Things have been good between television and Paul Morrissey lately, thanks mainly to his repeat appearances on The Late Late Show. The low-key baby-faced comic got his first TV spot on the CBS late nighter just a little over a year ago and has been asked back three times since, which is apparently some sort of record.

Not bad for a young standup who has neither an agent nor a manager. Morrissey half-jokes he’s afraid to get representation now — what if it breaks his winning streak? — but he’s been around the block with television once before, so he might have an advantage.

Before comedy, Morrissey started out doing local news, mainly sports, at a local station in northern California. Problem was, he got that job on the strength of his college basketball career and didn’t know what to do on camera.

So, naturally, he took a class in standup comedy; taught by no less than Karen Anderson, who went on to win six Emmys for her work writing for Ellen DeGeneres. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the fast track to replacing Dan Rather.

“I was the weekend sports anchor but they’d make me do news during the week. Murders and stuff, chili cook-offs and yo-yo conventions — horrible things you couldn’t help but make fun of,” he says, on the phone from his home in L.A.

He was eventually told his “sarcasm was a little too thick” for news and switched to being a smart-ass.

The pay was lousy anyway. “I think I qualified for food stamps at the TV station,” he says, “so it’s not like I was throwing money away to chase my dream.”

Morrissey, who headlines this week at Absolute Comedy, is known as a clean comic. He’s not shy about wanting to “keep it silly” and does material — in his native and nasal upstate New York accent — that takes a pass on heavy stuff like politics. He prefers riffing on his marriage and ephemera like high school rings and gym memberships.

“For me comedy is just a way to talk about stupid things... so I like to ask people what deodorant they’re wearing and make fun of that rather than what their politics are,” he says, going on to borrow a line from Gary Shandling that he’s, “a comic but in my spare time things bother me.”

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