Gilbert Gottfried

Gilbert Gottfried speaks onstage at the 2013 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, on Sunday, September 15, 2013 at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, in Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo by Phil McCarten/Invision for Academy of Television Arts & Sciences/AP Images)

WORCESTER - He has been called a comedian's comedian, starred in numerous children's programs and movies and when Gilbert Gottfried takes the stage in Auburn this weekend he will deliver on his trademark brand of comedy that has catapulted him into the national spotlight on numerous occasions.

"They can expect to sit there for about four and a half minutes and then turn to each other and ask 'whose idea was it to see Gilbert Gottfried tonight?'" he said of his upcoming performance on Saturday at Halligan's Lounge in Auburn.

Gottfried will take to the stage in a show featuring openers Adam Webster and Will Noonan. While Gottfried has starred as Iago in Disney's Aladdin and voiced the Aflac duck, it is his standup - that he has been doing since he was 15 - which has attracted the most attention in recent years.

A joke about the attack on 9/11 three weeks after the attacks, elicited a reaction so fierce that he launched into an old comedian's joke called The Aristocrats. The content of the Aristocrats joke, said Gottfried, contains what many would consider much more offensive subject matters but everyone loved it. In 2011, he lost his job with Aflac after tweeting about the Tsunami in Japan in what "turned out to be a very expensive hobby." Ultimately, people choose what to they get offended by, said the comedian.

"They say I'll get offended by that and not get offended by that," said Gottfried. "I feel like a lot of times when people are outwardly and vocally offended they are patting themselves on the back, saying what fine upstanding individuals they are."

Often people get offended if they do not understand a joke, said Gottfried. It is safer to get offended than laugh at a joke that may be suspect, he said, adding the internet has taken offense to jokes to an entirely new level.

“The internet makes me sentimental about the old time lynch mobs. Cause the old time lynch mobs actually had to get up, put their shoes on and get their hands dirty," said Gottfried. "With the internet it’s like you sit in your underwear on the couch and so I think the internet is a state of the art way of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away.”

Nothing is beyond being joked about, according to Gottfried, who takes offense to people waiting a year to tell a joke about tragedy. People have always told jokes around the water cooler immediately after tragedies, he said. By waiting a year to tell a joke publicly you are saying that after that set period of time those peoples lives are meaningless, said Gottfried.

"When people say tragedy plus time equals comedy, I always figured why wait?" he said, explaining that it is hypocritical to wait until a joke is not in bad taste. "At least when I do my bad taste joke it's obvious that its in bad taste."

Few jokes actually make him laugh anymore. After years of doing comedy, Gottfried said he looks at most jokes in a very technical way. Even the funniest jokes will likely only elicit a nod of approval.

"If someone says a joke that is really good I will nod my head and think that is clever," said Gottfried. "It's kind of like guys who have directed films. They probably go to the movies and say 'well they could have cut that scene by half a second and pulled in for a close-up over there.'"

The performance will be held at Halligan's Lounge in Auburn on Saturday, April 26. The event is sold out.