Norm Macdonald doing more stand-up – and tweeting – than ever

MONTREAL – Norm Macdonald has never been more of a stand-up guy.

The Quebec City-born, Ottawa-raised comedian is coming off two straight years where he’s performed 300 stand-up comedy shows a year.

“I never go more than three days without doing stand-up,” he says.

Macdonald was one of the headliners at this year’s Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, in shows that will be featured next season on The Comedy Network.

The 51-year-old says he was motivated to ramp up his schedule after talking to music legends B.B. King and Billy Joe Shaver. If these guys could handle 300 shows a year on the road in their seventies, thought Macdonald, so could he.

“It’s tough though,” Macdonald admits, suggesting he’s looking to stick closer to the clubs near his Los Angeles home.

Not that he’s abandoned television. The former “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update anchor and sitcom star is a judge this summer on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” He also lends his voice to the Winnipeg-produced comedy gem “Sunnyside” (returning with new episodes in September on City).

Macdonald loves TV jobs where “I don’t have to put on any makeup.” He can also be heard as the voice of a pot-smoking pigeon in the animated comedy “Mike Tyson Mysteries” (carried in Canada on Netflix), an Adult Swim throwback to such Hanna-Barbera classics as “Scooby-Doo” and “Jonny Quest.”

He’s also become a storytelling sensation on Twitter, where he has over half a million followers.

He pounds out diary-like entries 140 characters at a time. He dished about last winter’s “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary special and after-party as well as his final appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman.”

He also posted a fascinating series of tweets describing a meal he shared with Bob Dylan. Followers had to be in front of their Twitter feeds live for that as he took them down within minutes.

Asked if the posts were yanked as a result of hearing from the music legend, Macdonald stammered, “Oh, uh, perhaps.”

His regular followers also know he obsessively tweets about sports, offering virtual play-by-play coverage of major golf tournaments.

“That might be OCD because I can’t help myself,” he says. “I’ve got to stop doing that.”

Macdonald gets a lot of negative feedback on the sports tweets, “but then a guy said, ‘Hey, I’m at my mother-in-law’s house, thanks so much,’ and I thought, well, I have to do it for this guy.”

He started posting on Twitter to break up the task of writing his autobiography. Over the past three or four years he’s spent a few hours a day on the project, which he describes as “highly experimental.”

The title of the book: “Based on a True Story.”

Macdonald began doing stand-up 30 years ago in Ottawa. While he credits Yuk Yuks’ comedy club owner Mark Breslin for his start in Canada, he says Montreal’s Just for Laughs vaulted him into the U.S. comedy scene.

“The festival, although I didn’t realize it at the time, was the way out.”

Macdonald was scouted by a “Late Night with David Letterman” producer at the festival. That led to a booking on the series, a moment Macdonald still ranks as his greatest career thrill. Earlier this year came another big moment, an invitation to be the very last stand-up performer on Letterman.

The host himself phoned and asked Macdonald if he would consider it. Humbled, Macdonald took the opportunity to heart and crafted a note-perfect set, finishing with a sweet ‘I love you’ to Letterman.

Macdonald was a teenager when he first saw Letterman live. He was in the studio audience in the late ’70s in Toronto at a taping of the CBC talk show “90 Minutes Live” with Peter Gzowski.

“He did a set and I just thought, ‘This guy’s the most literate stand-up I’d ever heard, he just uses words so concisely and effectively.’”

The impression must have stuck. Using just the right words has made Macdonald a Twitter treat.

— Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.