Last week, we caught up with Mark Little, winner of the $25,000 grand prize in the 2009 Yuk Yuk’s Great Canadian Laugh Off, to see what he’s been doing with all that cash. 

YYLO: How has the Yuk Yuk’s Great Canadian Laugh Off changed your life?

ML:It’s a lot easier to focus on writing and performing my own as-yet-unprofitable material with $25,000 in the bank, so that’s been the main change: financial peace of mind. Temporarily. I guess it’s similar to how musicians/artists/writers must feel when they get government grants. Yuk Yuk’s is my Canadian Government. Make what you will of that analogy.

YYLO: What have you been up to since your big win last year?

ML:So, so much. My main focus has always been sketch comedy, and in the last year my sketch group Picnicface worked with Mark McKinney on developing a sketch series for the Comedy Network. It’s currently in the second stage of development, which, if I know anything about the Canadian TV industry, means it should go to air sometime between 2011 and never. We also wrote a book of lies about Canada for Harper Collins. They have the first draft; we’ll see if they publish it. We’re marketing it as a nice Christmas present for people who like to be lied to.

The most exciting thing is a feature-length movie script that Andrew Bush, Scott Vrooman and I wrote over the last year called Roller Town. We all had to learn how to roller skate for the trailer we shot. That’s the last major thing I did after winning the Laugh Off: buy rollerskates.

YYLO: How did you get into comedy?

ML: I did improv before anything. I got into it in high school through the Canadian Improv Games, which is this amazing organization that spans the country. Nothing glib to add to that, Mark? No, I’m good.

YYLO: Have you always been funny?

ML: I always made my friends laugh, but I’d get intimidated by the real class clowns with their spot-on velociraptor impressions. I think there’s an O.C. episode about that. I remember watching it and thinking, “You’ve captured my life again, O.C.”

YYLO: Where do you find your comedic inspiration?

ML:Other comedians get me real inspired, especially the balls-out original ones. Paul F. Tompkins blows my mind. That whole Comedy Death Ray crowd. Andy Daly. And sitcoms. Eastbound and Down, Seinfeld (still), Curb Your Enthusiasm, Peep Show. Especially Peep Show. Oh, and certain novelists, like the late David Foster Wallace. As for the jokes/sketches I write, the direct inspiration usually comes from things that happen to me — not things I do so much as things that are done to me. I don’t live life in any sort of active sense.

YYLO: If you were a fruit, what type of fruit would you be and why?

ML: I’d be a tomato. People would say, “I thought you were a vegetable…” and I’d be like, “Oh, did you?”

YYLO: What advice would you give to the contestants in this year’s laugh off?

ML:Advice? I don’t know. The judges are totally different in the early rounds compared to the finals. So… don’t get too down if you’re getting low marks from radio DJs? Nothing against radio DJs, of course. (Of course.)

I remember a friend told me that certain comics had an advantage in last year’s competition because they’d peppered their sets with a variety of judge-pleasing material: political bits, relationship bits, etc. Maybe that’s a good tactic, but all my stuff was pretty one-track and I did alright. So I guess my advice is don’t worry about tailoring your set to please the judges — be they radio DJs or, you know, not radio DJs.

ML: In response to your unasked eighth question: Big Mama’s House.