Oswalt shames jokes thief

The video evidence...

Patton Oswalt has named and shamed a fellow stand-up for stealing ‘huge chunks’ of his act.

The comedian – who starred in the sitcom King Of Queens and provided the voice of Remy in Ratatouille – also accused Nick Madson of lifting hokes from Dave Attell and Louis CK.

Videos posted on YouTube – see below – show he took not just the ideas, but whole routines, and performed them verbaitim.

On his MySpace blog, Oswalt wrote that he had previously pitied joke thieves for their lack of talent rather than get angry – but once he was the victim, found himself unpleasantly wounded.

He wrote: ‘I’m really hurt. It feels unpleasant. I worked very hard on those jokes – honed them night after night, kept challenging myself to make them funnier. Plus, I have a constant gallery of friends and colleagues in my head – Louie CK and Dave Attell among them – against whose work I compare my writing, and ask myself, sometimes harshly, if I’ve truly gotten my stuff to their level.

‘And I was also under the delusion that I’d developed enough of a voice – enough of a unique, personal voice – that my stuff would be hard to steal. And yet here’s Nick Madson – who, it turns out, is a stage actor – reciting huge chunks of my material and collecting a paycheck for doing it. ’

Patton added that another comedians on the show confronted Madson about the theft – and he claimed to have written for the comics from whom he stole. ‘So fuck him,’ Oswalt concluded.

Here is the evidence:

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Published: 30 Apr 2010

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