“The other day I was looking in the mirror and I say to my wife, ‘I look terrible. Look at my face, I feel like throwing up, I’m old, tired, fat… I need a compliment, damn it! Say something nice about me.’ My wife goes, ‘Your eyesight is perfect.’ I tell ya, I get no respect!”

Over the years, I’ve heard Rodney Dangerfield tell many variations of that joke, and it’s probably my favourite bit of material he ever performed. So much so that I regularly steal it for my own purposes… whilst always acknowledging the original source after the laugh, naturally.

You see, I love a bit of self-deprecating humour, and this clown was the absolute king of the art. Like most people of my generation, I first came across Rodney in his scene-stealing role as Al Czervik in Caddyshack. He was brash, bold and thoroughly derogatory towards those around him. Definitely funny, but a very different character from the one he brought to the stand-up stage.

In the same year that Caddyshack hit cinemas, Rodney released his Grammy award winning comedy album, No Respect, recorded at his own comedy club, Dangerfield’s, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. So we grabbed a couple of generous pours of gin and settled in for a listen…

The show begins with the murmur of a crowd. Then, from offstage, you hear those unmistakable words: “I tell ya, I get no respect!” The band plays, the crowd cheers, our clown takes centre stage and begins firing off those classic one-liners.

“I looked up our family tree the other day. I was the sap!”

At a time when many comedians were performing gags about how terrible their wives or mothers-in-law were, Rodney was happily turning those jokes on himself. The premise might have been familiar, but nine times out of ten, he’d find a way to make himself the punchline.

This is quickfire stuff, and by 2026 it’s fair to say that not every joke lands quite as well as it might have done back then. But you’ll still catch yourself laughing.

“I have two beautiful children. I’m so glad my wife cheats!”

Aside from his ever-present wife, the material covers his kids, childhood, career and, of course, the ever-popular visits to his physician, Doctor Vidi-boom-ba.

“My doctor told me I’m going crazy. I said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like a second opinion.’ He said, ‘All right. You’re ugly, too.’”

(We wouldn’t normally include quite so many actual jokes in our editorial, but when you’ve got 40 minutes of almost continuous one-liners to play with, you feel obligated to include a few just in case they were missed!)

One of the nicest touches in the set is the way he works the crowd. He deliberately waits for a break in the laughter, then leaves it just long enough to act as though nobody has reacted at all. He’s creating the impression of a show that’s falling flat while happily killing it on stage. It’s a clever little piece of theatre, and a reminder of just how much control he has over the room.

That’s perhaps the great contradiction at the heart of Rodney’s act. He’s playing a man who can’t catch a break, a man nobody respects, a man whose wife, children, doctors and pretty much everyone else seem to have it in for him. Yet he’s completely in control of the audience. Every insult, every pause and every deliberately awkward moment is part of the performance. The man might be the butt of every joke, but he’s very much the one having the last laugh.

The show ends with a short Q&A, during which one member of the audience calls our clown “one of the best to ever do it”. It’s almost at odds with everything Rodney has spent the evening trying to portray, but he takes the compliment graciously as the rest of the room applaud. Naturally, he soon returns to reminding us just how ugly he was as a child.

No Respect is a fantastic piece from the comedy archive. Dated? Yes, in places. But beneath the familiar gags and old-school delivery is a masterclass in comic timing, audience manipulation and making a room full of people laugh at a man who supposedly can’t get anything right.

You can see the influence Rodney has had on generations of stand-ups, and it’s well worth a listen. After all, a man who spent his career insisting he got no respect will always have ours.

Clown Stars: * * * *

@Dangerfields, NYC, USA

If you are interested in listening to this show, at the time of typing there were 194 listing for it currently on eBay, or you can listen to No Respect for free on YouTube