Tim Heidecker Accidentally Tricked NBC Into Implying That Bill Cosby Played the Riyadh Comedy Festival
No, Bill Cosby did not perform stand-up at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, a fact that should have been obvious if the NBC News production team stopped to think about it — I mean, if Cosby traveled to the notoriously dry Saudi Arabia, what the hell would he even spike?
By now, everyone in America who has an interest in the comedy industry knows that nearly all of our stand-up A-listers, from Bill Burr to Dave Chappelle to Kevin Hart, flew out to Saudi Arabia late last month and performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Although the list of participating comedians is a veritable who’s-who of greedy, spineless artists willing to promise not to speak truth to power in exchange for blood money, just remember that the American comedy industry has far worse power players than the Saudi shills — and the Saudi Royal Family isn’t interested in having those figures sully their good name.
In early August, long before the Riyadh Comedy Festival became front-page entertainment news, Tim Heidecker mocked the list of stand-up superstars lining up for a paycheck from the Saudi Crown Prince and joked that the amoral festival would also feature the talents of infamous comedy sex pests such as Cosby and Woody Allen. Then, when NBC hopped on the Riyadh story long after Heidecker called out participating comics, they accidentally displayed an edited festival poster from Heidecker’s Office Hours podcast during their coverage of the backlash to the event.
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On a recent episode of Office Hours, Heidecker and his co-hosts cracked up when they realized that NBC accidentally displayed their fully revamped and hilariously fake lineup for the Riyadh festival, which, along with Cosby and Allen, included Andy Dick, Dan Nainan and Carlos Mencia.
“I don’t know if we’re getting any credit for this, you don’t see any of these clickbait people talking about it!” Heidecker complained about his accidental but hilarious prank on the mainstream media. “Nobody notices!” Well, we noticed, even if NBC News isn’t quite as detail-oriented.
As the Office Hours co-hosts pointed out, the production team at NBC News likely made this gaffe because Office Hours’ early commentary on the Riyadh Comedy Festival preceded the widespread coverage of the international event, causing the podcast’s fake poster to shoot to the top of the Google Images results.
And, while the NBC producers can be forgiven for not recognizing figures like friend of the show Jay Weingarten and disgraced former Food Network host Josh Denny, someone at the news network definitely should have raised the alarm when their graphic implied that Dick was still getting work in 2025.