Comedian Chili Challis has passed away.
“I like flying kites, the higher the better. Sometimes I like doing it sober too.”
BERT (CHILI) CHALLIS
DECEMBER 27, 1950 – OCTOBER 9, 2018
Comedian, gag writer
Chili has written for and worked with the likes of Jay Leno, Ron White, Fred Willard, George Lopez, Steve Harvey, Sinbad, Drew Carey, Ellen Degeneres, Gilbert Gottfried, Arsenio Hall, Bill Hicks and many more. He also has extensive experience in opening shows for musical acts such as: Todd Rungren, the late Count Basie and his Orchestra, Leno Redbone, George Clinton and the P Funk All Stars, the late Ray Charles, Kool and the Gang and the Bob&Tom national radio show to rave reviews
Chili is being remembered here because:
Challis made his reputation – not a living – as a Leno contributor. Leno paid $50 for every joke he used. The ones Leno rejected, Challis used in his stand-up act or sold to Mike Peters’ Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip, he told me.
Peters used this one from a story about radiation experiments on people in the 1950s and ’60s: “Well, that kind of explains some of the guys in the World Wrestling Federation.”
above – February 1, 1994