South Philly Review

As a young girl growing up just off Passyunk Avenue, Eleanor Kerrigan didn’t want to be a comic. In fact, she never wanted to be a comic. But sometimes these things just happen.

“He started me. We did a TV show about four years ago, then I started a one-woman show and he was like, “You are doing stand-up.” And I was like, ‘No, no, this is different,’ Kerrigan said of longtime friend and fellow comic Andrew Dice Clay, who she has been opening for going on two years.

Kerrigan, now a full-time stand-up comedian, owes much of her success to the urgings of Clay, whom she performs with six nights a week at the Las Vegas Hilton. The duo has a running show two weeks out of every month in Sin City. Kerrigan, however, will be taking a short break to perform closer to home.

“I’m skipping a week to do my Borgata show,” Kerrigan, who will perform at the Borgata Comedy Club Aug. 16 to 19, said. “We are 10 [siblings] and my mom’s sister had 10 [kids]. My family is less like a family and more like a tribe.

“If everyone in my family bought a ticket we’d need more seats.”

Still, Kerrigan, the eighth of six brothers and three sisters that shared a one-family rowhome at 18th and Johnston streets, believes every member of her tight-knit group will be in attendance next week. Besides, it beats her usual home venue.

“The Nick’s Roast beef in Springfield. Years ago, when they expanded, my brother worked for him and he loved him and he went over and helped him open it. He makes me do stand-up there,” Kerrigan, 39, said. “They are there and eating roast beef and fries and the last thing they want to hear is some chick talking about her nine brothers and sisters.”

Luckily, her brothers and sisters want nothing more than to hear Kerrigan relay family stories about former childhood pets — which included an alligator — a colossal canopy bed that crowded the girls’ room and the quirks of her parents.

“I’ll just make fun of my family, just keep it to that,” Kerrigan said of the upcoming New Jersey show. “My dad owns a typewriter store on 20th and Porter, so I pick on him a lot. He said, ‘This year I’m closing ’cause it’s a recession, girl!’ Like really? The recession is what was hurting the typewriter business?

“He repairs and sells typewriters, and he brought in a couple adding machines, so he thought he was really branching out. He won’t even come see me. He says ’cause I make fun of him too much.”

This, too, is a joke, and her father comes to see Kerrigan perform with the rest of the group that is a good sport about being the butt of many jokes. And although Los Angeles, Calif., is where she now calls home base, making it back to her childhood home at least four times a year provides just the right dose of TLC, reality and material.

“[My family] never left. There are a few people that moved to the suburbs, but we call them wussies. My mom still lives in the same house that all 10 of us grew up in. My parents split up, but we really didn’t have room for him. I say unfortunately, but it’s really fortunately. Our house, the [former occupants] moved down the street because they needed more room, and they had one kid,” Kerrigan said. “I stay on my mother’s couch and I don’t leave.

“My brother [who lives in the suburbs] asks, ‘Why don’t you come stay out here? There is so much more room.’ And I go, ‘Why do you think I need room? What makes you think I’d mind the crowd?’”

Kerrigan attended St. Richard’s grade school, 1826 Pollock St., and then St. Maria Goretti High School, 1736 S. 10th St. Interested in the performing arts, she started at Temple University, but got the bug and left before she finished her degree.

Setting up shop in the City of Angels, Kerrigan got a waitressing job in a poplar comedy club, but never wanted to take the stage.

“I moved in 1993. I was a waitress at the Comedy Store, which ironic, and I never had any interest in comedy at all. I was doing plays and TV shows. Actually, I was a wrestler on TV … and I called and told my mom I was doing this — that I was going to be on a ‘wrestling show’ — and she was so happy and proud, and I was so confused. I hung up and said I would call her back.

“When I called back my sister Karen answered the phone and she goes, ‘Wow, you’re going to be on the ‘West Wing show,’ that’s great!’ [My mom] had told everyone and called the whole family.”