Laugh Track: John Pinette

Not very many comedians are able to parlay their gimmick into a full blown career. John Pinette’s gimmick is that almost all of his comedy revolves around food. All types of food: Indian, Chinese and Italian. If you can eat it, John Pinette has made a joke about it.

He didn’t just start making jokes and immediately become famous. In fact, Pinette was doing stand up for over 10 years before he recorded his first comedy album.

His career began back in the mid-1980s as a newcomer to the Boston Comedy scene. In the late 1980s Pinette toured as the opening act for Frank Sinatra, which lead to appearances on The Tonight Show.

He didn’t really hit it big until 1993, when he landed a regular role on the already popular Fox sitcom Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, which was in it’s final season. After a successful 3 year run, the series went off the air and Pinette moved back to doing stand up comedy.

After working the road of a number of years, Pinette released Show Me the Buffet in 1998. The record, which consists almost entirely of Pinette making jokes about his weight and his obsession with food, was a hit. He also landed a major role in the series finale of Seinfeld as the carjacking victim that Jerry and co. are arrested for failing to help.

The next year he won the Funniest Male Stand Up award at the American Comedy Awards. After recording the album, he continued to tour until he joined the Broadway cast of Hairspray in 2004. Pinette stayed in the role for a year before leaving to return to stand up. He a DVD of his stand up, I Say Nay Nay, in 2005. He followed it up immediately with I’m Starvin’! and Making Lite of Myself. All three of these DVDs featured Pinette’s signature humor, but he branched out into telling stories of his travels (all of somehow involved food) and poking fun at himself for starring in a Broadway show.

Pinette kept on going, performing at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in 2008 and then continuing to tour around Europe and the United States. As a culmination of his tour, he recorded a Comedy Central Special titled Still Hungry, which premiered on the channel in July of this year.