When addressing the great Judah Friedlander, star of stage and screens both big and small, don’t forget the honorific he says was awarded him by the venerated World Championship Committee.

“It’s kind of like Anthony Hopkins, the actor,” says Friedlander on the phone from New York City. “He’s been knighted by the Queen, so now you call him Sir Anthony Hopkins just out of respect. Same with World Champion. It’s a title I’ve earned, but that doesn’t mean I have to stick with talking about athletics. I can talk about whatever.”

Despite his purported sporting accomplishments, you may know him as Frank Rossitano, the bespectacled and behatted writer on 30 Rock, which ran for seven seasons on NBC. But even though they look similar, don’t confuse Rossitano with Friedlander’s Champ standup persona.

Friedlander has been performing standup since 1989. He’s always done lots of crowd work, and it eventually morphed into his role as the boastful World Champion. Champion of what, you ask? You name it, and he’s the greatest at it. Including, apparently, comedy.

“It’s character, but I can guarantee you I do more jokes in my set than 95 percent of the comics out there,” he says. “It’s joke after joke after joke. There’s laughs every five seconds. It’s not just swagger or persona. If you’re blind and you come to my show, you’ll be laughing the entire time.”

It’s a goof on the “America is number one!” hysteria that permeates his country—not that he hits you over the head with it or anything. While subtlety isn’t a natural trait of the Champ, he’s a craftsman on-stage and prefers that you connect the dots.

“I’m not big on preachy,” he says. “If I’m sending out any message, I like people to find it; I don’t like to shove it down their throats. So my act’s changed over the years, but it’s certainly a comment on just how self-involved many people are.

“America definitely has this ‘number one’ complex. And I joke about that. That’s because people do think that—they’re raised to think America’s the greatest country in the world. And I’m not ripping on America by saying this, but some of that comes from arrogance and some of it comes from brainwashing, propaganda, and ignorance.”

Friedlander has played Montreal, Edmonton, and Toronto, but this will be his first time performing in Vancouver. He was scheduled to play the Comedy MIX last April but had to cancel. Why did it take him so long to grace us with his presence?

“I want to test out all the inferior cities before I come to the best city in Canada,” he sweet-talks.

Turns out he’s been here once before, when he was either 8 or 10. (He claims not to be good at math.) A family trip? “No, I just went by myself,” he deadpans. Don’t ask him what he did, though, because “I was doing a lot of drugs back then, so I don’t remember much.”

While every Johnny-come-lately has a few CDs to his name, this 25-year standup vet still hasn’t released a CD or DVD. He promises one is coming this year.

“I should have had about seven albums out already, as well as several DVDs,” he says. “It’s just my own lack of organization.” He says he records each set he does, but maybe that’s his OCD acting up. “I never delete them, I never label them, and I almost never listen to them.”

Friedlander looks like he might be a darling of the alternative set, but he doesn’t cater to any one group.

“I’m a comedian,” he says. “I do mostly mainstream rooms and I do alternative rooms too, and I don’t change my act at all. I also do black rooms, I’ll do Latino rooms, I’ve done gay rooms, I’ve done Asian nights, and I’ll always just do my thing. I try to make my act so it works for everybody. It’s not exclusionary. I’m not in any clique. I’m like a freak. I’m an outsider. I’m a comedian for the people.”

Spoken like a true champion.

Judah Friedlander helps kick off the NorthWest Comedy Fest at the Comedy MIX next Thursday to Saturday (February 13 to 15).