Grand Casino Biloxi will begin its entertainment year, not with a glitzy headliner, but with some good old-fashioned, down-home humor.

Comedian James Gregory, who will perform Wednesday through Saturday in the casinos show room, says the only thing Southern about him is his Georgia accent.

However, those raised south of the Mason-Dixon will recognize a few of his favorite subjects covered-dish potlucks, crazy cousins, Waffle Houses, and funeral gossip.

Lenny Sisselman, describes him as a rather conservative, not-so-politically correct modern-day Mark Twain or Will Rogers.

He gathered plenty of material traveling the country before hitting the comedy circuit.

Gregory spent years as a door-to-door salesman before getting the nerve to go up on stage at Atlanta's Punchline Comedy Club in 1982.

"I never wanted to be a comedian, never even thought about it. Now, I had always enjoyed comedy and been a fan of comedy, but it was almost an accident. My friends who always thought I was funny because I was always cutting up at the coffee shop or work thought I should go up on stage and they dared me to do it. That’s how I got into it, and glad I did it by the way," he says.

After a few rough open-mike nights, Gregory embarked on a new career, drawing on family stories and everyday observations for material. He shies away from categorizations, saying his comedy is from the heartland not just the South.

"I stay away from what they call the toilet humor, there’s none of that. But it's a gut-busting, hilarious laughter show. There are a lot of descriptions. Now you read about comedians and they use all these words like stream-of-conscious humor or cerebral humor and nobody uses the word "funny" anymore. I try to do my show where it's just plain damn funny, which is what I think comedy should be. "People who leave the show feel a lot better then when they came in," he says.

"I have people come up to me after the show and say, 'I believe you know my family.' And the reason that is, is that these stories that I'm telling on stage and these comedy routines are based on real life."
As an example, he describes his routine about how Baptists respond to any event, whether birth or death, with a covered dish.

At a funeral, he says, folks will often gossip more about the food brought then the deceased.

He demonstrates, with a whisper, followed by a hearty laugh: 'I don't know what Elizabeth put in that potato salad."

Food is a continuing link in his shows. Gregory, who describes himself as an "anti-health nut," blames what he calls 'health nuts" for out-of-control kids, whether it be ill manners or classroom violence.

In fact, he sees a correlation between food and children’s behavior.

"When I was little, we got up in the morning and my mother cooked up something in lard; fried something in the skillet in lard, some kind of meat in grease, he explains. "We had pancakes, waffles - we thought syrup was a beverage. By the time the kids got to school all we wanted to do was sit down and rest."

"Now we got these young parents, I call them wimpy parents: non-drinking, non-smoking granola-munching people. They get up in the morning and they give their kids a banana and a bran muffin. That’s probably why they're shooting each other at school - because they're just so upset about breakfast.

In 1986 an Alabama newspaper editor described Gregory as the funniest man in America. Gregory made the appellation stick; he's now billed as just that.

When asked if it was marketing genius or simply the truth, Gregory didn't miss a beat.

"I believe it with all my heart, minute for minute, second by second nobody gets more laughs than I do. That's why they keep coming to shows," he says.