"Cosby has always been an economical but effective physical comedian; people howled as he shifted cautiously in his seat, imitating his father in that chair. But his greatest weapon is his strained and stentorian voice, which is easy to imitate but hard to parody, because Cosby's bewildered vehemence can scarcely be exaggerated. Often, his jokes come alive only in performance, fuelled more by the telling than by the words. In Salisbury, he reminisced about his wife, Camille, who was nineteen when he married her, in 1964. "She was not who she is today," he announced, and the audience was laughing already. "She was a nice person." More laughter, and then applause. "You know what I'm saying. If you are married, then you know the way you look at him." He imitated a wife's disapproving appraisal, his face serving as the punch line.
In Cosby's comedy, he returns endlessly, even obsessively, to this basic plot: the struggle of a man against the woman he has chosen and the children he hasn't. When "The Cosby Show" made its début, in 1984, he was already one of the most successful comics of his generation, and a television star of long standing. The show made him an American archetype: the personification of fatherhood, a word that was also the title of his best-selling book of observations and advice. When he takes the stage, he remains more than anything an exasperated father. Confronting the cosmic impertinence of a child who moans, "I didn't ask to be born," Cosby responds, as always, with fond irritation. "Yes, you did," he says. "About nine months before you were born, I released about sixty million—you were one of 'em. The idea is, first one to the egg locks the door. The others die." He pauses to let the laughter subside, then turns accusatory: "You could have hung a left.""
- Ikhide
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