First Date with Lauren Compton, a weekly podcast where first impressions will NEVER be forgotten.
Finding a decent person to date is hard work, and comedian/viral content creator Lauren Compton is here to get to the bottom of it. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. Weekly, Lauren invites celebrity guests on to have a first date with her and figures out how many red flags they have, if they’re dateable, AND if there will be a second date! Dating is a wild ride… strap in!
Lauren Compton: The Dallas native has amassed quite the following across all forms of social media with her highly-entertaining content, although her IG bio recommends that you “don’t show your mom.” Actress and standup comedian known for appearing on Showtime’s I’m Dying Up Here and HBO’s Here, Now. She also earned a leading role in the Justin Lin feature film HELP. Compton is a regular performer at various high-profile comedy clubs, including Comedy Mothership and Hollywood Improv.
This week, Compton’s welcomes legendary comedian Howie Mandel.
Howie has been married for a long time and he shares the real secret to having a “happy wife”. Lauren also asks him about his love language, awkward first dates, wrestling singlets, turn-offs, body hair, Uber etiquette, and one night stand marathons. Howie also shares his mafia-movie like proposal to his wife…take the deal and leave the cannoli.
Curly-haired Jewish-Canadian Howard Michael Mandel II was born in Toronto, Ontario on November 29 1955, and raised there. Of Romanian and Polish descent, and a distant cousin of Israeli violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, he proved to be a highly controversial class clown in high school and was expelled for some costly antics. He soon found work as a carpet salesman while hitting the stage at night as a cut-up at Toronto’s Yuk Yuk’s comedy club. His routine, which included extremely bizarre sight gags, which were favorably received. And then in 1978, he traveled to the States, visited the L.A. Comedy Store, and stayed.
While a regular performer at the popular Sunset Strip club, a producer for the syndicated comedy game show Make Me Laugh (1979) caught his act and booked Howie for a series of appearances during its short-lived 1979-1980 series. This led to a big step as an opening act for David Letterman, a CBS comedy special in 1980, several late-night appearances on “The Alan Thicke Show,” and a lead role in the wacky but poorly-received Canadian film comedy Gas (1981) also starring Susan Anspach. He also showed up as one of the original “VeeJays” on Nickelodeon’s music video series.
A pleasing, agreeable comedian who quickly graduated to TV talk shows and Vegas gigs, Howie earned household attention when cast in the critically-acclaimed medical TV drama St. Elsewhere (1982). Providing comic relief as bushy-headed Dr. Wayne Fiscus, he continuing to work as a comedian and take a shot at 80’s comedy film stardom. He played a young comic in the film The Funny Farm (1983); provided the voice of Gizmo in the box-office hit Gremlins (1984) and its sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990); co-starred with Ted Danson in Blake Edwards‘ comedy caper A Fine Mess (1986); co-starred with Christopher Lloyd as a wolf boy returning to civilization in Walk Like a Man (1987); and co-starred with young Fred Savage as a blue humanoid who introduces him to the world of weird creatures in Little Monsters (1989). These co-starring vehicles, however, failed to generate major box-office or stardom.
On TV, Howie provided the voice of Skeeter in the animated cartoon series Muppet Babies (1984). Having a strong affinity for children, he ventured into his own kid series with the Emmy-nominated Bobby’s World (1990) serving as creator, executive producer and title star vocals as Bobby Generic. In the 1990’s, Howie starred in a short-lived “dark comedy” series Good Grief (1990) in which he fell into the funeral business. This was followed by his own failed talk show The Howie Mandel Show (1998) during the 1998-1999 season. Throughout the decade, which included guest appearances on “Lois & Clark,” “Carol & Company,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Bless This House,” “The Nanny,” “The Outer Limits” and “Sunset Beach,” managed a near-full time schedule of concerts, tours, cartoon voiceovers and TV comedy specials, the last-mentioned keeping him current with viewers The First Howie Mandel Special (1983) and Howie Mandel: Live from Carnegie Mall (1985).
In 2006, Howie his pay dirt as the (now) bald-domed host of the game show Deal or No Deal (2005). The show ran for four seasons, but returned for a season a decade later. Over time Howie appeared in scores of TV commercials for Boston Pizza as their hired spokesperson. In April 2004, he was selected as #82 on Comedy Central’s list of the “100 Greatest Stand Up Comedians of All Time.” On September 4, 2008, Mandel received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Comedy Central listed him as #82 on their list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. That same year he revealed that he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and was involved in raising adult ADHD awareness.
In 2009, Howie served as star and executive producer of his own “Candid Camera”-like practical joke reality show Howie Do It (2008). It lasted one season. Two years later, he premiered a flash-mob reality show called Mobbed (2011), which did even less well. For the past decade, he has enjoyed stability as a judge on the reality show America’s Got Talent (2006).
Married to Terry (Soil) Mandel since 1980 with three children, Howie received a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto in 2009. Mandel has written and published an in-depth OCD, ADHD-themed autobiography Here’s the Deal: Don’t Touch Me.
Checkout previous episodes of First Date w/ Lauren Compton featuring Whitney Cummings, Ron White, Tom Segura, Annie Lederman, and more HERE
