The first time I ever heard Andrew “Dice” Clay, his words were spoken by a teenager — one of my high-school classmates was cracking up the lunch table with Dice’s ribald versions of our childhood nursery rhymes. It was the late 1980s, and Dice quickly rose to the top of the comedy kingdom, playing sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. A lot has changed since then. But the Dice man is back on the road, working clubs and performing stand-up. When I met up with him before his show Saturday night in Vegas for The Comedy Festival, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He still has a big ego. Can you blame him? Or, rather, would you want him to be less assured of himself? In this brief interview, he tells me why he’s still in the game after two decades of ups and downs.
That said, I could not help but wonder if his jacket had had a run-in with the Bedazzler. A couple of minutes later, the crowd in the Palace Ballroom began chanting for their headliner. “Dice! Dice! Dice!” And off he went, into the fray once more…