Robert Schimmel had a career both as a standup comedian and as a cancer survivor. He was currently best-known for The Howard Stern Show, probably the most successful show of his career. Early in his career, Robert Schimmel found a break when Rodney Dangerfield invited him to perform on the HBO Young Comedians Special.
Robert Schimmel had a career made controversial for his style of comedy. He was both admired and criticized for his sharp style that included comments inappropriate for a universal audience. Robert Schimmel took as his career model, the famous comedian Lenny Bruce. Not everybody appreciated his style of comedy and his ''inappropriate'' comments were cited as the reason for being disinvited from the programs Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Hollywood Squares.
Robert Schimmel died from the accident, but that was not his first encounter with situations that could lead to the loss of his life. In June 2000, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a kind of lymph cancer. Robert had a carcinogenic gene pool and it also contributed to the death of one of his sons, Derek, who died at the age of 11 from cancer. Robert Schimmel, however, recuperated and survived the cancer attack, though his treatment required long periods at the hospital and chemotherapy. Later in his career, Robert Schimmel wrote a book on his tryst with cancer: Cancer on Five Dollars a Day (chemo not included): How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life.
Robert Schimmel, in his career, produced several successful albums including: Comes Clean, If You Buy this CD, I Can Get this Car, Unprotected, and Reserection, published by Warner Bros., and Life Since Then, published by Image Entertainment in 2009. His book was published by Da Capo Press in 2008 and served as an inspiration for those battling with cancer to see the funny side of things.
One of the greatest traits of Robert Schimmel was that he could make fun of his own self and would often include his personal life experiences to create comedy. He even included his experience and fact of having cancer, and the premature death of his son in his comic acts. If Robert Schimmel were alive today, there is no doubt that this accident in Robert Schimmel's life would also have been turned into comedy.
