I’m still recovering from my time with Gilbert Gottfried, a true original

There has never been a comic like Gilbert Gottfried. The diminutive humorist wasn’t even like the abrasive and daring persona he created. Gottfried, who died at 67 due to muscular dystrophy in New York on Tuesday, was a brilliant comic, an exceptional voice actor and a surprisingly laidback, soft-spoken gentleman offstage.

The incorrigible entertainer, who was one of the few guests Howard Stern couldn’t control, along with Sam Kinison, was my comedy jukebox. Every time I would interview Gottfried, I always requested his 9/11 joke, and he always complied. Days after the World Trade Center attack, Gottfried made a Manhattan audience wince.

“I have to leave early to catch a flight to Los Angeles,” Gottfried said. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a direct. The flight is stopping at the Empire State Building.” “Too soon,” someone in the audience yelled at Gottfried. “I thought he meant I didn’t wait long enough between the setup and the punchline,” Gottfried cracked. “The crazy thing is that I followed with my ‘Aristocrats’ joke, which is about bestiality and incest. That was fine, but the 9/11 joke is out of hand. I still don’t get it.”

Equally inexplicable was the reaction Gottfried received after making some tsunami jokes in 2011 via Twitter after the Japanese earthquake disaster. AFLAC, who hired Gottfried for voiceovers, dismissed the rebellious standup shortly after.

The following month, I interviewed Gottfried and asked him if AFLAC knew that he’s a comedian. “It really was ridiculous,” Gottfried said. “What was even more insane was that there were so many television news reporters camped around my house after all that went down. It was if they were covering a mass murderer.”

Gottfried had no problem dealing with the media’s heat. He survived salvos from the media dating back to 1980 when he was part of the “Saturday Night Live” cast, which was the much-maligned troupe that succeeded the star-studded Not Ready for Prime Time Players, which included Bill Murray and John Belushi.

“We were not just pummeled by the media when we went on the air,” Gottfried recalled. “We were bashed before our first show ever aired. It was like, ‘How dare they go on with a new cast!’ They hated our cast. But you can’t worry about that sort of thing. It really was ridiculous.”

Gottfried couldn’t have been more chill when he was not performing. After covering a few roasts at the Friars Club, I was asked if I was interested in a membership since I was a journalist who wrote jokes for Bette Midler’s Kiss My Brass tour. I was invited to dinner to discuss being part of the legendary club, and I was seated next to Gottfried.

There was no screeching or squinting. Gottfried was as quiet as he was noisy onstage. “I might seem uncomfortable at dinner, but I’m really uncomfortable performing, too. I’m just not very comfortable, period.”

That was evident to fans who experienced Neil Berkeley’s excellent 2017 documentary “Gilbert,” which presented another side of the comic maniac. Gottfried was a loving husband and devoted father to his two young children. That was lovingly portrayed, but what was fascinating was how frugal Gottfried was at the prime of his career.

There’s a great scene in which Gottfried is about to board a Bolt bus, which is the cheapest transportation one can find in New York. Some tickets are just $1 one way from New York to Philadelphia.

Gottfried, like yours truly, grabbed unused soaps and shampoos from his hotel room and stored them in a flat Tupperware under his bed. Gottfried answered any question. It was fascinating when he reminisced about his appearance on the once popular reality-TV show “The Apprentice’ with Donald Trump.

The quirky and uncompromising comic was eliminated early in the competition. “I think I lasted five minutes on that show,” Gottfried said. “Unfortunately, all people saw was my former employer sternly firing me. What they didn’t see was that after he fired me, Trump took me into his office and laid me down on the couch where we cuddled for an hour.”

Rim shot, please. It’s difficult to imagine Trump cuddling anybody. Gottfried waxed about Trump’s run for president in 2016. “It’s quite a contrast from where Trump was a year or two ago,” Gottfried said. “I always thought it was a Roseanne-type publicity stunt when he announced that he was running for president.

“But I think part of the reason he is so popular is that everyone is so tired of having to watch what they say. He doesn’t care at all about what he says.” That made the unapologetic Trump a lot like Gottfried, who was politically incorrect in a very PC world, which includes the realm of comedy.

“I always think about what George Carlin once said, which is that a comedian’s job is to find where the line is drawn, and then you’re supposed to step over that line,” Gottfried said. “If Charlie Chaplin were around today, he would have to apologize to the homeless. It’s crazy what has happened in entertainment.

“Much of it has to do with the internet, which makes me sentimental about old-time lynch mobs. At least those people had to leave their house and get their hands dirty before they went out and killed somebody. Today, you can ruin someone’s career in seconds on your computer because of what they said. But the job of the comic is to not worry about that. You have to cross that line.”

It was no surprise that Gottfried and Chris Rock were close. Gottfried was unique, hilarious and, what I loved most, always accessible. About five years ago, I interviewed celebrities about travel for the Points Guy. I asked Gottfried to chat due to his 9/11 joke.

We chatted about the agony of dealing with TSA. “A TSA guy said, ‘Hey, Gilbert, I saw you on ‘The Tonight Show,’ and I loved you in ‘Problem Child,’ now empty out your suitcase.

I asked, ‘Why do you search me if you know me, and you’re a fan?’ The guy says, ‘You should have seen what we put Julie Andrews through last week.’ So, if they put Mary Poppins through hell, it’s a real nightmare for me. They treat me like Julie Andrews because they can.”

“Too soon,” to quote the fan who witnessed Gottfried’s 9/11 joke live. Gottfried left Earth way too soon.