Sat. Jan. 7

Robert Kelly, the hefty Medford-born and New York-based comic, turned 40 last year. He has been in recovery, and sober, a quarter-century. If you do the math... "I started drinking hard alcohol at ten which was pretty much par for the course in Medford," said Kelly, on the phone from his Manhattan home. "That’s what we did. We drank and hung out at Tufts Park and we’d fight kids from Somerville at their park. I was in and out of juvie hall and foster homes and then I was done [drinking] at 15. It was a wrap. I went to rehab in North Attleboro for a year with 23 other alcoholics and drug addicts. I wasn’t the youngest one. There was a nine-year-old. Hey, it’s Boston."

Out of that rough upbringing came a standup comedy career. Kelly achieved massive exposure when he joined former Bostonian Dane Cook and two other comics for "Tourgasm Live" in 2005, later a nine-part, hit HBO documentary. He also joined Cook in 2009, playing 80 arenas to a million people. Kelly, who moved from Boston ten years ago, comes home to the Wilbur Theatre Saturday Jan. 7.

Kelly: Oh God, those were my gorgeous days! I had hair. It’s weird. I’m Irish-Catholic, so I get skinny/fat my whole life. I was fat in sixth grade. Then, I got skinny and gorgeous. I’m on my seventh fat now. At my heaviest, I was 280. In 2009, I was actually gorgeous again, dropping 70 pounds. Then, I think I was in Cleveland for a week doing shows, and said, "This sucks" and I ate. I literally wake up and go, "What’s for breakfast? What’s for lunch? What the hell is happening with food?" Right now, I’m on my way back to gorgeous. I’m going back to the gym, no carbs, and probably by the summer I’ll be good-looking again.

It’s the last thing I have and once I drop that, I’ll be a fit human being, which I don’t know if that will make a good comic. Look, a comic’s life is constant hell. It’s "Why do people do this? Why do you do that?" This constant analysis of why people suck and why you suck.

People think it’s low self-esteem or self-deprecation and it’s more just being brutally honest. That’s why it gets a laugh. It has to have some kind of truth to it. I think it’s our job to talk about everything.

The best thing and the worst thing I ever did. Being a comic is kind of a solo thing. Put four of us on a bus, all day, every day, 20 shows in 30 days, it got a little heated and hectic. Egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. But it was great as far as the exposure and HBO thing that came out afterwards.

Louie is just a genius smart guy. He can just see the truth of something really quickly, which is the great part of being a comic, because you have to find out who you really are.

There’s no cast. He just writes it. If he writes you in, he writes you in. He didn’t have a brother and always wanted a brother and said, "It’s my show, I’ll write me a brother," which I loved. I’m hoping next season he doesn’t kill his brother off. He could write an episode, not even have me in it, and just have a car crash and have some fat, bald stunt double there.

Yeah, absolutely, but think of all the great sympathy I’d get for a couple of weeks. I’d be like a superstar. I have this midtown Manhattan apartment and it’s only 720-square-feet. I’d have the house to myself.