Mike Bocchetti

Early life

Bocchetti was born on April 3, 1961, in Staten Island to a Catholic Italian family of a humble blue-collar background. The oldest of five children, he graduated from Tottenville High School in 1979. Often bullied as a child for being overweight, he was inspired to become a comedian after hearing Redd Foxx. He joined the Marines in 1980 but washed out after a few weeks.

Career

Bocchetti began performing comedy in 1992 and has worked New York-area stages for decades, including the Staten Island Comedy Festival and The Bamboozle. He was the announcer on DirecTV's The Artie Lange Show from 2012 to 2014, having been friends with Lange since the 1990s. His television appearances include two seasons of NBC's Last Comic Standing in 2003 and 2006, a 2004 Monk episode, and a 2015 episode of Louie. He was a guest on 25 episodes of Nights With Mary between 2003 and 2012.

With comedian Ken Burmeister, he formed Blasted Films, which produced the web series Tubby Man: Hero of the Bullied in 2013. He has been a frequent guest on talk-radio and podcasts including The Howard Stern Show and Opie and Anthony. He started his own podcast, The Mike Bocchetti Show, in 2014, and later relaunched it on YouTube in 2022 with co-host Jenny. In 2002, he played a role in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3, and other film work includes Chooch and Faraway Eyes. A 2009 short documentary, Who Is Mike Bocchetti?, covered his career.