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By AMY CALDER
Staff Writer 10/30/2007

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FUNNY GUY: Internationally known comedian Bob Marley, who attended Waterville schools between 6th and 8th grades, will perform on November 2 at the Waterville Opera house. For a sample of his humor, click here.

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But he knew he could make people laugh.

"I was class clown at Waterville Junior High," Marley, now 40, recalls. "I've been class clown all my whole life. I'm the only class clown that has never had detention. I'm lucky because my demographics were good. I could make the teachers laugh, too."

Marley -- now a comedian and actor in demand internationally -- will perform Friday night at the Waterville Opera House.

He has appeared on more than 100 television shows in his 17-year career and has traveled the late-night talk-show circuit, appearing with David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, among others. He was featured on "Prime Time Live" with Diane Sawyer, NBC's Comedy Showcase, and does radio shows.

Marley, now of Falmouth, lived three years in Waterville, from sixth through eighth grade. He has a soft spot in his heart for the Elm City.

"Waterville for me is such a great place and I grew up on Burleigh Street, right off of Mayflower Hill," Marley said in a telephone interview recently. "I never realized as a kid how lucky I was to have those three years in that town until I actually went back a couple of years ago. I got in town early for my show at the Opera House and I drove down through that street and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, any kid would be lucky to have a street like this.'"

He said he attended catechism at St. Francis de Sales and sixth grade at Pleasant Street School, now called Albert S. Hall School. He remembers playing kickball with a big red ball there.

"You could whale it over onto Elm Street," he said. "We'd get all geared up. We'd get hepped up on Nerds and those little candies and give that thing a good whale. I remember I took a snowball and chucked it across the playground one day and hit a girl on the nose and almost broke her nose and I was like, 'Oh, boy, I'm going to hell for that one.'"

Seventh grade at the junior high was especially great because it was the year the school was being renovated, he said.

"I only had to go to school 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. my seventh grade year -- the whole year -- and I was like, 'This town is like the best town I've ever heard of.' I was home every day at 11. Me and all my buddies were all playing street hockey every day."

He played football, street hockey and other sports with Doug Frame, now the athletic director for Waterville Senior High School, as well as boyhood friends Joseph Jabar Jr. and his brother, Jason; Willy Brown, Ian Hatch and Tony Mavrinac.

"We had the best sports neighborhood in Waterville," Marley said. "We would take on other neighborhoods."

Never one to let an opportunity for humor slide by, Marley says he always remembers good times in Waterville.

"Every time I drive by 33 and 34 -- those two exits -- I don't know what they're called now, formally. It's like all the exits got married. 'You remember me, I used to be Exit 19.' I always tell people, I say, listen, they did that for the tourists 'cause they couldn't follow the exits. They did it so they could follow the mile markers and I said, 'Listen, there's only 12 exits in the state of Maine; if you can't remember 'em, you can't come.'"

Marley was born in Bangor. He remembers as a third-grader his two Irish uncles sitting at camp on Sundays drinking brown liquid out of tumblers, smoking and telling stories. Marley always tried to interject and was unsuccessful, but once said something that got his uncles laughing hysterically.

"I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, they're finally listening to me -- I guess I just gotta make them laugh.' And then when I went to Waterville I think by my seventh grade year I could do it at my disposal. I could do it really when I wanted to do it."

By the time he got to high school -- he graduated from Deering High School in Portland in 1985 and likes to say he graduated 242 out of 178 kids -- he was doing impressions, but still wasn't aware he wanted to make comedy a career.

"You don't really know you want to be a comedian, but you know you love to make people laugh," he said.

He majored in community health at University of Maine at Farmington. He performed in a talent show his junior year and was hooked.

During his senior year, he drove to Boston every night to perform in clubs.

He attended class at UMF from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., drove to Boston to perform and at 10:30 or 11 p.m. headed back to Farmington. He'd arrive around 3 or 4 a.m., sleep three hours and return to class.

"I did that my whole senior year," he said.

Marley and his family -- he has a wife and three children -- moved back to Maine from Los Angeles two years ago.

"It's the best thing we ever did. I always tell people I loved L.A. It was a great experience; it was really, really good to me but in the two years I've been home I've never woke up one morning and thought about Los Angeles. But every day I lived in Los Angeles I'd wake up and say, 'Hm, I wonder what it's like in Maine today?' It's home, you know what I mean?"

He says he loves and takes his influence from old-school comedians such as Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett and Rodney Dangerfield, all of whom he worked with.

"I've been super lucky, you know? I really have been lucky -- I definitely know that."

Amy Calder -- 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com

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