In the pantheon of modern TV talk-show hosts, one stands above the rest: David Letterman. The sardonic comic is the closest we have to the king, Johnny Carson, who always favoured Letterman over his own NBC-appointed successor, Jay Leno. Letterman's nightly comedian segment, like Carson's before him, is the one young standups aspire to.

Jim Gaffigan had been in the business 10 years before he got the call to appear on The Late Show With David Letterman in 1999. Being a New York comic, Gaffigan says performing on Letterman was a "rite of passage" among his peers. "If you hadn't done Letterman," he says on the phone from San Francisco, "you were a crazy person that went on-stage and talked."

No matter what setbacks a young comedian may face, a spot on Letterman gives instant credibility. "It silences critics," he explains. "It's like, 'Well, you know, he definitely is a comic.' So there was a great level of relief. I felt like, 'Well, now I can die. I've done Letterman.'"

But Gaffigan was to see his relationship with the show and its host continue. Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, offered to develop a sitcom starring him (which went on to be called Welcome to New York and lasted one season). He's also appeared a total of 10 times on the New York-based program, and has done stints on everything from That '70s Show to Ellen.

After almost a decade of not getting coveted weekend spots at New York comedy clubs, one night on Letterman had changed his life. "It was surreal," he says.

The years he spent waiting for his shot gave him the confidence he needed to succeed in front of his fellow Hoosier. "At the time I did Letterman, in the back of my mind I kind of felt like, 'Well, I should have gotten this five years ago.' But that didn't diminish my enthusiasm and my level of being terrified of taking advantage of this opportunity....I was like, 'I'm ready for this. I wanna do this. I could do it in my sleep.' It was very exciting. It was really kind of like I said, 'Okay, I'm not a lunatic.'"

Gaffigan will take to the stage of the Vogue Theatre next Sunday (September 25) with two other Letterman alumni to close the CanWest Comedy Festival, in what should be the highlight of the week (a week that includes, coincidentally, Jay Leno himself the previous night at the Orpheum).

Along with Gaffigan, standup vets Jake Johannsen and Eddie Brill will appear. Johannsen, who has a stammering quality and storytelling style reminiscent of Bob Newhart, has done the Late Show an incredible 40 times, while Brill, the in-house warm-up comedian and comedy booker, has appeared on-air eight times.

As good as those comics are, Gaffigan is the latest hot property in the standup world. He is that rare breed that appeals both to the audience and to the usually jaded comics. He's even rarer in that he works clean in an era when a movie like The Aristocrats is drawing huge crowds to hear 100 of the best standups tell the filthiest joke on the planet.

"I've always felt like when I have cursed in the past that it's been kind of cheating," he notes. Referring to the F-bomb, he says, "I've always been kinda trying to balance...what's really funny and what's really irreverent." He loves challenging himself to make people laugh without resorting to blue language. "That's not to say that dirty jokes aren't funny. It's just that I feel like it's a bigger mountain to climb....I've always been like, I wouldn't want to do a joke that would embarrass my mom. Like, there are Def [Comedy Jam] comics that are talking about eating pussy, then they're like, 'I love you, Mom!' There's this ironic twist there." Gaffigan has his own brand of irony. "I never have free time; I don't know about you," goes one of his routines on laziness. "You ever go to the cash machine and there's two people in line in front of you? You get kind of flustered and you're like, 'Forget it! I'm not standing here for 40 seconds. I got things to do, okay?'"

As you might have guessed, Gaffigan was raised in a fairly conservative household, the youngest of six children. Success, he says, was wearing a suit to work. Pursuing a career in show business was not anything his family knew about. Yet his parents were supportive. "It was kind of like, 'Well, Jim's the crazy one'," he says.

He feels lucky that he gets to do what he loves, which includes not only standup but acting in both comedies and dramas on TV and film. "There are times when I can't believe that I'm actually getting paid to do this," he says. "Then there are times when it feels a little bit like a job."

He figures it's a 90-10 split on the positive side. He simply loves getting in front of an audience and making them laugh. "Standup, for me, is such a creative outlet that I feel like it's kinda like this secret. A lot of creative people could avoid a lot of neuroses and a lot of cases of methamphetamine addiction if they could just have this outlet."

Of course, not everyone has the talent. Sometimes they really are just crazy people who get on-stage and talk.