Doogie Horner fights to win over the crowd and judges on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”

Doogie Horner may not be featured on NBC's Last Comic Standing this summer, but overnight, he became a TV sensation on the same network — at least if Howie Mandel and the producers of America's Got Talent have anything to say about it.

Horner (who made my November 2009 list of funniest comedians working in Philadelphia) performed on Tuesday night's episode of the NYC auditions, and the Philadelphia stand-up comedian met with a hostile crowd. How hostile? They started booing him Apollo-style immediately after his first one-liner. Of course, it didn't help (at least as the show was edited) that, as host Nick Cannon said, forty other supposed stand-up comedians had taken the stage and bombed. But Horner, perhaps remembering what Bill Burr had done when he met with a barbaric audience in Philly four years ago, decided to lash right back into the crowd. Mandel loved it. So did Sharon Osbourne, and Horner got passed through to Vegas over the objections of Piers Morgan. This clip doesn't show what happened next, as producers played the theme from "Rocky" — a great touch since Horner is from Philly — then had cameras follow him outside the theater to interact with the audience some more. When I get that clip, I'll share it. Here's what they have for us for now. Roll it!

On a side note, I don't know why I find it odd that America's Got Talent would have comedians competing when they could be on LCS. After all, they have plenty of singers, too, and they could have been on American Idol. Grandma Lee made the finals of AGT last year, and ventriloquist Terry Fator won the grand prize before, too — which at a million dollars and a running show in Las Vegas, is quite a different prize from LCS. So why not?

Further reading: In 2008, Doogie Horner also created this handy guide to comedy via flow chart!

Updated: So here is the full final segment of the show from last night, which I include because the producers completely set the show up as bad for comedians but uplifting for Horner, from Mandel talking about his hopes to find a good comedian, through the incorrect use of the Laugh Factory sign to denote New York comedy (as the club no longer has a branch here and hasn't for a couple of years), then through the montage of horrible "comedians," which leads us to Horner, the dubious judgement of Piers Morgan and what happens afterward. It's really worth watching the entire thing as the rest of America saw it on their TVs. Roll the clip!