Columbus comic Jeff Bodart will headline a show at 7 p.m. Friday at The Pixy Theatre in Edinburgh.
Photo provided
Columbus comic Jeff Bodart has been on maybe 10 sea cruises since January, and most recently returned from Barbados as an onboard entertainer for Royal Caribbean. So he laughed when asked if he is as tanned as the perennially brown George Hamilton, the actor especially known for soaking up the rays.
“No,” Bodart said. “I am still as pale as an Irishman.”
The 44-year-old standup performer gets a day in the local sun of sorts with longtime pal Robert Hay-Smith, also of Columbus, when the two appear at 7 p.m. Friday at The Pixy Theatre, 111 S. Walnut St. in Edinburgh. Dave Cross will open the show. The duo have appeared at a range of other clubs recently, including before nearly 300 people recently in Lexington, Kentucky.
“I thin it works well with us together because we’re so different,” said Hay-Smith, who learned vaudeville-style comedy while touring with British pop group The New Vaudeville Band in the 1960s.
“I’m a little more fast paced,” said Bodart, who has built a national following from appearances and also writing for eight years for the Indianapolis-based and nationally syndicated “Bob and Tom Show.” “And his set-ups are definitely a little longer with a big payoff at the end.
“I, in turn, like to go for laughs even amid the setup.”
Bodart left a job at The Republic newspaper as a graphic artist to pursue comedy full-time 21 years ago. He said ship guests who live all over the country have told him they have heard him on “Bob and Tom.”
Hay-Smith, who operated his venue creation called The Harlequin Theatre at FairOaks Mall for seven years, got back into performing only in the past several years.
“The standup just sort of crept in,” Hay-Smith said. And now seems like a perfect time to book new shows, he figures.
“I think that right now, people are still anxious to be able to get out again and have good laugh,” he said.
Bodart mentioned that some of his newest material focuses, of course, on the cruise ship crowd — a group that he says can easily laugh at themselves and their excess.
“Man,” Bodart told a recent crowd. “You people aren’t going to know what to do with yourselves when you get home and you can’t automatically get your 17 square meals a day.”
