subject: Jeff Dunham Tickets : Dunham Has Been Called America Favorite Comedian [print this page] Jeff Dunham is an American ventriloquist and stand-up comedian who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Star Search, Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show and Sonny With a Chance.
He is familiar to Comedy Central audiences for his three specials on that network: Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself, Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity, and Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special. Dunham also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show for one season on the network in 2009.
Jeff style has been described as "a dressed-down, more digestible version of Don Rickles with multiple personality disorder".Describing his characters, Time observes, "All of them are politically incorrect, gratuitously insulting and ill tempered." Dunham has been credited with reviving ventriloquism, and doing more to promote the art form than anyone since Edgar Bergen.
Dunham has been called "America's favorite comedian" by Slate.com, and according to the concert industry publication Pollstar, he is the top-grossing standup act in North America, and is among the most successful acts in Europe as well. As of March 2009, he has sold over four million DVDs,an additional 7 million dollars in merchandise sales, and received more than 350 million hits on YouTube.
A Very Special Christmas Special was the most-watched telecast in Comedy Central history, with its DVD going quadruple platinum in its first two weeks. Forbes ranked Dunham as the third highest-paid comedian in the United States behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, and reported that he was one of the highest-earning comics from June 2008 to June 2009, earning approximately $30 million during that period.
Dunham was born in Dallas, Texas in 1962, and raised in an affluent neighborhood as the only adopted son of a real estate appraiser and a homemaker. He began ventriloquism at age eight, when his parents gave him a Mortimer Snerd dummy for Christmas, and an accompanying how-to record album.
The next day he checked out a how-to book on ventriloquism from the library. Dunham began practicing for hours in front of a mirror, studying the routines of Edgar Bergen, and the how-to record Jimmy Nelson's Instant Ventriloquism, finding ventriloquism to be a learned skill, similar to juggling, that anyone with a normal speaking voice can acquire.
When Dunham was in the sixth grade, he began attending the Vent Haven Convention in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, an annual international meeting of ventriloquists that includes competitions, where he met Jimmy Nelson in person. Dunham has missed only one convention since then, in 1977.
The organizers of the Convention eventually declared Dunham a "retired champion", ineligible from entering any more competitions, as other attendees were too intimidated to compete against him. The Vent Haven Museum devotes a section to Dunham, alongside Senior Wences and his idol, Edgar Bergen.
In addition to building the dummies he uses in his act, Dunham also restores antique ones as a hobby, such as The Umpire, a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) mechanized dummy built in 1941 to work the plate at a girl's softball game, but which went unused and packed away for 50 years, before Dunham acquired it in early 2008.
Dunham, who says he has loved helicopters since childhood, is fond of building and flying his own kit helicopters from Rotorway helicopter kits, as depicted in his appearance on the CMT television magazine Fast Living.In November 2008 Dunham separated from his wife of 14 years, Paige, with whom he has three daughters, Bree, Ashlyn and Kenna.
