Laughs Comedy Spot will bring iconic comedian Emo Philips to Kirkland on Sept. 11-12.

Emo started his stand-up career five thousand shows ago in the comedy clubs of Chicago. His big break came in 1984 with an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman.” In quick succession came an award-winning comedy album on the Epic label E=MO Squared, a half-hour “Cinemax Comedy Experiment,” and a one-hour HBO special, “Emo Philips Live at the Hasty Pudding Theatre.”

Around this same time Emo started making annual trips to the UK and became just as big a star there by appearing on the “Bob Monkhouse Show,” “Friday Live,” and “Saturday Live.”

In 1989 he was the undisputed hit of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, quickly selling out over a dozen shows at a 600-seat venue and leaving the promoter scrambling to add more. This led to a two-week run at a West End theater, a UK tour, a Channel Four Special, and a series of television advertisements for Sony.

Emo guest-starred on an episode of “Miami Vice,” playing a crooked game show contestant in cahoots with Phil Collins. He also had a memorable film cameo as the shop teacher who demonstrated table-saw safety to Weird Al Yankovic in the cult-classic “UHF.”

Jay Leno has called Emo the best joke writer in America. In a comedy survey commissioned by GQ Magazine, three of Emo’s jokes were judged, by a panel of his peers, to be among the best 75 of all time – and one of those three was recently voted, in a British poll, to be the funniest joke about religion ever.

Showtimes are 8 and 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $20. Laughs Comedy Spot is located at 12099 124th Avenue NE Kirkland.

More information is available at 425-823-6306 or www.laughscomedy.com