You can't wait forever for an audience to get the joke, but you should give them at least two seconds to join in before you go on to the next one.

I advise treating the studio audience like a nightclub audience because that's the reason you're doing television - to get them to come see you in a nightclub.

Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned.

Obviously the audience has veto power signified by whether they laugh or not, but you-not them-retain the ultimate power to decide what they're going to get the opportunity to laugh at.

A technique I developed quite naturally to help me make smooth transitions was to use a word or phrase from the next routine in the preceding one.

You must study their deliveries, their use of their bodies, their timing, and their use of audio and vocal effects.

Being black and speaking properly are not mutually exclusive. My father was an African, and he spoke beautifully at home. Nelson Mandela speaks beautifully. Should Mandela put his hat on backwards and say, 'Yo, homey, this is Nelson. Yo, Winnie, yo, this is def'?