Fame Audit: Howie Mandel

Questions
1. When a mildly successful comedian takes a job as a network gameshow host, should that increase or decrease his fame stock? Increase? Okay. But what if the comedy shtick he is best known for includes a rubber glove placed on his head?

2. Is Bobby's World the most interesting work Howie Mandel was ever a part of? Or was it when he played Maurice the Monster in Little Monsters?
*Side note: I guess his OCD wasn't so bad during the filming of that, was it?

3. Where did Howie Mandel go when Bobby's World ended?

Here we have an interesting figure in Mr.Mandel for whom I believe a serious fame audit is in order given his resurrgence on NBC. It would seem that when Bobby's World--a marginally entertaining cartoon based on one of Mandel's standup "characters"--ended, so too did Howie's carrer. During that time he apparently did little more than shave his head and make public his apparently very charming(?)bout with OCD and germophobia. Then in 2006 he re-emerges as the host of Deal or No Deal, which is really a game of luck that people just eat up for no reason, and people love him. His audience appeal in this endeavor now gives him his own prank/hidden camera show on NBC, which is a theme Mandel must think he's a bit of a guru at having done some hidden camera work with Jay Leno this decade. It seems his stock is rising undeservedly, and I have a suspicion it's all because of that fist pound crap. He's not funny and he can't even act well when he's "answering the phone," but he's safe and he probably appeals to old women, and that is why he's on television twice a week.

Howie Mandel: Funny in children's comedies in the early to mid 90s, now is safe and charismatic even if unfunny.

Relative level of current fame: Jon Stewart

Should be: Lower than Bob Saget


**This segment is brought to you by (and stolen completely from) a great but now defunct website called Fametracker.**