American readers of this blog who are of a certain age will very likely remember watching Gallagher on television in the 1980s. He started his career as a conventional stand-up comedian, making use of his collegiate studies as an English major (!) to regale his audience with the oddities of the language...
"Con is the opposite of pro. So Congress must be the opposite of progress."And so on. Then he found his shtick in physical comedy, and parlayed that into a series of television specials.