Lachlan Patterson is still standing strong

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      When Last Comic Standing runner-up Lachlan Patterson gave standup comedy a shot at the age of 19, he thought it was one and done. People had been telling him he was funny, so he got onto an amateur night down at the old Yuk Yuk’s at the Plaza of Nations, invited his coworkers from Home Hardware, and slayed. Mission accomplished.

      Or so he believed.

      “I thought I had just conquered standup comedy,” Patterson says on the phone from his garage in Venice, California. “And I stopped doing it. I went back to my job. I noticed over the next couple of years that nobody was mentioning that show and how funny it was. I woke up to the fact that ‘Hey, you weren’t funny. They were laughing at you.’ It took a while for my ego to let that soak in.”

      A few years later, he found himself at Langara College, “taking all sorts of courses to do something stupid that I didn’t want to do,” when he noticed a night course for comedy, which he promptly signed up for. “I needed to prove that I was right and they were all wrong,” he says.

      Turns out he was right. The West Vancouver Secondary School grad honed his craft around the city before making the big move to Los Angeles in 2007. He got his visa and on his first day down south he shot an episode of Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham. He hasn’t looked back since. He’s appeared on Tosh.0, Legit, and The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. On January 5, he’s doing The Late Late Show with interim host Drew Carey.

      But it was NBC’s Last Comic Standing earlier this year that gave him his biggest boost, with Patterson getting all the way to the final against Rod Man. The two comics performed to a draw before judges Russell Peters, Roseanne Barr, and Keenen Ivory Wayans and a live audience.

      “Our final set, I came out and just kinda had this feeling of ‘Let’s just give it everything,’” he says. “And then when it was a tie, and we had to go back into our dressing rooms and come out again to do another set, I wasn’t really prepared for that, so I had to kind of put a set together in my dressing room. I think if I had more time, I would have been able to give Rod a run for his money.”

      He may not have won, but he’s now playing to crowds that know him—something every working comic dreams of. The day after the show ended, Patterson performed in Nashville. “I walked out to a standing ovation,” he says. “People brought me flowers. There was definitely a huge difference.”

      As disappointing as it was to get so close, Patterson says he works better as the dark horse anyway.

      “I’ve always been better at struggling,” he says. “It pushes me. To be honest, I’m glad I didn’t win that contest. I think I still might have a little underdog status and I work better from there. You know, some racers work better from the back. They don’t like the lead. I think I’d be one of those.”

      After a 55-city theatre tour with the top five finishers from Last Comic Standing, Patterson has gone out with the old and in with the new. He’s written 45 new minutes of material and says he’s adding to it every day.

      “I’ve never enjoyed telling jokes that I knew the audience already knew. It doesn’t feel as rewarding as telling something that you know they’ve never heard,” he says. “I really want to be a great comedian. I think if your intentions are pure in comedy and you just want to be great, then who cares if it takes you longer?”

      Lachlan Patterson performs at the Vancouver Playhouse on Saturday (December 27).

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Josh D

      Dec 23, 2014 at 7:05pm

      I saw Lachlan in Mesa on his first night of the LCS tour. He was much better than Rod Man and did not tell ANY repeat jokes from the show unlike all the other comics.

      He really should have won.