I was MC-ing. There was a guy in Long Island who taking the comics’ jokes and putting them in cartoons. So they said, Keep an eye out.

Sure enough, one night somebody said to me, “Richie, there’s a guy out there with a tape recorder.” A well-dressed man with a beautiful woman.

At the end of the show I said to the guy, “You have a tape recorder. You taping this a part of the show?”

He said, yes. I said, “Well, why don’t you listen? I’m going to make it nice and easy. Take the tape out. You hand it to me.You go home. Nobody gets hurt. OK?”

He said, “I’m not going to do that.”

I said, “Let me tell you what’s going to happen. Before you leave here, I will have the tape in my pocket. That’s the bottom line. There’s nothing you can say or do that going to change that.”

“You tell him, Richie!” My comic friends all behind me.

He goes, “That’s not going to happen.”

I said, “I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your nice lady here. I have six comic friends behind me.”

He goes, “What are you going to do? Rough me up?”

I said, “No, they’re not going to do anything. I’m going to get the tape. I’m going to ask you one more time, and then it’s going to get hell. I don’t want to use bad language. You’ve got a nice lady here. You better give me the fucking tape, or I’ll…”

He said, “No!”

“Oh,yeah!” I hit the guy, pop him. I wrestled him down to the ground, I’m grabbing his tape recorder.

He goes, “Gimme that tape!”

I go, “You’re not getting it!”

He goes, “I’m a psychiatrist! One of your comedians is my patient!”

“Oh no!”

“Yeah!”

I get up and go, “Aw, I’m really sorry.”

Actually, he pushed me first and I pushed him back and then I punched him. That was the last physical confrontation for me.