Dave Attell Says He May Be Ready for Retirement, but He’ll Never Stop Doing Stand-Up

Despite being on top of his game, seasoned stand-up Dave Attell has been floating the idea of retirement recently. On Tuesday Howard got to the bottom of his reasoning.

“I’m thinking of not so much retiring, but just doing it for fun,” Dave clarified, explaining that there is no leaving comedy for good. “I would always do stand-up,” he said.

Still, the constant travel has taken its toll. Attell told Howard that he now walks with a cane in the winter at times as a result of his bad knee and has been mulling his next steps.

“I’ve been doing it for 30 years, so like, it’s time for me to probably move on to the next chapter which would be dog grooming,” Dave said with a laugh. “I investigated it, Howard. I’m not just saying it for the effect … I like dogs.”

Despite the hardships, Dave is still enjoying doing gigs like his recent all-star comedy gala with Kevin Hart at Mohegan Sun and a recurring show with the Roastmaster General, Jeff Ross. “I can’t say enough about the show that I do with Jeff — we do it for fun,” he said. “He’s got classic comedy timing … so when we get together onstage, you know, it’s great because I’ll set him up, he’ll throw it back.”

Outside of stand-up, the past 30 years have also included stints on “The Daily Show” and later “Saturday Night Live” where he served as a writer for one season.

“I would say I was on there for a year and I wrote for maybe two weeks,” Dave told Howard of the experience, remembering he would always leave early to do stand-up sets.

As a comic, Attell found the position of writing for other performers challenging. “That’s the worst, like whenever you come up with a great joke and it’s your job to, like, make someone else funny,” he explained.

One of the featured cast members during Season 19, which Dave wrote for, was none other than Norm Macdonald, who joked in his book “Based on a True Story,” that he wanted to hire a hitman to kill off Attell and steal his then-girlfriend and fellow comic Sarah Silverman.

“I was not dating her then!” Dave insisted, though.

Moreover, Dave told Howard that he didn’t even realize the story was in the book and congratulated Norm on the release when it came out. Norm didn’t mention anything.

“He never brought it up!” Attell recalled. “Norm is one of the funniest guys in the world … You don’t know what’s really going on up there.”

See Dave Attell at Carolines on Broadway December 28-30.