Bert Kreischer
Himself
Overview
Comedian Bert Kreischer is ready to take his shirt off and "party hardy" with his debut Netflix Original stand-up special, Bert Kreischer: Secret Time. Considered one of the best storytellers of his generation, Bert regales the audience at the Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia with stories about zip-lining with his family, his daughter practicing softball with an imaginary ball, and upstaging ex-NBA player Ralph Sampson at a childhood basketball camp.
Cast
Reviews
5 min readThe Man Who Told Too Much
I’ve seen Bert Kreischer live twice—once in a half-empty comedy club in Austin, once in a sold-out theater in Chicago—and both times, the man took his shirt off within the first twenty minutes. It’s not a gimmick, exactly. It’s more like a surrender.
Kreischer isn’t here to perform stand-up in the way we usually think of it: no tight five, no polished callbacks, no carefully constructed act. He’s here to tell you stories, and the stories are so vivid, so physical, that the shirt has to come off just to keep up. In Secret Time, his first Netflix special, he does it again, and the camera lingers on the moment like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
(It is, for him.) The shirt hits the stage, the audience roars, and just like that, we’re all in on the joke: this isn’t comedy. It’s confession.
The special opens with Kreischer bounding onto the stage at Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theatre, already talking before the spotlight even finds him. He’s got the energy of a golden retriever who just heard the word “walk,” and the physicality to match—all loose limbs and exaggerated gestures, like a man trying to act out a story before he’s even finished telling it. This is stand-up as oral history, delivered by someone who’s spent his life perfecting the art of the overshare.
The stories he tells aren’t just funny; they’re lived. There’s the one about zip-lining with his family, where he turns a mundane vacation activity into a white-knuckle disaster by sheer force of his own enthusiasm. There’s the bit about his daughter practicing softball with an imaginary ball, which somehow becomes a meditation on parenting, failure, and the absurdity of childhood.
And then there’s the legendary tale of his childhood basketball camp, where he upstaged ex-NBA player Ralph Sampson by being, well, Bert Kreischer.
What makes these stories work isn’t just the punchlines—though there are plenty of those—but the way Kreischer inhabits them. He’s not just recounting events; he’s reliving them, his body twisting and contorting to mimic the people he’s describing. Watch the way he acts out his daughter’s softball practice: his face scrunches up in concentration, his arms swing wildly, his whole body leans into the imaginary pitch.
Full Plot (Spoilers)
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This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThe shirt hits the Trocadero floor before he has said a word.
Philadelphia, February 2018. Bert Kreischer is on the Still Shirtless tour. A crew is in the Trocadero Theatre to tape what Netflix will later call his debut Original standup hour. The Inquirer got the drop date on 13 August. Secret Time, 24 August, stories about zip-lining with his family, an imaginary softball, and upstaging Ralph Sampson at a childhood basketball camp. The teaser has him shirtless, promising to get drunk and tell all the secrets. 
Decider, watching the finished 57 minutes, latestnetflix.com contends, clocked the shirt in the crowd before the first joke. The room cheers the drink too. His line for the hour is simple. "We're just getting drunk and telling secrets."
The shirt is not a bit he planned as a brand. In a Decider interview the day before the drop he traced it to a Thursday night in Columbus. He used to rip the shirt, kill a beer, put it back on. One night he forgot. A woman giggled. She said, keep it off. He did. Showtime, for 2016's The Machine, told him to wear a shirt. He did not. "I've never been so uncomfortable with a shirt." Then the Russian-mafia story went viral and Joe Rogan told him the rooms lose their minds. Netflix, he said, asked the opposite question. Your shirt will be off, right? He compared the look to Ali Wong's pregnant belly, on a man.
The other origin story is older and he has never cashed it. Rolling Stone's 1997 piece "Bert Kreischer: The Undergraduate" named him the top partyer at the number one party school, Florida State, sixth year, Alpha Tau Omega. Oliver Stone optioned the article. When that deal died, a writer changed the name and sold it to National Lampoon. Van Wilder, Ryan Reynolds, 2002. Kreischer told the New York Post in 2014 he had never seen it and had nothing to do with it. Wikipedia keeps the chain, including his line that he would not sue. Secret Time is the dad version of that myth. Zip lines. Daughters. A 13-year-old at basketball camp who, Decider notes, supposedly showed up Ralph Sampson. Todd Biermann directed. Comfortably Dumb was Comedy Central in 2009. The Machine was Showtime in 2016. This is the first Netflix hour, filmed in Philly, later followed by Hey Big Boy, Razzle Dazzle, and Lucky.
IMDb trivia says he vowed $50,000 to the High and Tight Foundation if the special hit a million views. The foundation hands denim to people shut out by mental illness or substance abuse. Its slogan, Try It Out, became his mantra on paper. Treat the pledge as trivia until a receipt shows up. 
Paste's Graham Techler gave it 3/10 and said it wanted to be on campus. Netflix still sold him as a cool, not always responsible dad.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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