Growing up, I loved comedy even before I knew that you could be a stand-up comedian.

I really loved making my mom laugh, and I knew that she thought that I was funny. It was really valuable, in my home growing up, to be able to have a chat and participate in a conversation and be funny. Whatever I could do to make my mom laugh could either get me out of trouble or just get me more attention or get me respect in the house.

Growing up in Canada, I dated a few ice hockey players.

Christmas coming means one thing for comedians: office party gigs!

I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where my great-great-uncle worked after he emigrated from England in the 1880s.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

Not long ago, I got to meet some troopers whose lives had been saved. They came with their wives, their children, their parents. It was a very moving occasion.

I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.