Judah Friedlander, known to billions of viewers as Frank Rossitano from 30 Rock, as well as the World Champion of sex, athletics and karate, is heading to Britain next month for three nights of stand-up in London (tickets are available here). We got in touch to find out what precautions people should take before going to see him, and also asked him about ping-pong for some reason.
Hi Judah! Firstly, congratulations on your many ongoing victories.
Thank you. Thanks for showing respect. You’re a good citizen of the Earth. When you’re the World Champion, a lot of people are ill-informed about karate and sports, and they’re just jealous.
So, you’re the World Champion…
Yeah. The World Championships are basically karate deathmatches for charity, because I like to give back. Even when I win a karate deathmatch, the proceeds go to charity. It’s important to help out.
You’re very good at ping-pong. Do you prefer calling it ping-pong or table tennis?
Britain claim they invented ping pong, so it’ll be nice to come to the motherland. I prefer the name ping-pong to table tennis. It’s called ping-pong in many different countries. One of the reasons it sometimes has to be called table tennis is that there’s a company, Parker Brothers or another game company, that owns the copyright to the name ping-pong, which is corporate corruption, which is not cool, so I call it ping-pong. The other thing is, ping-pong is its own sport. It doesn’t have the same rules as tennis. You don’t do overhand serves, there’s no volleying at the net, and to my knowledge there are no grass-court ping-pong tables. It’s a different game. Table tennis makes it sound like a subsidiary of tennis. But it’s a different game with different rules. So that’s why I call it ping-pong. I’ve got some videos coming out soon where I’m playing against a ninja, you should watch those.
You’re playing the Soho Theatre in London on the 4th, 5th and 6th of June. How should people prepare to come and see you?
They should probably work out before the show, and make sure they’re in really good health and shape. All my shows come with free Laughter Insurance – most comics, when you go to their show, they make you sign a form to pay for Laughter Insurance, in case you don’t think the show is funny enough, which I think is unfair on the audience. So everyone gets free Laughter Insurance, and you have to sign a Laughter Waiver, just in case. A few weeks ago in New Jersey I did a show and a woman had had surgery a month before, and her stitches started popping because she was laughing so hard, so paramedics had to turn up during the show. So you might want to get medical clearance. That’s all.
