82-year-old Jerry Lewis on retirement: 'Why?'

[October 24, 2008]  SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- These days, the King of Comedy is graying at the temples and sometimes a little wobbly on his feet. But don't ask him about retirement.

"A break? No, why? You got something better to do?" Jerry Lewis told a reporter Friday who asked if the 82-year-old entertainer was contemplating leaving the stage after more than 50 years of performing. "Show me somewhere better than this and I'll consider it."

Lewis was fronting a news conference in Sydney to promote his latest stage show, a retrospective of his career that includes show tunes with a 24-piece band, excerpts from his scores of movies and television shows, and his trademark slapstick comedy.

As he walked onto a small stage at a luxury hotel for Friday's news conference, Lewis lost his balance on the stairs and ended up stumbling slightly toward a reporter on the floor. Without missing a beat, and true to ad-libbing form, Lewis grabbed the reporter's hand and started pumping it, saying, "How do you do?"

"Don't you understand that when you croak, it's for a ve-e-e-e-ry long time," Lewis said later when asked about retirement. "So you want to get in as much activity as you can before you go."

Another topic the entertainer doesn't give much time to? The U.S. presidential election.

"Everybody talks about politicians -- I don't do it because I do comedy already," he said, declining to comment on either Barack Obama or John McCain. "There's nothing fun about it."

[Associated Press; By ROHAN SULLIVAN]

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