COMEDIAN AND VENTRILOQUIST Jeff Dunham spent the better part of the past two decades relentlessly hitting the nation's comedy clubs with a suitcase full of rib-tickling puppets.

The perseverance is paying off in spades as Dunham continues his sold-out theater tour with comrades like the fuzzy-wuzzy Peanut, the grouchy Walter, and the darkly wacky Achmed the Dead Terrorist in tow.

www.jeffdunham.com (ENLARGE)
Jeff Dunham (with Peanut) has a couple of sold-out shows coming up this weekend at the Cobb Performing Arts Centre.
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Hugely successful DVD sales, wide exposure on Comedy Central, and a solid fan base are taking Dunham and dummies to a level of voice-throwing fame not seen in years.

He's proving so hot — even hotter than the innards of puppet compadre José Jalapeño — he's making a return trip to Atlanta in June after a pair of sold-out April shows.

During a recent phone conversation, Dunham packed up his puppets and did all of the talking.

Things are going great for you right now. What was the turning point?

The obvious thing is just the Comedy Central [airplay]. They were nice enough to give me a shot at it, as they do many comics. ... I've been on the road 18, 19 years ... and getting that grass-roots following, year after year, city after city. Fans feel like they've found something new and cool. ... And I've tried to put a new, different twist and spin on an old, tired art; tried to make it hip and fun. ... The material — some of it's smart and some of it's stupid — is able to strike some kind of chord with the audience now. The demographic is everything across the board. Old people, young people, white-collar, blue-collar. It's just this delightful slice of Americana.

Has it been challenging to keep sticking at it through the years?

There's a tenacity that goes with being on the road for that long. And my goal every year since moving to L.A. in '88 has always been, I want to be doing a little bit better this year than I was last year. And next year I want to be doing a little better than this year. So it's been a slow, slow progression. But I also believe in the physics of it. Truly, in real physics, whatever goes up fast comes down fast. ... It's been this long, rumbling takeoff, and now it's up in the air, and it's pretty solid. But you never know how long this thing will last. And when you say show business, that's what it is. It's a business. You have to give the audience what they want and what you think the audience would like.

There's a clip online of Peanut's hair falling off during a performance. How do you deal with dummy malfunctions?

Some of them are things that actually happened onstage, and I repeat them, because they're so funny. One of them happened to another ventriloquist friend of mine. He picked up the dummy the wrong way, and the head fell off and landed on the stage. That was one that I used to do when Peanut would actually fly off my hand, fly across the stage and slam down on the floor. People would [be shocked]. ... And people would go away thinking this funny accident happened. I've had dummies' legs fall off. Those kinds of things happen. Sometimes I look forward to stuff like that, because it proves whether you can ad lib or not or think on your feet. And that just comes from years and years and years. I'm almost disappointed sometimes if I get from start to finish without something going flatly awry. Because when something goes wrong or different, the audience picks up on it and knows it and feels like they've seen something that otherwise they wouldn't have ever seen.

In your act, you make a joke about throwing your voice in public. Ever do it?

I used to more than I do now. Now I leave it at the office. Every once in a while, I'll goof around with it a little bit. I would always do goofy stuff in school. The siren was the big thing. I used to do this siren that sounded really distant. I remember I was in government class in Texas, and the teacher thought it was a tornado drill. And he started marching all the kids out in the hallway. I was the only kid left in the classroom, and I started laughing. He realized what I had done, and I got in trouble and was sent to the office.

What's next?

We have a Christmas special coming up this year, and that's going to be just wrong. After that, we have another DVD that we'll tape about a year from now. ... There are feature films that we're talking about, TV shows, pitch meetings and the typical stuff. But I won't believe it until we're actually shooting one. But there are a lot of people who want to get into the fray right now, so we're trying to make hay while the sun shines.

• THE 411: Jeff Dunham. Sold out. 7 and 10 p.m. April 4. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster.com.