Nature calls and Chappelle loses standup title

updated 8:53 p.m. ET Oct. 20, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Dave Chappelle could be holding Hollywood’s comedy endurance record if he’d only been able to hold something else.

The comic, who famously walked away from a $50 million deal four years ago to continue his Comedy Central TV show, was on stage at the Laugh Factory on Sunday, seemingly on his way to setting the club’s endurance record for continuous standup comedy.

But then, five hours into his routine, he walked away to go to the bathroom and was disqualified, said club owner Jamie Masada.

The audience wasn’t happy, Masada said, but he insisted that rules are rules where endurance comedy is concerned.

“There are only two rules,” Masada said Tuesday. “You have to continuously tell jokes that are funny and you can’t leave the stage, even to go to the bathroom.”

The result: the seven-hour, 34-minute marathon performance that Dane Cook turned in last year stands as the club’s record.

The late Richard Pryor set the original record, two hours and 41 minutes, in 1980. Cook broke it 27 years later with a three-hour, 50-minute set.

Chappelle raised the bar to six hours, seven minutes before Cook took the record back last year.

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