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At 72, Bill Cosby might be at an age when his doctor looks the comedian dead in the eye and says, “Bill, I’m telling you, if you want to see 73, lay off the half-smokes.” Well, if Cos has ever heard those words, he’s not heeding them.
Nizam Ali, youngest son of founders Virginia and the late Ben Ali, says Cosby still grabs half-smokes at Ben’s Chili Bowl every time he’s in town. (I mean, why not? He’s still only one of two folks who eats free at Ben’s, the recent winner of our D.C. Dish Hall of Fame contest.)
“If he doesn’t physically come in the door,” Ali tells Y&H, “he’ll send a car by or the hotel will send a car by or his venue will just happen to come by and get them or he’ll call in and have us deliver them. So he always seems to get them when he’s in town some kind of way, whether or not he actually walks in the door.”
Cos did walk in the door in October when the Kennedy Center awarded him the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
“He walked in and said hello to everybody,” Ali remembers. But Cos did one thing more: He ordered up half-smokes for a reception at the big Twain event.
That’s right, the half-smoke made its debut at the Kennedy Center.
Photo by devriesm via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License