Comedy Central Roast - History

History

Between 1998 and 2002, Comedy Central produced and televised the annual roasts of the New York Friars' Club. After the original five-year agreement expired, the network began producing its own roasts in the same spirit. The first, featuring roastee Denis Leary (and produced by Leary's production company, Apostle), aired on August 10, 2003 and was the most watched program in the channel's history, excluding episodes of South Park.

Some roastees have stated that certain topics are off-limits. For example, Pamela Anderson had the topic of her Hepatitis C infection as off limits (though Andy Dick did make a joke that was cut out), and William Shatner requested the comics not mention his late wife Nerine Kidd-Shatner's drowning in his swimming pool. Others, however, have had no limits on the topics – David Hasselhoff was one example, and according to Lisa Lampanelli (as per her Twitter feed), Donald Trump was another. However, Anthony Jeselnik later stated that Mr Trump placed a restriction on roastees that they could not say Mr Trump has less money than he says he does. Although Charlie Sheen initially agreed to no restrictions on his roast, he later said during an interview with Jay Leno that he requested jokes about his mother to be edited out of the broadcast.

During Charlie Sheen's roast, Steve-O made the joke "The last time this many nobodies were at a roast, at least Great White was playing", which was removed from broadcast per Steve-O's request. Also, for Roseanne Barr's roast, Jeff Ross made a joke about Seth Green that was not aired: "Seth, congratulations. This is actually a great night for you. You haven't gotten this much attention since you shot all those people in Aurora... I'm kidding. You're not like James Holmes. At least he did something in a movie theater that people remember!". Anthony Jeselnik's joke, "Roseanne, what does it say about you that when you accused your father of incest, there was an outpouring of sympathy for your father?" was also removed.