Who's Paul Giles?
And why does he think he's so funny?

Me in my younger days in front of the Holy City Zoo,
circa 1980.

For a
more recent photo,
click on the "Comedy Writers" link above.

Okay, here's the brief biography:

I was born in humble beginnings in a little log hospital in Rochester, New York. My real name is Paul Giglia (nice Italian boy), but since it's hard to pronounce I used Giles as my pen name. As I grew older and more smart-assed, I decided I wanted to be a comedian, so in 1978 I moved to San Francisco to become part of that city's thriving comedy scene.

I started doing open mikes (shouldn't that be mics?) at the moderately famous Allen's Alley at the Boarding House, then at the very famous Holy City Zoo comedy club. In no time at all I went from complete comedy unknown to one of the best office supply salesmen the city had ever seen. Hey, comedy is HARD! Still, I was working and hanging with people like Robin Williams, Paula Poundstone, Dana Carvey, Bobcat Goldthwaite and a host of the greatest known and unknown comics of the day. As a matter of fact, Robin Williams got his start at the Holy City Zoo. The parallels between him and me are amazing. He was a bartender there, I was a bartender there. He began his comedy career there, I began my comedy career there. He won an Oscar and gets $20 million a movie...did I tell you I was a really good salesman?

But I persevered and actually began getting gigs at the Zoo and other clubs around the Bay Area. I think it was my good friend political comedian and commentator Wil Durst who got me started as a writer, though. One night at the Zoo, just after I had finished my set, Wil came over and said, "Paul, you've got the best material I've ever heard!" I was about to blush a shade of crimson usually seen only in albino sunstroke victims when Wil added, "Of course, you suck on stage."

He was right, so I wasn't angry. He asked if he could buy some material from me, and I figured if audiences were ever going to laugh at my jokes, they'd have to hear them from someone competent enough to deliver them. From there I began selling gags to Wil, Joan Rivers, Bobby Slayton, Ronn Lucas and a lot of other comics, most you've never heard of and should be thankful you haven't.

Eventually we decided to move our little family, which had grown to four, back east to that glittering metropolis of the great state of New York...Buffalo. I continued to write, publishing articles in newspapers and anywhere else that would have me. Something was missing, though. I still had the urge to do stand up. What was missing was my brain.

I did go back to doing standup. I did get a lot more work. I was more mature, and became a pretty good comedian. But I knew I'd never get that star billing or a dressing room that didn't smell like the men's room at a fat guy convention. I hated the road and the money wasn't all that great. Writing was easier. By the time I left Buffalo (more on that later) I was a regular contributor to Jay Leno's Tonight Show monologues (and no, when I say "contributor" I don't mean I sent stuff that he never used...he bought and used a lot of my jokes), and to Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. I was also a staff writer on A&E's Caroline's Comedy Hour in New York and wrote for a lot of comedians in between. My comedy sketches appeared on the award-winning NPR show The Imagination Workshop. I published humor in newspapers, and many of my jokes were quoted in papers from the San Francisco Chronicle to the Los Angeles Times.

But wanting a regular paycheck, another move was in store. I took a full-time job in Cleveland at American Greetings. I was the editor of their humorous, alternative greeting card lines. Wrote a lot of damn good cards, too! Great job, but after more than 5 years of employment the company, suffering financial dengue fever, let me and 1500 other people go. Now where did I leave my freelance writer pants?

I'm still in Cleveland, working in advertising, but still writing comedy for corporations, speakers, toasters (not the metallic kind) and...yes...comedians. I don't do standup anymore, but I don't really miss it. That's the abridged version. If you want the complete story, you'll have to buy my depressing autobiography, No, I Can't, if I ever decide to sit down and write it.