Born in New York City in 1937, George Dennis Patrick Carlin was one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time. He appeared on "The Tonight Show" more than 130 times, starred in an unprecedented thirteen HBO Specials, hosted the first "Saturday Night Live" and penned three New York Times bestselling books. Of the twenty-three solo albums recorded by Mr. Carlin, eleven were Grammy nominated and he took home the coveted statue five times including a 2001 Grammy win for Best Spoken Comedy Album for his reading of his best seller Brain Droppings. In 2002, Carlin was awarded the "Freedom of Speech Award" by the First Amendment Center in cooperation with the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and he was the named eleventh recipient of The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in June of 2008. George Carlin passed away at age seventy-one on June 22, 2008 in Santa Monica, California.
Tony Hendra was recently described by The Independent of London as "one of the most brilliant comic talents of the post-war period" He began his comedic career with Graham Chapman of Monty Python, appeared six times on the Ed Sullivan Show, was one of the original editors of National Lampoon, edited the classic parody Not The New York Times, starred in This Is Spinal Tap, and co-created and co-produced the long-running British satirical series Spitting Image for which he was nominated for a British Academy Award. He has written or edited dozens of books, most of them satirical, with the exception of two New York Times bestsellers: Brotherhood (2001) and Father Joe (2004). He is a senior member of the Board of the nation-wide story-telling community, The Moth.
