Brian Regan gets laughs by keeping it clean

One of the biggest honors in any profession is recognition from your peers. As great as commercial success can be, there’s something special about people who do what you do acknowledging how well you do your job.

What’s the biggest honor in film? The press-bestowed Golden Globes? No, it’s the Oscars, given by the industry. The Emmys and Grammys are more prestigious than the People’s Choice Awards.

So when thinking of who the greatest stand-up comic is — well, it’s subjective, but if you ask working comics, Brian Regan, who will perform at Blaisdell Concert Hall on Friday, at least deserves consideration.

Jerry Seinfeld — in an episode of his web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” — called Regan “one of my favorite, favorite comedians.”

On his “WTF with Marc Maron Podcast” in 2012, the host and veteran stand-up took the superlative further.

“Any comic that I talk to, you’re like, ‘Who’s the funniest guy?’ ‘Brian Regan’s the funniest guy.’ It’s like a given! There’s Brian Regan and then there’s other people.”

How does Regan feel about such lofty praise?

“It means everything to me,” Regan said recently in a call from his Las Vegas home. “To have people who do what you do like what you do — it’s like the ultimate compliment. But at the same time I try to be careful not to play to the back of the room — you know, that’s an expression in comedy, where comedians care more about comedians than they do the audience. … Some comedians care more about the audience than the back of the room, some care more about the back of the room than they do the audience. I consider myself a pig; I want everybody laughing.”

Regan, who grew up in Miami as one of eight siblings, decided he wanted to become a stand-up while at Heidelberg College in Ohio, and dropped out in 1981, 10 credits shy of his degree. (He finished up in 1997, doing his homework from the road.)

The timing was good.

Though he thought about moving to New York right away, the boom in stand-up meant he could move back to Miami instead when a comedy club opened in nearby Fort Lauderdale.

As the boom continued, clubs spread around the country, allowing Regan to perform in a different city every week for a couple of years before moving to the Big Apple when he felt he needed “to take the next step.” In the city’s lively comedy scene, Regan became fast friends with such future stars as Seinfeld and Chris Rock, who gave Regan a small role in his 2014 film “Top Five.”

Other than some voice work, that was the extent of Regan’s acting career until last year, when he was cast as a regular in TV’s “Loudermilk,” starring Ron Livingston (“Office Space” and “Swingers”) and directed by Peter Farrelly, who with his brother Bobby made some of the funniest movies of the past 25 years (“Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary” among them).

Regan’s stage presence inspired Farrelly to cast him. The stand-up paces the boards the way so many comics do, but he also contorts his face and body to great effect, twists his voice into enough different characters to make Mel Blanc envious and often strays from merely telling jokes into full-on visual depictions.

“He (Farrelly) said that he could tell from my act that I’m an actor,” Regan said. The director told him, “You know how to act. It’s just a question of figuring out how to do it with cameras all around.”

Though he has enjoyed making “Loudermilk,” Regan’s focus remains on his stand-up. He is halfway through a two-special deal with Netflix. The first — “Nunchucks and Flamethrowers” — debuted in November, and Regan has slowly been working in new material for the 2019 follow-up. (“What I’m doing on stage now is about 60 percent different from what was in the Netflix special,” he said.)

Even when you’re one of the best, it helps to have a hook, something to bring the audience in, something that sets you apart from everyone else.

Regan’s hook is that he works clean — no profanity and no bawdy material.

Though Regan went “clean” as a challenge to himself — “to see how much mileage I can get without hitting certain buttons” — the move has also paid off. He has a sizable and loyal following in religious Utah, where he sold out 10 shows at Salt Lake City’s Abravenal Hall in 2012 and has since moved up to regular two-concert stints at the much larger Vivint Arena, where the NBA’s Utah Jazz play.

He is to the Beehive State what Jo Koy is to the Aloha State.

Regan’s stand-up style is an exuberant combination of observational and absurdist, with a willingness — an eagerness even — to laugh at himself. Along with his own foibles, among Regan’s favored topics are sports, food and the intricacies of the English language.

One area he stays away from is politics.

“I always liked comedy ’cause you’re taking everyone in the audience and making them one,” Regan said. “Not everyone agrees on everything, (but) for that laugh, or for that hour, you’re trying to get everyone to at least agree that we’re here having a good time.”