It’s the Corner of 19th and Broadway, and the rain-glossed streets are awash with yellow cabs. A grilled elevator takes me on a creaking ride to an old rehearsal hall, its hardwood floors worn from the weight of countless Broadway-bound tap shoes. Martin Short is sitting at a long cafeteria-style table, enjoying a ginger ale and a tuna sandwich. In a white T, loose pinstripe pants and white trainers (with luminescent teeth to match, a quick reminder of his Hollywood citizenry), he is welcoming and relaxed. With many comedians, the predictable analysis is that humour is just a polite way to funnel despair or awkwardness or anger. But Martin Short is the rare happy clown, lighthearted and hard-working.

In his latest show, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, his life is the joke. It’s a musical parody of the autobiographical solo act, the kind made trendy by Billy Crystal and others, which tend toward melodrama and soul-baring sentimentality. After a stint in San Francisco, Fame Becomes Me—written by Short, Hairspray’s Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, and Toronto playwright Daniel Goldfarb—hits Toronto’s Canon Theatre this month, then Chicago, and later starts an indefinite Broadway run. “The show’s about my struggle with the fact that in 2006, just entertaining isn’t enough. We need the paaaain. We need the angst. Marc Shaiman said that if Judy Garland were alive today, she’d have to take those pills and die eight shows a week.” Short sings a few verses from the show: “No longer can you simply entertain them, now you have to curse your mother and say your father’s gay. The days of Brice and Jolson are dead and gone, alas, now you’ve got to show your mug shot and the hash pipe up your ass.” The show becomes an absurdist exposé of faux tragedy, with Short revelling in the invented details of a horrifying childhood.

The real story was a happy journey that started in Hamilton, Ontario. The youngest of five, Short was born in 1951. His mother, Olive, was a member of the Hamilton Philharmonic. “She was the first female concertmaster of a symphony,” he says with endearing pride. His father, Charles, was a vice-president at Stelco. Although Short was very funny, he didn’t plan a career in performance. He wanted to be a doctor; being an actor didn’t seem realistic in Hamilton. Despite that boyhood pragmatism, he enjoyed a juicy imaginary life, staging talk shows in his bedroom. He even made an applause record and his own TV Guide to announce upcoming guests.