[I'm on vacation until November 18, so my friends are looking after The Critical Condition. I'm happy to welcome the fantastic Tara Ariano, who co-founded the websites Television Without Pity and Fametracker and also wrote three awesome books. Today, she's breaking it down about comedian Brian Regan.]

Before this year, I had known of Brian Regan from his standup specials on Comedy Central. But it wasn’t until recently that I became aware of his status as a comic’s comic. This spring, I started listening to the podcast “Comedy And Everything Else,” featuring comics Todd Glass and Jimmy Dore. About half a dozen episodes covered their midsummer trip to Regan’s show in Los Angeles — several before, about how excited they were, and a couple afterward, when they were still enjoying its afterglow. Even “C&EE” co-host Stephané Zamorano — not a comic herself — was so impressed by the end of the show that she asked the woman sitting next to her what she thought; although the woman sighed that it was great, Stephané couldn’t help opining that this anonymous woman couldn’t appreciate what a display of comic mastery she’d just seen.

And that’s not the only comedy podcast enamoured of Regan: Late in Season 3 of “Never Not Funny,” Jimmy Pardo also admired how prolific Regan is and said he should have a special on HBO every year.

For most of the biggest stars in the world of comedy, an audience that include parents with pre-teens would be unthinkable. (In fact, if you knew a mother who brought an eleven-year-old to see Chris Rock in concert, you might call the state on her.) But as I was leaving Regan’s show last weekend at Avery Fisher Hall, I saw quite a few kids who might have even been under ten, and who were probably just as entertained as their parents were by Regan’s bits about nearly getting into a fight in Dallas while wearing a Miami Dolphins t-shirt.

It wasn’t even until that moment, actually, that it occurred to me: Not only hadn’t Regan used any curse words, but I’d seen racier material in network sitcoms airing in 8 PM time slots. He did mention Mrs. Regan, but not to complain that she’s frigid or a nag or any of the usual married-comic hackery. I recall her having to show him how to work his cell phone to get a text message, and choosing, for his entrance music at a comedy club, the Bee Gees’ “More Than A Woman.” (Tee hee hee.)

Don’t get me wrong — I fucking love to swear, and I virtually always find it hilarious. But the marvel of Regan’s act is that it’s PG-rated without seeming bowdlerized. And when he came out for his encore, the early-twenties-aged goombas hollering “Pop-Tarts!” and “spelling bee!” at Regan (who, amused, expressed how flattered he was that anyone even knew his act so well) clearly didn’t feel they’d been ripped off by sanitized material.

It’s not an easy thing to impress both the most jaded, critical audience — fellow comics — and ordinary people who might never see another standup in their lives. Brian Regan does both, and if there were any justice he would be filling Madison Square Garden while Dane Cook was forced to subsist on Pop-Tarts.

*** This would be from a Regan bit about the guy who invented the blank greeting card. “He’s selling a crease!”