DON'T CALL ME SIR.(a standup comedian)(Biography)

Earlier this year, on a winter evening in Atlantic City, Don Rickles left his suite in the Sands Hotel and, with his publicist, his road manager, and a hotel bodyguard, took the elevator down to the Copa Room. On a scouting mission earlier in the day, he had been pleased to discover that the Copa still has an old-school night-club setup, with tables and leopard-print upholstered booths and waitress service. "Most of the rooms these days, they've got theatre-style seating," he explained. "This is one of the last places where I can ask the maitre d' to try to get a funny-looking guy up front--a big laugher, or someone who looks kind of odd."

In the dressing room, he changed into a shirt, a super-sized bow tie, and a robe that had been laid out for him by his valet, Kenny. He drank some coffee prepared by his road manager, Anthony Oppedisano--a dandyish man with a strawberry-blond quiff, known to his familiars as Tony O. And then, since it was still only seven-thirty and he wasn't due onstage until ten, Rickles sat down in front of a large flat-screen TV and began to grimace, in a slack-jawed, masculine fashion, at a football game.

Rickles is a great believer in a languorous run-up to a performance. For the more than half century that he has been in show business, he has punched in early for work. "You know how a fighter always comes into the dressing room way before a fight?" he says. "That's me--I'm like a fighter." This year, he turned seventy-eight, and he will perform between seventy and ninety dates across the United States; at every one of them, barring disaster, he will arrive a good hour before whoever's doing the opening act.

At nine o'clock, Rickles, still in his robe, went out to the wings to watch a balladeer called Gene Ferrari perform. Ferrari, a sad-eyed Sicilian with hair the color of eggplant and a powerful, slightly distraught tenor voice, has been opening for Rickles for the past two years. He specializes in high-intensity love songs depicting the darker side of the romantic experience. It is safe to say that his interpretations of "Sometimes When We Touch" and "I Who Have Nothing" no longer hold many surprises for Rickles. But Rickles always comes out to watch him anyway--partly as a gesture of respect for a fellow-performer and partly as a chance to size up the audience. "I like to get the smell of them--see how they're reacting," he says.

After Ferrari had wound up his set with a thundering, ballpark-style rendition of "America the Beautiful," there was a three-minute break. Back in his dressing room, Rickles took off his robe and shouted "Pants!"--a signal to his valet to hustle forward with his tuxedo trousers. Then he walked out into the long, dingy-green hallway, past the clattering hotel kitchens, and up to one of the side doors of the Copa auditorium.

A trumpet blew the opening notes of the old Spanish song "Macarena" and, assuming his trademark expression of bulge-eyed irascibility, Rickles strode out, looking like a snapping turtle surfacing in a pond. The stage lights were flashing red. The audience was clapping in time with the music. His great hairless Brueghelian head gleamed in the spotlight. He struck various martial attitudes and flourished an invisible cape. The conceit of this entrance--unchanged since the early seventies--is that Rickles is a matador come to do battle in the bullring. "Rickles!" an elderly man in an open-neck shirt and crucifix shouted hoarsely above the general roar. "Rickles, we love you!"

Rickles moved toward the stage, pausing here and there to shake a man's hand or to fall upon an attractive woman in a mock-lascivious embrace. Once at his microphone, he ululated to the music in nonsense Spanish for a few moments, before breaking off to berate his band leader, Joe Mele, for some imaginary mistake. In short order, he turned his attention to the audience and began to rain derision on them in the prewar New York accent of a Dead End Kid.