Gilbert Gottfried’s Five Best Dirty Jokes, According to His Widow
Gilbert Gottfried began doing stand-up at 15 and continued performing until he died in 2022 at the age of 67. Throughout all that time, though, he never released a comedy album of original material. As his widow, Dara Gottfried, explains to me, “I nagged Gilbert for 20 years to put out an album of his original material, but Gilbert never updated his act — he was still doing jokes about Molly Ringwald, O.J. Simpson and Gary Coleman. He was afraid that, if people could hear an album of his material, they wouldn’t go see his live shows.”
But after Gilbert’s untimely passing from myotonic dystrophy type 2, a rare disease that causes muscle weakness and dysfunction, Dara decided the moment was finally right for that album. With the help of Gottfried’s friends Penn Jillette, Jeff Ross and several others, she released Still Screaming earlier this month, the profits from which go to the Gilbert Gottfried Myotonic Dystrophy Type 2 Research Fund.
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Along with Gottfried’s original material, Still Screaming features a few handpicked dirty jokes that Gottfried loved to tell — no one, of course, could tell a dirty joke like him — and so, I asked Dara to choose her five favorites from the Gilbert canon.
The Old Jew and the Genie
“The genie joke is really clever,” says Dara about the joke where an old Jewish man finds a lamp and makes a wish. “It also happens to be really timely with what’s going on in the world right now.”
‘An Old Man Goes to the Doctor’
As Gottfried would tell it, “An old man goes to the doctor for an examination. The doctor examines him. He goes to the old man, ‘I’ve got terrible news. You’ve got cancer, and you’ve got Alzheimer’s.’ The old man goes, ‘Thank God I don’t have cancer.’”
“This joke is a favorite of a lot of people,” Dara tells me. “It’s literally a dad joke — my father likes it.”
‘How Do You Know You’re at a Gay Picnic?’
“Most people can’t tell the jokes that Gilbert was allowed to get away with, and this particular joke was so wrong and so funny. He told it at George Takei’s roast: ‘How do you know you’re at a gay picnic? All the hot dogs taste like shit,’” recalls Dara. “I also like it because George loved Gilbert. He was a guest on our podcast. When the kids were born, he sent cards. George is the sweetest, sweetest man.”
His Roast of Roseanne Barr
“Gilbert calling Roseanne ‘Rozilla’ at her roast and saying all these horrible things about her, people loved it and talked about it and millions of people watched it online. It’s just a classic bit from a Comedy Central Roast,” says Dara.
The Aristocrats
Could anything else really be number one?
As Dara explains, up until 2001, Gottfried never told dirty jokes in public, but thanks to one telling of “The Aristocrats,” he became known as a dirty comic for the last two decades of his career.
“Penn Jillette made the documentary The Aristocrats with 100 comedians all telling the same joke, and it culminated in Gilbert’s telling of the joke at the Hugh Hefner Comedy Central roast just about two weeks after 9/11,” Dara explains. “At the roast, first Gilbert told a joke where he said, ‘I have to catch a flight to L.A., but my travel agent said there were no direct flights. I have to make a stop at the Empire State Building first.’ Gilbert got booed and people screamed, ‘Too soon!’
“Gilbert figured, I’m already going to Hell, I might as well go deeper into Hell. So he told ‘The ‘Aristocrats’ joke, which was a joke no comedian would ever tell onstage. It was so brave of him to go there after he was bombing — no pun intended. People were hysterically laughing, and Gilbert got a standing ovation. It was this cathartic moment as it was basically the first time people laughed again after 9/11.”