Jeff Dunham

Jeffrey Douglas Dunham (born April 18, 1962) is an American ventriloquist, stand-up comedian and actor who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show and Sonny With a Chance.

He has six specials that run on Comedy Central: Arguing with Myself, Spark of Insanity, Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special, Controlled Chaos, Minding the Monsters, and All Over the Map.

Dunham was born on April 18, 1962, in Dallas, Texas.

When he was three months old, he was adopted by real estate appraiser Howard Dunham, and his homemaker wife Joyce, who raised him in a devoutly Presbyterian household in an affluent Dallas neighborhood, as an only child.

He began ventriloquism in 1970 at age eight, when his parents gave him a Mortimer Snerd dummy for Christmas, and an accompanying how-to album.

Dunham's television debut came in 1976 when the still prepubescent performer caught the attention of Dallas reporters like Bill O'Reilly, who interviewed Dunham for a local news story.

Dunham later did commercials for Datsun dealerships in Dallas and Tyler while still in high school.

While emceeing a high school talent show, he dealt with a heckler, and won over the rest of the audience.

During this period he became so associated with his craft that he and one of his dummies "cowrote" a column in the school paper, and he would pose with his dummies for yearbooks as an inexpensive way to acquire professional photos of his act for promotional purposes.

Dunham has missed only one ConVENTion since then, in 1977.

The organizers of the ConVENTion eventually declared Dunham a "retired champion", ineligible from entering any more competitions, as other attendees were too intimidated to compete against him.

The Vent Haven Museum devotes a section to Dunham, alongside Señor Wences and Dunham's idol, Edgar Bergen.

Dunham began performing for audiences as a teenager, in various venues such as school, church, and during his job at Six Flags.

By his middle school years, he began to perform for banquets attended by local celebrities such as Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, having developed his style of lampooning those he performed for, using the puppets to say things too risque for him to say without them.

He was voted Most Likely to Succeed, and in 1980, after he graduated from high school, Dunham gave himself a career goal of obtaining, within ten years, an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which was seen as the "holy grail" for comedians.

That year Dunham began attending Baylor University, hoping to graduate with a degree in communications, while performing around campus.

He would also fly around the country on weekends, doing up to 100 private shows a year, entertaining corporate customers such as General Electric, whose CEO, Jack Welch, he mocked during his routine.

By his junior year in college (1983–84), Dunham was making $70,000 a year, and as word spread of his act, he landed featured spots opening for Bob Hope and George Burns, though he still perceived his act as raw, as he did not have any knowledge of standup comedy beyond his Bill Cosby albums.

He caught a break in 1985 when he was asked to join the Broadway show Sugar Babies with Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller, replacing an outgoing variety act.

For the naive and devoutly-raised Dunham, Broadway was a new world filled with beautiful showgirls and crusty stagehands, and his first taste of entertainment industry egos came when Rooney called Dunham into his dressing room, and told him he was there for one reason alone: so that Rooney could change his costumes.

He performed at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island.

These early experiences, in which he used characters like José Jalapeño on a Stick, taught him the value of modifying his act regionally, as the jalapeño jokes that worked well in Texas were not as well received by audiences in Long Island.

After graduating from Baylor University in 1986, he continued honing his act in comedy clubs in the Southwest with new characters such as Peanut and José Jalapeño, but struggled against the perception he relates from fellow comedians that he was not a true comedian because he relied on props.

His experience at Catch a Rising Star in New York City served as a bitter confirmation of where ventriloquists stood in the comedic food chain, as the emcee at that club gave Dunham little respect.

Forbes ranked Dunham as the third highest-paid comedian in the United States behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock and reported that he was one of the highest-earning comics from June 2008 to June 2009, earning approximately $30 million during that period.

Dunham also does occasional acting roles.

He achieved the Guinness Book of World Records record for "Most tickets sold for a stand-up comedy tour" for his Spark of Insanity tour, performing in 386 venues worldwide.

Dunham also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show, a series on the network in 2009.

His style has been described as "a dressed-down, more digestible version of Don Rickles with multiple personality disorder".

Time described his characters as "politically incorrect, gratuitously insulting and ill-tempered."

Dunham has been credited with reviving ventriloquism and doing more to promote the art form than anyone since Edgar Bergen.

Dunham has been called "America's favorite comedian" by Slate.

According to the concert industry publication Pollstar, he is the top-grossing standup act in North America and among the most successful acts in Europe as well.

As of November 2009, he has sold over four million DVDs, an additional $7 million in merchandise sales, and received more than 350 million hits on YouTube as of October 2009; his introduction of Achmed the Dead Terrorist in Spark of Insanity was ranked as the ninth most watched YouTube video at the time.

A Very Special Christmas Special was the most-watched telecast in Comedy Central history, with the DVD selling over 400,000 copies in its first two weeks.

The next day he checked out a how-to book on ventriloquism from the library, and explained in 2011 that he still had it, remarking that he was "a thief in the third grade".

By the fourth grade, Dunham decided he not only wanted to be a professional ventriloquist, but the best one ever.

Dunham began practicing for hours in front of a mirror, studying the routines of Edgar Bergen, and the how-to record Jimmy Nelson's Instant Ventriloquism, finding ventriloquism to be a learned skill, similar to juggling, that anyone with a normal speaking voice can acquire.

Dunham has explained that, as an only child, he enjoyed being alone, likening his solitude to a "warm blanket" with which he could explore his own thoughts and ideas, which prepared him for the solitude of living alone when he later moved to Los Angeles as a struggling comedian.

When Dunham was in the sixth grade, he began attending the Vent Haven ConVENTion in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, an annual international meeting of ventriloquists that includes competitions, where he met Jimmy Nelson in person.