::MARK
RUSSELL::
A Man of Comedic Candor and Musical
Mischief
Whenever Mark Russell is down in the
dumps, he opens the newspaper and immediately cheers up.
Practically everything he sees strikes him funny. "Some
days," he says, "the jokes jump off the pages
and write themselves."
TV Guide has called Mark Russell "the
funniest man on television." But, he disagrees: "The
funniest guys are always on C-SPAN."
Mark’s popular series began on PBS
in 1975. He works dangerously live, fresh and topical, performing
standup comedy even when accompanying himself on the piano.
THE MARK RUSSELL COMEDY SPECIALS have consistently been
among the top-rated shows on that network.
Mark Russell readily admits that when he
was a kid he dodged the draft. He did it by joining the
Marine Corps.
After serving his full hitch, he found
himself in the smoke-filled bars of Washington, D.C., singing
his funny songs. When he got a job in a Capitol Hill bar
where congressmen went to drink, the first thing he thought
was, "I’ve started at the bottom, but I’ve
managed to work my way down."
Around the time that the New Frontier was
invading Washington, Mark Russell invaded the Shoreham Hotel
for a risky two-week engagement--that lasted 20 years. He
left the Shoreham in 1980 after making The Marquee Lounge
the place where, every night, politicians would come to
hear Mark’s jokes about the things they had done that
day.
Today, Mark spends most of the year on
the road. His syndicated column is enjoyed all over America,
as are his CDs, tapes and videos.
People constantly marvel at Mark's wealth
of fresh material and frequently ask "Do you have any
writers?" Honest to a fault, he's always quick to admit
"Oh, yes, I have 535 of them--100 in the Senate and
435 in the House of Representatives!"
