Vancouver comedy audiences have a reputation—somewhat deserved—of being a tad on the PC side. It will be fascinating to watch how they react to the Pitbull of Comedy on his first visit to a standup stage here.

Bobby Slayton has been skewering races, genders, and sexual orientations for nearly 40 years. New York–born, the 59-year-old entertainer got his start in mid-’70s San Francisco. While he’s never played Vancouver before, he feels like this is where he was finally in show business.

He filmed the last episode of a very short-lived NBC series called Nightmare Cafe here in the early ’90s. The series was directed by Wes Craven and starred Robert Englund.

“They put me up in some beautiful hotel downtown for 10 days,” he says over the phone from suburban Pittsburgh, where the L.A. resident is on a tour stop. “I remember running into Dick Van Dyke in the elevator and Jimmy Page at the bar. All I remember was it being great and feeling like I was really in show biz now.”

He’s had other parts over the years, too, including one in the Amy Heckerling movie Loser. But all the roles are more or less the same.

“Everything I do when I act, I just play me,” he says. “Every part I get is a fast-talking New York Jew. People are like, ‘Hey, you were really great as Joey Bishop in The Rat Pack.’ Joey Bishop was a fast-talking Jew from the East Coast. It wasn’t a big stretch for me.”

But standup is his bread and butter. For a guy who got his start in San Francisco, it’s odd that he would go the attack route. The genesis was a backlash to all-gay and all-black comedy nights in the area at the time. “The black comics would go, ‘You ever notice white people do this?’ And gay comics would go, ‘You know what I hate about straight people?’ And it’s fine. I have no problem with that. But if they’re going to make fun of me, I can make fun of them. I remember people giving me shit, but at the same time I was getting more of a following. It wasn’t anything mean-spirited. You know, my gay material has always been pro-gay.”

He’s not a fan of the Pitbull moniker, saying, “I don’t know why I’ve never let go of it.” The name has followed him around since a San Francisco DJ gave it to him when Slayton made a McDonald’s joke that cost the station a $50,000 ad campaign. But it fits. People know what they’re getting—although in clubs, that’s not always the case. Some people just randomly show up for a night of comedy and are in for a rude awakening.

“You can’t please everybody,” he says. “I know people that don’t like the show Seinfeld and I know people that don’t like the Rolling Stones and would rather see Journey, people that think Roger Moore is a better James Bond than Sean Connery. You can’t please all these fucking assholes. But when you get them in the audience, sometimes it actually makes for a bit more of a colourful show.”

Confrontations with those easily offended are rare because they often leave well before the show is over. But for every “You’re horrible, you’re not funny, you’re a horrible person,” he says, “I get people who are pissed at me because I wasn’t dirty enough. My act’s not really dirty. ‘You weren’t offensive at all! You never picked on me.’

“You gotta take both with a grain of salt,” he says. “It’s damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

Starting out, Slayton would open for people like Michael Keaton, Jerry Seinfeld, and Elayne Boosler. But he really cut his teeth by opening for bands.

“You didn’t get paid a lot of money, but it was a challenge,” he says. “The Tubes had me open up for them a lot. The shows generally went okay. Ray Charles was fine and Warren Zevon was fine, but when you start opening for some punk bands, it wasn’t a matter of doing well; it was a matter of staying on the mechanical bull long enough to collect your $25 paycheque.”

If he can deal with punk fans, he can deal with the PC police.

“The thing with the PC people, they don’t want to laugh, but they do,” he says. “Like, ‘You’re such an asshole, but you’re so funny.’ That’s fine. We’re not going out on a date. If you’re laughing, that’s what you came there for and that’s what I did. You want nice, go talk to somebody about unicorns and rainbows and panda bears. But if you want funny, that’s all I can deliver.”

Bobby Slayton headlines the Comedy MIX from Thursday to Saturday (April 16 to 18).