Comedy CentralNo one tells a story like Bill Cosby, whether it makes sense or not.
Put him across the table from Stephen Colbert, and out comes a treasure trove of nonsensical nuggets of humor, wisdom and awesome anecdotes.
Comparing the "Cosby Effect" to the "Colbert Bump," Colbert brought up on Wednesday's episode of The Colbert Report that Nelson Mandela and his jailers legendarily watched The Cosby Show during his imprisonment in South Africa. Which brought Colbert to the logical question: "Why isn't Morgan Freeman playing you in a movie?"
Cosby thought about it for a moment, then said, "Out of respect, Morgan and I worked together on The Electric Company, so I think, out of respect..." He paused, then said with utmost gravity, "Morgan is waiting for me to die. You see?"
"Will he call you up and ask you how you're doing?" Colbert asked, somewhat facetiously, paving the way for Cosby to launch into one of his signature riffs.
"Not only that," the comic legend continued, "but he's asked how Sidney is doing—Poitier...Harry Belafonte, everybody wants to know how they're all doing.
"He's not a happy man," he deadpanned, the joke being of course that Freeman is calling up all of the esteemed older black actors, waiting for his chance to play one of them in a movie and just waiting for one of them to die. "Not a happy man."
Asked how he's feeling in the meantime, Cosby said, "Well, sometimes they'll post on the Internet, somebody will post that I died." But otherwise he's fine.
"Morgan calls," Cosby continued, really drawing it out for affect now, "and I have a machine upon my death, if you call it sounds like I'm answering. Fourth ring—'Hey, what's happening?'"
Then the caller says hello and the machine goes, "Stop saying hello, what's goin' on, man?' So that fools a lot of people. So I think that Morgan is going to be all right—he may have to play some people that nobody knows."
But wait, there's more! Cosby's riff on Freeman is within the first couple of minutes, but watch the whole thing for more hilarious yet inevitably strange stories.