Howard's Heroes

He can't for the life of him remember his relatives' phone numbers.

But a raunchy riddle Jackie Martling heard, say, two decades ago? That he'll recite effortlessly.

Take your pick: gross-out gags about bodily functions, perverse sexual limericks, politically incorrect ethnic bits. Martling knows volumes of them by rote. (Because of their content, however, they're largely unprintable.)

They don't call him Jackie "The Joke Man" for nothing, folks.

"It drives my wife crazy," the standup comic, who performs at the Riviera today and Saturday, says. "I'll ask her, 'Hey, Nancy, what's your sister's phone number?' and it drives her nuts because I can remember every joke I've heard."

At least he's put personal hard drive to good use: Since 1986, Martling has been shock jock Howard Stern's head joke writer and one of his on-air sidekicks.

He first hooked up with Stern in the early '80s, when stand-up comedy was his full-time occupation. He offered a couple of his comedy albums for the listening, and Stern eventually offered him a job.

"The way I see it, I'm the wind at his back," Martling explains of his professional relationship with Stern. It's his job to come up with most of the off-color one-liners that have made Stern infamous, usually in the midst of the live show.

"I'm sure you have friends that are funny," Martling says. "Say you're talking to another person and your friend who's funny is standing there and ... all of a sudden the funny guy thinks of something he would say as part of the conversation, but instead of saying it, he writes it down and puts it in front of you and you say it."

With Stern, Martling says, he's "just part of the conversation. They're not major, monster jokes, they're just funny quips. Sometimes they can be really hysterical, but it's basically just conversation as it's going along."

He also gives credit for the show's notoriously controversial humor (Stern and Co. have been fined by the Federal Communications Commission countless times) to Fred Norris, who handles the audio effects.

"What makes the show so funny is that Howard has a sense of humor and Fred and I have two other distinct senses of humor, so it's ... three completely different senses of humor and all coming from the same guy (Stern)."

Besides the radio program, which is nationally syndicated, Martling is also seen on Stern's television shows on the E! cable channel and CBS ("Howard Stern" and "The Howard Stern Radio Show," respectively.)

The CBS show, which airs opposite NBC's long-running "Saturday Night Live," has struggled for ratings since its debut earlier this year. It has been panned by some critics and cancelled in a few cities.

None of this, however, concerns Martling. "It's just finding its audience," he contends. "We're figuring out what to present; it'll win out, you'll see."

Martling, 50, also had a role in Stern's 1996 autobiographical movie "Private Parts." "That was the greatest experience in the world," he says. "I spent a couple of days next to a totally nude (adult film star) Jenna Jameson; they fed you; they treated you like a king."

Still, earlier this year, he briefly quit the radio show when, he says, he and show executives failed to see eye-to-eye on salary issues.

"Everybody tried to read so much into it, but it was as simple as I asked for more money," he says. When negotiations came to a halt, "I just went home until we came to an agreement. It was that simple; it had nothing to do with ego or billing (on the show). When it got to where it was palatable, it made sense, I came back."

Even with his rise in celebrity status in recent years, Martling, who started his comedy career in 1979, continues to play occasional stand-up gigs each year. (This weekend's performances are his first since July.)

His style has been compared to that of legendary comedian Henny Youngman. "I'm very punchline-oriented," he says, "you know, put A and B together and get C."

You don't see much of that these days in stand-up comedy, he contends.

"Nobody tells jokes. Everybody's up there ... talking about this and complaining about that and being crazed about this. I'm just up there telling joke after joke and nobody else does it, and I love it. There's no competition.

"Everybody loves dirty jokes," he says. "Everybody goes to the bathroom; everybody has orgasms; everybody has sex; everybody has tensions about this group or that group. It's right across the board."

Forget about tailoring his schtick tp suit specific audiences.

"People say, 'Oh, what if old people are at your shows?' Are you kidding? A guy who's married 20 years is going to laugh twice as hard at the sex jokes as a guy who's on a first date, who doesn't know the girl very well. My jokes are for everybody," he says.

But if fans can't catch Martling's antics live, they can substitute for the real thing with selections from the virtual comedy library -- 15 comedy cassettes, three CDs, four videos and four books -- that is the bread and butter of his cottage industry promoting himself via his company, Off Hour Rockers.

For years he has maintained his "Use Your Finger" dirty joke telephone line (516-992-WINE), which is set up in his mother's New York home. He also oversees the contents of jokeland.com, a website jam-packed with photos, sordid tales and comedy bits. "That's a labor of love," he says.

Martling's most recent CD is not-so-subtly titled "Hotdogs and Doughnuts," and the foreword to his latest book, "Jackie 'The Joke Man' Martling's Disgustingly Dirty Joke Book" (Simon & Schuster, $9.95), his fourth literary effort, was penned by Stern.

You'd think by now his joke well was running dry. Not so. "I have hardly made a dent in the files I've got," he says, explaining how he began writing down all of the jokes he knew in the mid '70s.

With every gig he adds to his collection, thanks to a wildly popular bit called "Stump the Joke Man" where audience members hedge their bets that Martling doesn't know their dirty joke.

Too bad for them he figures he's heard "99 percent" of all jokes.

"Eighty people will try, and maybe one person will get me with a new one, or two people will get me with one I should know, and for some reason I draw a blank, which happens," he says. (Those lucky yuksters are awarded an "I stumped Jackie The Joke Man" T-shirt.)

"People have stumped me with jokes that have been in my own books," he admits, but adds that usually, "somebody starts a joke, they get done with the first sentence and I tell them the end. It makes people crazy."

At least his wife is in good company.

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