back on her generous endowment of humor, she conceded, “Dad would have raised me as a singer, but I was tone deaf. No way I could have gone that road.”

So how fortunate for us that she chose the road to comedy as Mrs. Hughes, America’s Funniest Grandma.

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