page_title: Fancy Ray
section_title: Other appearances
hierarchical_section_title: Fancy Ray / Career / Other appearances
caption_attribution_description: English: Fancy Ray McCloney stands in front of a mural of himself on Lake Street in Minneapolis
context_page_description: Fancy Ray McCloney is a stand-up comedian and advertising pitchman from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is known for his flamboyant comic persona, once described as "gleefully narcissistic," blending elements of Little Richard, Muhammad Ali, James Brown, Prince, and a tent-revival preacher. He is known for producing and starring in low-budget TV ads for local businesses in the Twin Cities and markets across the U.S., including a Taco Bell ad aired during the 2016 Super Bowl that played off his status as a "local legend." Rarely breaking character on stage or off, Fancy Ray is a buoyantly self-aggrandizing, larger-than-life personality given to spontaneous poetry and mock-boastful proclamations including his oft-repeated characteristic catchphrase "I'm the best-lookin’ man in comedy."
  In 2020, he released the career-retrospective stand-up album The Best Lookin' Man in Comedy on Stand Up! Records. Writer/producer Diablo Cody, who wrote the liner notes for the album, calls Fancy Ray a "subversive" and "bombastic character looms large in the collective psyche of the Twin Cities ... a nontraditional, nonconformist guy" whose "shtick is almost like a spell."
context_section_description: Fancy Ray has appeared on a number of nationwide talk shows and reality series, including The Tonight Show, America's Got Talent, Last Comic Standing, Entertainment Tonight, The Maury Povich Show, and The Jenny Jones Show. He moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to establish a Hollywood career, but returned to the Twin Cities in 2008. McCloney appeared in the 2008 direct-to-video comedy The Junkyard Willie Movie: Lost In Transit as "Crazy Revival Preacher." He contributed guest vocals to the 2003 song "Parrots" by indie-rock band Hymie's Basement, and stars in a promotional video for Sleeping in the Aviary's 2010 album You and Me, Ghost, described by the Minnesota Daily as "a tongue-in-cheek homage to all those late night advertisements you’ve probably fallen asleep to once or twice."
  He was profiled in a 2019 segment of Twin Cities PBS' Minnesota Original.
  His face appears on a mural painted on a building at 2933 E. Lake St. in Minneapolis.
  McCloney is an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church and has officiated many weddings.
caption: McCloney stands in front of a mural of himself on Lake Street in Minneapolis
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