>>Last night I just caught the tail end of a film biopic essentially about the dissolution of Andy Kaufman, "Man on the Moon", played by Jim Carey.
>>
>>Now there have been several seminal TV sit-coms from the USA, that were loved over here: Rhoda, Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends. And Kaufman, as Latka, was one of the main draws. Apart from this, esp. as he died quite young, I don't think a lot was known of him over here. From this film though it appears that, outside of his role in Taxi, he was, to the British senses, about as funny as a dose of distemper in a dog's home. And he was nutsoid, arrogant, single-minded in his conviction of his own talent and funniness and self-destructive.
>>
>>Did you guys really find him all that interesting and hilarious, outside his Latka role?
>
>I'm with you 100% on this. Other than Latka, and the finest Elvis impersonation in the history of mankind, he did nothing I found remotely worthwhile. I felt that he was simply laughing at his audience. I figure he was doing things he knew were not remotely funny or entertaining and betting the audiences would laugh anyway because they thought they were supposed to, and because they wanted to show that they'd 'got' it while others less hip than themselves did not.

Aye, I don't know if you saw the film (which heavily features the ACTUAL cast of Taxi) but the audiences WERE nervously laughing, as if, as you say, they thought that if they didn't they'd portray to the others that they didn't know what the joke was. His perf's were excrutiatingly embarrassing to watch. Towards the end he was doing college gigs. At one, despite the audience's calls for him to do Latka etc., he insisted on reading out a full story (not funny) straight. At first the audience tittered, expecting a madcap twist but no, he continued on to the bitter end, at which there was only 1 person - asleep - in the autitorium.

As I say, aptly played by Jim Carey ...