Smiles never left the faces of the crowd as comedian David Ferrell shared his brand of clean comedy at the 11th annual Mizell Memorial Hospital Foundation Gala.

The Opp hospital held the gala at First Baptist Church’s Fellowship Center.

Ferrell has been doing clean comedy for 25 years. Clean comedy is comedy that uses clean content and no profanity.

Ferrell, a North Carolina native, travels around the country and speaks at corporate and hospital events.

“One of the advantages of my job is that this is a gift that God gave me,” Ferrell said. “It opens more doors.”

Once Ferrell got into his routine, the audience hung onto every joke he told, laughing out loud when they got the chance.

“The Salvation Army has an alcohol recovery program,” Ferrell said. “One of the officer’s name was Capt. Morgan.”

A big portion of Ferrell’s 50-minute stand up was about the local towns in the surrounding area.

Ferrell asked audience members to name some towns there were from and what festivals are common in the towns.

One audience member said he was from Opp and the Rattlesnake Rodeo happens every second week of April.

Somebody else named Samson as a town and said it was known for a snuff box train car.

Ferrell then proceeded to do a broadcaster’s impersonation, along with firework noises, describing the various fun festivals.

Ferrell didn’t shy away from his early career when he had to sleep in his car and eat $1 meals from McDonalds. He poked fun at how many apple pies one gets for $1.

“One-dollar McDonalds meals kept me alive,” he said.

While in the drive thru, Ferrell said he noticed that the driver ahead of him was arguing that he only wanted one apple pie.

“Who only orders just one apple pie?” Ferrell said. “One apple pie costs 89 cents. When I drove up to the window, I said ‘sir, here’s 11 cents. I’ll take that second apple pie.’”

Ferrell also poked fun about famous golfer Tiger Woods after talking about how an Arnold Palmer drink is a half lemonade and half sweet tea.

“A diet lemonade and a diet sweet tea must be a Tiger Woods,” he said.

During his career as a comedian, Ferrell shared his talent as a former Durham Bulls announcer for car commercials. The Durham Bulls are a Triple-A minor league baseball team out of North Carolina.

What go the crowd rolling was Ferrell’s impersonation of the late Jimmy Stewart singing Rod Stewart favorites.

All jokes aside, Ferrell said he believes that laughter is like medicine, adding that a couple that was going to get a divorce a day after a show ended up patching things up.

“That was the first time they had laughed together in years,” he said.

Ferrell’s dad battled an illness for 30 years and visited hospitals often. He said that his dad would have good years and bad years, but the one constant in his life was the caring hospital community.

“Everyone associated with local hospitals loves and cares for people in their community,” he said.

Fundraising totals were unavailable when The Star-News went to press Friday night.