Inuvik (Sep 26/03) - The business of making people laugh is never easy, but comedian Bob Angeli loves the challenge.

Originally from Montreal, Angeli moved to Edmonton to go to school and that's where he started standup.

"People just told me I had this knack for telling a good joke," Angeli recalls. "I wasn't a class clown so to speak, but it takes certain personality traits to be a comedian."

"A comic has to be able to keep his composure and deliver it like he means it," he said. "Seinfeld said, 'Everything about standup is delivery and confidence.' You have to believe it's funny."

Working on tour is often a challenge too, he says, because what's funny in Toronto may not be funny in Edmonton, and regional tastes are just as discriminating in the territory.

"Some of the jokes I told in Yellowknife just brought the roof down, but here, I'm standing there and wondering what I have to do," he said.

Every comedian has to deal with hecklers in the audience, but they rarely can put down the guy with the microphone. Angeli says sometimes hecklers will crack him up so much he has a hard time keeping it straight on stage and sometimes that makes the show for him.

"I love that; I feed off that."

In Inuvik he was heckled before he even started the show.

"The blonde heckled me and then Richard heckled me in the front and I was thinking, 'OK, this crowd is going to be fun.' But then they'd shut up," he said. "They didn't want the room's attention, they just wanted to make their own little pocket of laughter."

His brother is a police officer and his sister a stock broker and Angeli's parents weren't exactly convinced that comedy was a stable career choice.

"The first time my dad saw me, he enjoyed it, but my mom was like, 'Get a job,'" he said. "Then the next time I was better and my mom said, 'Now I know why you pursued this.'"

Of course his mom was concerned if he was making enough money at the profession.

"It didn't matter to me if I was making 10 grand or a hundred grand, because I love what I do," he said.

Making it pay

Now 15 years into the business, he's still making a living and is also part owner of the Comedy Factory in Edmonton.

"There was only one comedy club in Edmonton and I decided to take a risk," he said.

He salutes comedians like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin who laid the groundwork for the growth of the industry.

"All these guys took comedy from mainstream clubs to little bars," he said. "All these little coffee bars started hosting comedy nights, so it wasn't just New York, Chicago and L.A."

"Now you could go to Iowa or Tuktoyaktuk and see a comedy performance -- it's everywhere."

In the late 1980s comedy clubs started popping up everywhere and there was a huge demand for comedians.

"There was so much work, there weren't enough comedians and then in 92-93 there was a crash all across the country," he said. "When there's no money, people stay home.

Everyone has those days when you just don't want to go to work and comedians are no different.

"Sometimes it's very difficult to say, 'Today I'm funny -- let's go.'"

But he says there is therapy in comedy too and he draws on that to push him through performances.

"Humour is a natural release and there is so much stress out there in the world right now."