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Calling all funny bones

Comedian Lorne Elliott stops in Salmon Arm April 17 on his Break Out Your Funny Bones Tour.
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Comedian

Most people have two funny bones – one in each arm. Hit them and you’ll likely double over in a strange mixture of laughing and crying.

Far funnier and totally painless – although you may laugh till you cry – is Lorne Elliott, who arrives in Salmon Arm next week on his Break Out Your Funny Bones Tour.

With some 40 years worth of writing and performing under his belt, Elliott feels perfectly at ease on stage, with a wealth of funny fodder to fuel his hilarious shows.

But Elliott’s material has not gone stale with time.

Every show is different, a mix of the already-written with improv, as ideas that hit his own funny bone are integrated into the show – combining his trademark dry humour with newly minted musical parodies and skits.

He says politics do creep into his material, and describes 2014 as a long winter and a good year to become politically obsessed.

“It started to happen about six months ago on-stage. Every time I mentioned Steven Harper, the audience was growling and grinding their teeth,” he says, musing on the effect power and its pursuit have on some individuals, often politicians, and how it prevents them from doing their jobs.

“Like most Canadians, I am waiting for the time to cast a ballot and kick the bums out.”

As well as the Canadian experience, Elliott tailors his shows to each community he visits.

“It’s very important to focus on where you are; it makes it much more real to the people here,” he says. “It’s the reason why live is powerful.”

Fond of the Shuswap, Elliott still chuckles at the joke he crafted the last time he was here.

It’s about tens of thousands of salmon toiling their way up the Adams River whose banks are lined with curious humans and asking each other, “how did they find their way here?”

For the past 26 years, Elliott has been touring and performing in concert across Canada, the U.S. and Australia. For 11 seasons “Madly Off In All Directions” was his own CBC Radio Comedy Series and he is currently developing new projects as well as working as a playwright and novelist.

In 2012, Elliott received the Playwrights Guild of Canada Best New Musical Award for his play Jamie Rowsell Lives and his first novel Beach Reading was published in July 2013 and was selected as a finalist by Quebec Writers Federation for the Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize.

Elliott says he feels very privileged to do what he does and honoured that people flock to his shows.

Elliott is a shrewd observer of the human animal. Often self-deprecating, always silly and never profane and firmly on top of current affairs, Elliott’s funny is suitable for the whole family.

Elliott appears at the Salmar Classic Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 17. Tickets are available at Acorn Music. Call 250-832-8669.