Comedian Slade Ham has a complicated relationship with hecklers. He hates that they interrupt his stand-up act; he loves shutting them up when they do. Ham, who spends 200 days out of the year on the road, is a Houstonian and it was here in H-Town that he had his most epic encounter with a heckler. “I was doing a show the day after Christmas,” he tells us. “I was the fifth comic out of six, and this…woman yelled things out through the first four acts. She had something to say after every joke. She interrupted, she booed, she talked over setups. The comics hated her. The crowd hated her. She was a vile creature sent here from the hottest of hells. I have a bit of a reputation for shutting hecklers down, and I was just pacing the room waiting for my turn. The club wasn’t stopping her — for some unknown reason — and I not only expected her to take a shot at me, I was craving it. When I finally got introduced, I tried to go into my first joke and she rattled off something from her seat. I turned to her and said, ‘Okay, you really…’ and this soccer mom in the front row turned around and yelled, ‘Shut the [fuck up], lady!’ It was beautiful.”
See Slade Ham at 8 p.m. The Joke Joint Comedy Showcase, 11460 Fuqua. For information, call 281‑481‑1188 or visit jokejointcomedyshowcase.com. $16.
Wed., Nov. 26, 8 p.m., 2014
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2014.