• November 20, 2006
• Vol. 66
• No. 21

20th Anniversary: Comic Relief

By Ryan Pienciak

Still Cracking Wise After All These Years, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal Reunite—Again—For a Good Cause and Stand Up for Victims of Hurricane Katrina

Back in 1986 Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams teamed up to emcee the very first Comic Relief special—a star-studded HBO telethon for the homeless, dreamed up by comedy writer Bob Zmuda, that became a tradition until 1998. On Nov. 18 the benefit returns for a special 20th-birthday celebration aiding survivors of Hurricane Katrina. And the show's three hosts? PEOPLE's Ryan Pienciak discovered they may be a bit older and grayer, but they're still not afraid to keep the censors busy....

So what's it like to reunite?

CRYSTAL: We just love being with each other—and we're doing it in Vegas, so it'll be cool.

WILLIAMS (singing): Las Vegas, a crazy town! There's a lot of money there—just on the tables alone.

CRYSTAL: It's a great way to get the word out that there's still huge problems [on the Gulf Coast] so people don't forget....

WILLIAMS: Like people in the White House!

GOLDBERG: Save it [for the show]!

Have things changed since the last Comic Relief telethon?

GOLDBERG: My waistline has changed—I know that.

WILLIAMS (in an old man voice): There were no cell phones when we started. There were just phones in the old days.

CRYSTAL: Are you, like, a bear? An animated bear? What is this voice?

What was the most outrageous thing that ever happened on the show?

WILLIAMS: There was the time I did the talking vagina. It was the first Vagina Monologue.

CRYSTAL: And then—then it got dirty.

This year the show will also be broadcast on TBS. Are you going to clean up your material for basic cable?

WILLIAMS: BLEEP them! We will not tone it down! That's BLEEP!

GOLDBERG: TBS will just have to be quick [with the bleeping].

WILLIAMS: They'll have a 10-second delay and witness-protection things for certain areas of the body.

Does anything stick out as a memorable moment from any of the shows?

CRYSTAL: Jerry Lewis.

WILLIAMS: That was insane. He shows up at rehearsal, and there's a lot of comics who did impressions of him, some not too kind, and all of a sudden it was like, "Ahhhh! Run! Run! He's here!"

Did you ever think you'd be doing this schtick for 20 years?

GOLDBERG: We hoped not, because we thought we might be able to actually get the problem of homelessness under control. New Orleans is a place where maybe we can actually do something ...

WILLIAMS: ... and also bring attention to it again. It's still in really bad shape.

CRYSTAL: The problems are still out there, and what's cool is we're still there. This is the "We Still Have Our Own Hips" tour!

WILLIAMS: We're still moving! Thank you!

CRYSTAL: What's good about [Comic Relief] is you can do stand-up, go wild, go crazy, but then have a serious kind of moment. It gives you a chance to make people think and have fun.