The Joke Man & Peter Bales - EP489

For eighteen years (1983-2001) a fixture of radio & television’s Howard Stern Show, comedian Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling was born and raised in East Norwich, a tiny hamlet on the glorious North Shore of Long Island, New York. He graduated in 1966 from Oyster Bay High School and earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University in 1971.

As he was accumulating the world’s most extensive collection of jokes, Jackie toiled in the music business until abandoning it in 1979, saying farewell to his beloved trio “The Off Hour Rockers,” to give his punch lines a shot on the not-yet-existent Long Island comedy stages.

Peter Bales has appeared as a stand-up comedian at countless comedy clubs, corporate functions and colleges across the country and has appeared on a variety of television networks including FOX, A&E, Comedy Central, Lifetime, MTV, VH-1 and, most recently, “The New Rascals Comedy Hour” podcast for XM Satellite Radio.

Peter has also hosted his own radio programs on NYC’s WABC (770 AM) and WEVD (1050 AM). He has studied at Chicago’s famous “Second City” and in the eighties directed The Laughter Company, an improvisational comedy group that helped launch the careers of Rosie O’Donnell and Bob Nelson.