“I’ve always been known to have a filthy sense of humour,” says Bob Saget, laying his conversational cards on the table right from the start.

“The first joke I ever wrote, back when I was a teenager, let you know where I was coming from. ‘I have the brain of a German shepherd and the body of a 16-year-old boy. They’re both in my car and I want you to see them.’”

It’s unlikely anything that unsophisticated is going to wind up on the show Saget is hosting for The Movie Network on July 27: its first live comedy event, JFL XXX — The Ultimate Nasty Show.

The “JFL” stands for “Just For Laughs,” because this is part of its 2012 annual joke-fest in Montreal. The “XXX” can represent the 30th anniversary of the event or the super-adult nature of the material.

But when it comes to “nasty,” well, when you google “Bob Saget” that’s one of the more polite words that appears.

The 56-year-old comedian/actor is probably best remembered for his stint as Danny Tanner, the DustBuster-wielding widowed father on Full House, that family-friendly comedy that ran on ABC from 1987-1995 and made a star out of Saget as well as co-stars John Stamos, Dave Coulier and the Olsen Twins.

“Wow, that was pretty squeaky clean, wasn’t it?” he laughs. “Now it would be too tame for network and it would probably have to wind up on Disney, but it worked.

“OK, the show may not have really been all that funny, but we all genuinely liked each other and that’s what held it together. Dave and John and I would have to talk in code around the kids.”

Saget spins an anecdote about the time they had a donkey on the program, but it developed an erection and while they were trying to hide that from the twins, “it took a crap all over the place.”

Asked if he had to sit on his own raunchier instincts when things like that happened, he deadpans, “Hey, when you’re as big as I am, you hire people to sit on you. I hired the guy who played Sloth in Seven to sit on me. It didn’t work out too good for either of us.”

A lot of people want to believe that all the years Saget spent working on Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos is what spurred his naughty gene, but he makes it clear that he was just taking a giant money-making detour.

“I started doing stand-up when I was 17 in Philadelphia. I did music comedy, I’d play a song called ‘Bondage,’ a whips-and-chains, 50 Shades of Grey, kind of thing.

“I got picked up real quick. Harvey Weinstein was my manager, I did the Rodney Dangerfield young comedians’ special, but then things stalled. Because you couldn’t do the kind of humour I wanted to do back in those days. I did a lot of Merv Griffins and you couldn’t curse on those.”

But when Saget came out the other end of the G-rated tunnel, he was rich and famous, but worried.

“I was afraid I might have lost my edge, all the stuff that made me really good at the beginning.”

So he plunged into raunchy stand-up comedy and sketchy guest appearances until 2005, when he became famous and infamous once again in the same year.

That was when How I Met Your Mother first appeared. Saget is heard (but not seen) every week as the voice of the 2030 Ted Mosby, giving him a small but effective mainstream window.

But that was also the year that The Aristocrats got released, a documentary film about the most famous dirty joke of all time, which allowed a galaxy of famous comedians to ad lib their darkest, raunchiest versions of the anecdote that fuels the film.

Classic smut-mongers like Gilbert Gottfried, Sarah Silverman, Don Rickles and Andy Dick all did their best, but — by common consent — Saget was the most unquestionably offensive of the bunch.

“You know, I had never even heard the joke before they asked me to make the movie,” he admits, “but once I got in there, they kept spurring me on and urging to make it ranker and ranker, and so I did.

“I remember thinking, ‘This will ruin me,’ but it really didn’t. It did the opposite, in fact.”

Saget may seem like a take-no-prisoners kind of guy, but he has some pretty firm standards as to what he will and won’t do in the name of comedy.

“I don’t like to do hurtful stuff, I don’t like to play with people’s feelings, I don’t do anything racist. Anything that comes from actual rage or harm, I won’t have anything to do with.

“You know how they say when you go on a date you don’t discuss religion or politics?

“Well, I’m the same way about comedy. I like to keep everything below the waist where it’s safe.”

For someone who deals in so much sexual content, it’s also nice to hear him say that he doesn’t go in for attacking non-heterosexuals.

“I spent my whole childhood being called ‘Saget the Faggot,’ just because it rhymed. . . .

“I know bullying exists, but it’s not as acceptable as it used to be or as popular, and that’s good.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Saget goes from asserting how dirty he is early in the conversation to covering his tracks a bit as it progresses.

“I’m actually not as blue as everyone thinks,” he insists.

“I’m more R-rated than X-rated, to tell the truth. And yeah, I use a lot of f-bombs when I perform, but I treat them as a kind of rhythm section, punctuation, not comment. I like weird, absurd comedy. Strange, deviant, off-the-road kind of things.”

He adds, “It’s kind of scary to be hosting a live network show that announces its bad intentions so strongly. Part of me wants to be no holds barred and part of me wants to bar a hold or two.

“I’ve got three kids and I’ve never parentally blocked them from watching anything. Hey, my daughter watches Sex in America at times. I make her watch it. That’s a joke,” he adds.

“You know, all the great comedians loved to get down, but they’d do it privately. That was before the Internet, which puts everything you ever say or do right out there forever.” (Saget ought to know; he’s got more 1.5 million Twitter followers.)

“I was 24 the first time I met Steve Martin. He was executive-producing a comedy special for Martin Mull that I was doing the warm-up for. I wanted to test the waters with him, so I asked, ‘Do you have a problem with your clitoris?’ He thought for a second and then said, ‘Only in one of my vaginas.’ Man, he was Obi-Wan Kenobi to me from then on.”

FIVE FAVE EDGY COMEDIANS

MONTY PYTHON

“There was a lot of filth hidden in there, but you’d never know it because there was so much intelligence on top.”

LENNY BRUCE

“I didn’t discover him until Fosse’s biography of him, but then I studied everything he ever did.”

RICHARD PRYOR

“I got close to him for a while and I’m glad. It took a lot of pain to fuel that comedy of his.”

RODNEY DANGERFIELD

“He was the guy we all looked up to. The professional, the one who knew how to do it.”

GEORGE CARLIN

“I admired him so much, even though my silliness wasn’t nearly as poignant as his.”