Tim Allen has his power tools. Andrew Dice Clay has his leather jacket. And Bill Carroll has a three-piece suit, a briefcase and a Wall Street Journal. The props are part of Carroll`s shtick as the ”Corporate Comic,” a routine that is an outgrowth of his 30 years at Ford Motor Co.
By day, Carroll is Detroit regional manager for Ford North American Public Affairs and head of the Ford North American News Bureau. But he`s all show business by night. He has written gags for radio personalities, sweated out open-mike nights at comedy clubs around the country and hosted countless roasts and retirement parties.
Getting him to talk about his comedy triggers an almost Rodney Dangerfield-like panic attack. Carroll, 60, rolls his eyes, yanks at his red necktie and mops his bald head. ”The comedy is strictly a hobby,” he says in an 8 a.m. interview in his Dearborn office. ”It has nothing to do with my daily job, which I take very seriously.”
The disclaimer over, he learns that his visitor lives near one of the tonier suburbs on Detroit`s east side. Carroll straightens the lapels on his gray suit and launches into a series of Grosse Pointe jokes. ”The cops are really touchy there,” he deadpans. ”I was driving there the other day, and a cop gave me a ticket for having an inferior trim package. I stopped there to have dinner, and someone broke into my car and upgraded my radio.”
But comedians who work in glass houses shouldn`t expect their craft to remain a secret for long. David Scott, Ford vice president for public affairs, says that, while Carroll doesn`t spend time telling jokes to the chairman, his Corporate Comic routine is well-known around the company. ”When he needs to be serious, he`s serious,” Scott says. ”But he`s also a professional-level comic who`s as good as Jay Leno or Johnny Carson.”
And, Scott notes, Chairman Harold Poling has used some of Carroll`s jokes in his speeches.
Carroll recently performed his monologue at his 60th birthday party. With a number of executives looking on, including Ford design boss Jack Telnack, Carroll tweaked the company a bit. ”Big deal-Jack Telnack,” he said. ”Vice president of Ford. With all his money, he never owned a Cadillac.”
Carroll says he draws the line at making fun of the competition. ”I could tell a million Iacocca jokes and GM layoff jokes,” he says. ”But I won`t.”
Outside of an autographed Pavarotti poster in his office, there is little to suggest Carroll`s show-business sideline. But in the basement office of his suburban Detroit home, a file cabinet is crammed with ideas for jokes, some jotted on cocktail napkins, others on menus and scraps of paper. On several occasions, Carroll claims, he has been bounced from comedy clubs for taking notes.
Phil Gram, a booking agent who used to work with Carroll at Ford, says the comedian has an unerring sense of timing and delivery.
Carroll patterns his act after comedians like Henny Youngman, whom he describes as ”king of the one-liners.” Carroll prefers topical humor and peppers his conversations with groaners like, ”My son is dating a homeless girl. He takes her out for the evening and drops her off anywhere.”
Gram said the comedy has been an asset for both Carroll and the company.
”They use him at news conferences and new-car introductions. He comes in and does a couple quips and warms up the audience. Most corporate types would not do this. They are wound too tight.” Carroll, in fact, may be something of an executive safety valve, Gram maintains. ”Corporate life is not staid or high-powered all the time. If it were, you`d break. The comedy is a relief.” But Carroll gets impatient with people who call him at work wanting to pass along a joke or hear one. ”I`m not a slapstick idiot,” he says. ”I don`t go around telling stupid jokes all day long. If there`s an accident at a plant, I`m not going to tell a reporter three jokes before I tell him what the news is.”
In 1970 Carroll was in California on company business when the Comedy Store held its first open-mike night. ”I got up and did five minutes of stuff,” he recalls. ”I figured nobody would know me so it wouldn`t matter if I bombed. A short time later, a guy nobody ever heard of named Richard Pryor came in to test out new material.”
On his frequent business trips around the Midwest, Carroll checks out the local comedy clubs and often gets up to perform. The comedy club performances are strictly for love-not money. In fact, the only time Carroll got paid for a gig, he bombed. ”I got $100 to play a Christmas party at the Hillcrest Country Club several years ago,” Carroll recalled. ”I got to the airport from a business trip, and there was a terrible snowstorm. It took me 3 1/2 hours to get to the place. By that time, it was 10:30 p.m. and everybody was drunk. I tried every joke I knew and nothing worked.”
He has had better luck writing scripts for roasts (”A good all-purpose line is, `What can you say about (blank) that hasn`t already been said about Preparation H?` ” he suggests.)
He`s not sure if he`ll make comedy his career after retiring from Ford.
”For every success, there are 50 failures,” he says. Yet Carroll still finds satisfaction in the footlights. ”The world is so sad, if you can get people`s attention and make them happy, you`ve really accomplished
something.”
