Bill Maher Reveals Worst Job He Ever Had Before Comedy & Late-Night TV

Bill Maher
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What To Know

  • Bill Maher revealed on his Club Random podcast his worst pre-comedy job.
  • He described the role as similar to being an au pair, which he disliked due to his aversion to children.
  • Before his comedy career, Maher worked various odd jobs, including lawn mowing, grocery stocking, and food service, often struggling financially.

Bill Maher recently revealed the worst job he ever had before finding fame in comedy and late-night TV.

On the January 12 episode of his Club Random podcast, Maher, 69, sat down with his guest, Australian actor Joel Edgerton, 51. During their wide-ranging chat, Edgerton asked the Real Time With Bill Maher host about the worst job he took on before hitting it big.

A stone-faced Maher replied, “Well, I was a guest star on Married … With Children,” before laughing and adding, “That was a complete joke. I loved being a guest star on Married … With Children.”

The former Politically Incorrect host then recalled a litany of odd jobs he held as a young man, “I was always a kid who worked after school … mowing lawns, raking leaves, shoveling driveways. Whatever the season was, I was doing something in the neighborhood to make money. And then I was the delivery boy for the liquor and the drug store. I stocked the [grocery store] A&P in college. I worked at Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips.”

Maher said that from the time he left high school to when he moved to Los Angeles, he had little money and “lived in slums.” After college, he moved to New York, where he snagged a surprising gig before launching his stand-up career in the comedy clubs.

“I lived with, in the maid’s room, the ambassador to South Africa—or at the time, delegate because they were thrown out of the UN—and I was the bodyguard for their three children,” Maher revealed.

He explained, “Now, some people have said that I was an au pair. I resent that deeply. I was not an au pair. But I kinda was. And I hate kids. Taking those three brats to school every day, picking them up, making sure they were safe. They got right from the bus, right to the door of the school.”

In addition to his dislike of children, Maher confessed, “I had no training. I was this kid right out of college. I don’t know why they hired me at all.”

Unsurprisingly, Maher never had kids of his own.

Real Time with Bill Maher, Season 24, Premieres, Friday, January 23, 2026, HBO