Daddy Works at Night. It's a Dirty Job.

Saget's material has always been filthy-dirty and it's just gotten filthier. Did ABC used to flip out when he did his blue material at the clubs? "I had a couple of 'Bob, we have a problem' moments. There was something in my contract that says you can't have sex with an animal. It was very strange to have me in an environment with children. That's a joke. One of the things I did that was wrong -- it's my problem, nobody else's -- I'm validating this story. They had a stand-in doll on the show, a plastic doll, so when the girls who played Michelle . . . "

This would be the twins, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen?

"Exactly, when they were in school" -- the law requires child actors to continue their studies with on-set tutors -- "they would give me the doll to act with. It was [for] camera blocking. There would just be bunch of guys on the floor. Nobody's there, there's no audience. And they give me a plastic doll that's about 3 1/2 feet tall, whose legs moved."

You didn't?

"So I did stuff with it. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? It's not good. If you tell people that stuff, I don't think it sits well. It does with contemporaries, but -- I don't know how you tell it. I want to be careful not to hurt anybody."

It is true. While Saget will excoriate his own work on television, he does not defame his co-stars. About the Olsen twins, there are no jokes. "I love them," he says. "When my dad died, they were there. I'm close with everybody from the shows."

He recalls a story. It is Nietzschean, in the sense of that which does not kill you makes you stronger. "I rented a car once in Monterey. Went to Big Sur. With my wife -- with my ex-wife," he says. "Anyway, so we're there and I walk up to the Avis counter, and the lady goes, 'Oh, you're on that show. My boyfriend hates you. He turns off the sound when you're on.' And I went, what? And I got really upset 'cause I was just starting a vacation, you know, working those 80-hour weeks. And I was, like, oh, God, her boyfriend hates me; what I would do to make him laugh. And why? Why do I have to have somebody like me? What the [bleep] is wrong with me, right?"

You could have said: I'll try harder.

"Wait, there's the payoff, it's perfect," Saget says. "Two ladies from the counter come out to my car rental with me and go, 'Oh, don't be upset about her, Bob. Her boyfriend beats her.' Don't be upset about her, her boyfriend beats her! They're telling me to feel better, because the reason she said her boyfriend hates me is she's abused. So I'm supposed to feel better? It doesn't make sense to me."

It is hard to believe someone would just say something so mean at a rental car counter, which is usually such an oasis of calm.

"Yeah, you'd think, yes," Saget says. "But also, I overreact." But not anymore. "One of my best qualities, I think, is that I just don't give a [bleep]. Because how long am I here? And who the [bleep] cares."

When did this insight occur? "I think the past few years. I think as the arc in whatever I'm doing as an artist or performer, or whatever you want to call it, changed. And getting divorced is a gigantic hit. That was a huge hit." That was 10 years ago, like three marriage cycles in L.A. "No, I can't forget that, that's what I'm saying. When you have kids -- I have three daughters [ages 14, 17 and 20] -- that's in my face. But . . . now . . . . This is literally -- and I wish my dad was here, and I wish my sisters were here" -- both sisters died young, one of scleroderma and one of a brain aneurism -- "but this is literally the best time of my life. Just because I'm not holding anything back. As things unfold or don't unfold, as I get to do what I want to do, or don't, or if I don't, so what?"

See what we mean about the iced tea?

Saget does have one fear. "I'm scared of this HBO thing. You know, parents will go, 'Oh, it's dad from "Full House." We're going to go out tonight, you stay home, you 8-year-old.' And the kid watches. And the parents come home and he, like, murders them in their sleep."

Saget himself is careful not to let his own daughters watch their daddy work as a comic. "But that's the weird psychosis, or I guess you call it schizophrenia, of what I do, if I look at an audience and I see a 9-year-old out there, I'm not doing the same set. I can't have him there. I can't do it. I couldn't have my own kids at my thing, I don't want a kid there. Actually? A 15-year-old boy, my act is made for him, I'm a fartmeister, you know, and I'm immature and it's all . . . "

He changes the subject. He was invited recently to perform at Harvard University for the Lampoon staff. "We did a 20-minute 'Full House' sketch, the filthy lost episodes. Filthy. Filthy. Filthy. And I did 30 minutes of filthy stand-up. It was the first time I sang 'Danny Tanner Was Not Gay,' to the Backstreet Boys tune. It was parody," he says. "You know, it was a kind of a cathartic thing."

You think?