Why is howie mandel afraid of germs

She's healthy, she's clean, it's not like a stranger," Mandel said. Mandel has been on the stage for 30 years. His first big break came April 19, , when he took the stage at a small comedy club in Toronto called Yuk Yuk's. He loved to perform and felt at home in the spotlight. So it's no surprise that he soon became the featured act. Terry kept his horoscope from that day, which reads: "Tonight your life will change forever. From there his career took off.

Wayne Fiscus for six years on the Emmy Award-winning drama, "St. Elsewhere," and delved in film and voice-over work. Mandel's only unexplored territory as a performer was hosting his own talk show. That opportunity came in with "The Howie Mandel Show. And I also had my friend as a surgeon and I had a surgical scrub that I would do before and after the show," he said. The show was canceled after just one season. He said he found the offer insulting.

But Terry convinced him otherwise. She told him to take the deal. Mandel is using his new fame to help shed the stigma attached to mental health. He recordered a public service announcement for anxiety disorders and is testifying on Capitol Hill. I've gotta go to my psychiatrist. I'll be back in an hour. Despite his fear of germs, the "Deal Or No Deal" host still tours the country nights out of the year, performing stand-up comedy.

Though staying in hotels is difficult since he won't touch the comforter, the shower floor, or the phone, he said he does it because he feels most at home on stage.

And that's the only time when I feel part of the world. We'll notify you here with news about. But he did spend hours every day on the phone with daughter Jackie Schultz making prank calls, calling pals and being silly. No subject is off limits — the father-daughter duo recently had a spirited discussion about getting high — and they clearly share a similar sense of humor. Read Next. Emma Watson addresses retirement, engagement rumors on soc This story has been shared 56, times.

This story has been shared 17, times. This story has been shared 13, times. This story has been shared 9, times. View author archive follow on twitter Get author RSS feed. Name required. But if you pulled the blanket away? Give me the blanket again! In the s and 80s, stand-up comics started getting sitcom deals. Billy Crystal had Soap.

Freddie Prinze had done Chico and the Man. A path was being beaten from L. He did the audition. When he got home, his wife asked him how it went. I went into a room with these producer guys, and halfway through they stopped me.

So it was shit. It was a medical drama about young residents at a rundown hospital. He showed up on the set and met Ed Begley, Jr. He met Bill Daniels, from The Graduate. Mandel was excited and a little freaked out. Can you recommend a school, or a class or something?

Just listen. Elsewhere, and he could do the classical work, if you will, of the show. And he did the same thing on camera, where you have to really be invested to totally believe that you are that guy in the emergency room. He committed. But I remember him as a very talented actor.

And also as a really sweet, nice man. I had no idea. But basically he was always just such a sweet man. Very caring man.

The youngest cast members saw the show change their careers, and their lives. There was a lot of camaraderie. We evolved in this little nest of young people. We hatched as parents. We got a little more known. We hatched into the world a little more together. We were these little birds nesting, and we just flew. Is he doing anything? It was a comedy club in Toronto, and Mandel was there with some friends one night in the spring of It was amateur night, and his friends urged him to go up and try it.

Mandel was a carpet salesman back then. No kind of performer. But he was their nutty friend. The kind of guy you shove up to the stage on amateur night at the comedy club. Well, Howie just slid right into it. There he was, standing there, under his big hair, smiling into the lights. People started laughing. And people laughed more. He hit puberty late, he had long hair, and he was…a little crazy, it seemed to the other kids. He had good parents, a good brother, a nice life at home. But you want to be loved by someone other than your mom and dad.

And so when he stood up there causing strangers to laugh, he felt loved. It was a new feeling for him, and he never wanted to not feel that way again.

It was amateur night. He got up. He got laughs. And then he got phone calls. Mike Douglas. They wanted him on television.

Mandel was doing his thing. It was working, whatever it was. And you talk about fear. Pryor was working it out, and from a place of such honesty and hurt. And I would watch Richard Pryor maybe take it too far with his language, or talking about religion. He saw the fear make Pryor better, and the better he got, the more fear he summoned. Mandel became a student of his own act. He thought about Richard Pryor. He thought about the red light. And he thought about why people laugh.

Why are you laughing at somebody falling down? Or a pie in the face? And he and Terry were in his dressing room between the two shows, looking out onto 6 th Avenue.

The 6, from the first show were walking out of the theater, and the 6, people for the second show were lining up. A mass of people, there for him. Cops directing traffic. Stanchions corralling the crowds.