Get ready for a hilarious night with Jeff Dunham during the Inappropriate Contact Tour, live at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts in Wilkes-Barre on Nov. 19 at 7 p.m.

Tickets for the show go on sale July 21 at 10 a.m. at kirbycenter.org, and ticketmaster.com; in person at the Sordoni Family Foundation Box Office at the F.M. Kirby Center, Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; or by phone at 570-826-1100.

A quick glance of Dunham’s childhood photos reveals the milestones of youth — birthdays, graduations, awkward first dates … very awkward first dates. Nothing unusual — except for the fact that in almost every photo, he’s joined by a dummy seated on his lap. Literally.

Luckily for Dunham those early wooden characters were a hint of the career to come.

Dunham, the only child of a real estate appraiser and homemaker, raised in a Dallas suburb, at the age of 9 received a toy ventriloquist dummy for Christmas, began to practice, and started dreaming of characters who could say what nobody else would dare.

The little boy who fell in love with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd was soon charming and disarming classmates, appearing at Kiwanis Clubs and Scout banquets, doing TV commercials for Texas car dealerships, and was on his way to national appearances while still in high school.

By the time he attended Baylor University, he was earning $70,000 a year for having public conversations with himself.

Later came the comedy club circuit, larger and larger venues, and ultimately sold-out concerts in the same arenas as Taylor Swift and Metallica.

Dunham holds the Guinness Book of Records record for Most Tickets Sold for a Stand-Up Comedy Tour: his Spark of Insanity Tour racked up almost 2 million tickets across almost 400 venues worldwide.

No wonder the man Slate called “America’s favorite comedian” and TIME cited as “a dressed-down, more digestible version of Don Rickles with multiple personality disorder” is able to say the things you-wouldn’t-dare with his cadre of characters who tap into almost every aspect of American life.

Whether the cranky old man Walter, who doubled as Wonald Grump and Ben Hiden during the last election, the hyperactive and crazy Peanut, the self-explanatory Jose the Jalapeno on a Stick, the redneck cliché NASCAR-loving Bubba J, the utterly befuddled Achmed the Dead Terrorist, and Url, the basement dwelling social media smartphone addict, Dunham allows each to speak their mind, regardless of how much they embarrass their co-star in the process.

Dunham has nine comedy specials to his credit. His NBC prime-time special, “Unhinged,” ranked as the time period’s top non-sports program on the Big 4, rebroadcast six weeks later on Comedy Central to become its top rated special of 2016.

Dunham has been named Billboard’s Top Comedy Tour three years in a row, and cited by Forbes as the third highest paid comedian behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock.

The F.M. Kirby Center is a historic Art Deco-Moderne-style performing arts center located in Wilkes-Barre. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.