Gilbert Gottfried’s pals reveal shocking jokes he made about his own death
nypost.comlife-ending illness a secret from all but his closest friends. He did what he could to maintain his wild sense of humor even as death loomed.
Fittingly, those occupying his inner circle strove to keep Gottfried, who died Tuesday at age 67, laughing.Penn Jillette, who met Gottfried decades ago when they appeared together on the Howard Stern show ranked among the last to speak with the comedian. “Being in the room with Gilbert equaled being in the room with Miles Davis,” said Jillette of his late friend’s freewheeling, improvisational talents.Jillette’s wife, Emily, was in the hospital room with Gottfried and his wife, Dara, and she held a phone to Gottfried’s ear so the two comedians could have one last conversation.“Twenty minutes before he was officially dead, when they were going to pull the ventilator off of Gilbert, I spoke with him,” Jillette, choking up, told The Post. “I tried to make a few jokes.
Then I fell apart and said, ‘I love you.’ That was it.”Jillette, who is devoutly scientific, added, “I have no delusion that he understood me.”Gottfried died from recurrent ventricular tachycardia, a heart disease brought on by myotonic dystrophy type 2.Jillette told The Post that, even while fighting a fatal illness, the comedian — who, “when he wasn’t working, [could be] incredibly soft-spoken and gentle and not mean” — maintained his comedic edge. “We always liked to do transgressive humor,” said Jillette. “If you thought Gilbert was not safe for work on TV or movies or Stern, you have no idea how far Gilbert can go.”Sharing, he told The Post’s reporter, “would end my career and yours and his memory in one fell swoop.”According to Frank Santopadre — a friend and co-host of “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing, Colossal.
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