On this week’s episode of Chicago Stories, Mayor Emanuel sat down with Beverly-native Pat McGann to hear how he went from selling boxes to telling jokes, along with his take on Chicago humor, how his family is an endless supply of material, and why comedy resonates so strongly today.

Pat never thought he’d be a comedian, much less playing to huge crowds across the country. Like so many of his friends growing up, Pat dutifully followed college with a steady job — in his case selling boxes for a packaging company— but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I was just lost and I didn’t know what to do with my life,” Pat told Mayor Emanuel. “I didn’t even take any business classes in college — I was just drifting.”

Beneath it all though Pat was secretly nursing a dream to get on stage, but it wasn’t until after he turned 30 that he finally got the nerve, thanks in no small part to his wife Sara, a fellow Beverly-native.

Pat turned out to be a natural, going from his first open-mic in 2007, to being hired as the house emcee at Zanies Comedy Club, to his first network television debut on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2014. 

Today, when Pat’s not playing residencies at Zanies, he’s serving up jokes about life in Beverly as the opening act on comedian Sebastian Maniscalco’s “Stay Hungry” mega-tour. It’s a long way from his days as a salesman.

“I love it, I’m so passionate about it,” Pat told Mayor Emanuel. “I never thought that I would love my job — this doesn’t really feel like a job, but I still can’t get enough.”

Pat’s entry into comedy came at a perfect time as the industry surged with new availability through the Internet and streaming, along with a public demand for authentic commentary on the world around them.

“I just think that people are fed [nonsense] everywhere they go all day long,” Pat said. “When you turn a comic on they’re saying things everyday people are thinking, they’re sharing their experiences that everyone can relate to.”

For his part, Mayor Emanuel sees comedy’s popularity today in part as the result of news itself having become “entertainment,” leading people to seek out comedians to understand the events of the day.

As Mayor Emanuel said, “comedians are . . . the people actually holding the mirror up to the moment.”

Be sure to listen to the entire episode as Pat shares some of his newest bits, recalls how he met his wife at a St. Patrick’s Day party on the North Side, along with some of his favorite parts of Chicago’s comedy scene.

Listen and subscribe to Chicago Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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