Comedian Chad Daniels Inspired Classic Mitch Hedberg Joke

Chad Daniels, whose comedy special Empty Nester recently dropped on Netflix, names some usual suspects among his influences, including Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. But in an interview this week with radio station i95 in Brookfield, Connecticut, Daniels raved about another favorite, the late Mitch Hedberg.

“I think one-liners are funny,” Daniels said. “One of the funniest people that has ever lived is Mitch Hedberg. He was just one brilliant one-liner after another. But I think to really deep-dive a story, you feel that human connection. That’s pretty cool.”

The i95 disc jockeys were right there with Daniels, citing Hedberg’s pancake joke as a personal favorite. 

Daniels then revealed that he used to open for Hedberg on the road. In fact, Daniels is the unnamed friend in this Hedberg classic about mashed potatoes:

Hedberg’s joke: “My friend came up to me. He said, ‘Hey, you know what I like? Mashed potatoes!’ It’s like, Dude! You got to give me time to guess.”

“That was actually about me,” Daniels revealed. “We were out eating, and I said that and he grabbed his notebook and wrote something down. I watched his set that night, and he said that and I have never been more thrilled in my stand-up career than to have Hedberg have a joke about me. It was crazy.”

In the early days of Daniels’ career, he actually put “inspiring Hedberg’s mashed potatoes joke” on his resume. He told comic Dan Soder “I used to use that as a credit because I didn’t have any credits.”

Soder would have done the same thing. “That’s a bad-ass credit.” After all, in his view, “you could argue Mitch Hedberg is the greatest joke writer of all time. You got (Rodney) Dangerfield, you’ve got Norm (Macdonald), you’ve got Mitch Hedberg.” 

Daniels got the gig opening for Hedberg very early in his career when the two comics met in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Daniels said on the Books on Pod podcast. Even though the two comics were very different, Daniels says he learned some important lessons from Hedberg. 

“I guess it wasn’t about stand-up necessarily,” he explained. “It was about how to treat the staff, how to treat the people who are opening for you, how to treat the bookers. Just everybody. I don’t know anyone who had a bad thing to say about him so I try to live a little bit like that.”