Running A 'Clean' Comedy Club

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Anders Berg, owner of Scandinavia Service System Inc., a Phoenix-based cleaning service, and SwedeClean.com, a janitorial supply Web site, spends one night a month as producer and sponsor of the Ahwatukee Comedy Club in Phoenix.

"My friend, Tom Grayson, who is an airline captain, is also a comedian," says Anders. "Tom would drag me to one city after another to watch him perform. My daughter happened to start working at a local hotel, and it made me think that maybe the hotel could have Tom perform his comedy routines there instead of his traveling to other cities to perform."

The hotel agreed and in January 2005 Anders and Tom debuted the Ahwatukee Comedy Club and they have been have been offering monthly comedy shows ever since.

Even though he said it wasn't his goal to get involved, Anders ended up as the club's sponsor and producer. He handles the money and tickets for the club while Tom performs and handles the guest comedians.

Fitting for this industry, the Ahwatukee Comedy Club is a "clean" comedy club. The humor cannot include profanities and it needs to be similar to what would be accepted to appear on television.

"You go to a lot of comedy clubs in this country, and the performers immediately start using four-letter words," says Anders. "I like humor, and I like jokes, but not profanity. I don't think that profanity is funny."

In addition to being the producer and the sponsor of the comedy club shows, Anders says he figuratively and literally wears many different hats.

"The night of the show, I keep changing the hats I wear, which makes people smile, and I run around and make sure that folks are comfortable," he says.

Anders doesn't personally perform comedy routines, other than to start the show out with a variation of a familiar opening line: "It's Saturday night — live from Ahwatukee."

Besides the monthly comedy show, the club sponsors charity events, such as "Boots for Troops," a comedy show that helps a local military veterans' group raise money for their charitable efforts.

Though he's not a performer or joke-writer at his comedy club, Anders collects and shares jokes in other settings.

"When I see a joke, I save it. I have 1,500 pages of jokes," he says. "When I hear people laugh, that's really when I feel we've done something good."

Gretchen Roufs, an 18-year janitorial supply industry veteran, owns a marketing and public relations company in San Antonio. To suggest someone you think should be featured in “Freetime,” contact her at Gretchen@GretchenRoufs.com.