About Joey De Leon

Comedy is to Joey De Leon, as Joey De Leon is to comedy. He has captured the Filipinos’ funny bone with his antics in the country’s longest running noontime show Eat Bulaga, a name he so proudly coined himself! Joey is an expert in all facets of belly-laughs, from film satires to TV gag shows. You may also catch him in Mel & Joey, with "pards" Mel Tiangco.

Joey is married to Eileen Macapagal, with whom he has three children, Jocas, Jako and Jio. He also has two children from a previous marriage with actress Daria Ramirez: TV host/actor-comedian Keempee de Leon and former teen actress Cheenee de Leon. He has four grandchildren, one from Keempee and three from Cheenee.

He started out his showbiz career in the 1960s as a radio DJ (disc jockey) for some of the top FM stations mostly owned by pre-martial law ABS-CBN. Some of his radio colleagues and contemporaries included Inday Badiday, Ike Lozada, Johnny de Leon (no relation) and Helen Vela. In a span of five years, he worked for 12 different FM stations while doing other jobs as gag writer and songwriter. His first big break on TV was IBC's gag show OK Lang which starred him alongside the Sotto brothers (Tito, Vic and Val), Ricky Manalo, Jr. and the APO Hiking Society.

In 1975, Joey became a co-host of GMA Network's early afternoon variety show Discorama hosted by Bobby Ledesma (of Student Canteen fame). At that time, the show hardly had any viewers and suffered from low ratings. While Bobby was on vacation, he told Joey to take care of the show. Joey invited his former co-stars at OK Lang, brothers Tito, Vic and Val Sotto, to join him at Discorama. Only Tito and Vic accepted Joey's invitation. The newly-formed trio started to do comedy newscast segments interspersed with Top 40 hit-song parodies written by Joey. The new comedy trio gave Discorama a new lease on life and was saved from the axe of network executives. The trio was soon invited to become part of Bobby's noontime show Student Canteen as they released 12 hit albums based on their Discorama Tough Hits segment.

Although Tito, Vic and Joey started their trio via Discorama and Student Canteen, it was the sitcom Iskul Bukol that gave them nationwide fame as comedians. Soon after, other TV and movie producers came knocking on the trio's door. In 1979, Tito, Vic and Joey started hosting for the noontime show Eat Bulaga! which was pitted against the more established Student Canteen hosted by their former colleague (and now competitor) Bobby Ledesma. Not long after, Eat Bulaga! toppled Student Canteen from the ratings.

In December 2006, Joey returned to recording with a novelty single he wrote entitled "Itaktak Mo" (Shake it off). Unlike most of his previously recorded songs where the melodies were based on past and contemporary hits, Itaktak Mo had a unique melody that can pass off as either a pop dance hit or a ballroom song. Seen by critics as his answer to the other wildly popular hit, Boom Tarat Tarat (written by Lito Camo and sung by Joey's rival host Willie Revillame), Itaktak Mo was softly launched on Eat Bulaga shortly before the Christmas season. On January 2007, the song was launched in Joey's album, Joey to the World 2 and gained airplay in most FM stations in a short span of time. Itaktak Mo has also become part of Eat Bulaga's segment "Taktak Mo o Tatakbo" that replaced "Laban o Bawi", and is also one of the official dances of the 4th batch of the reality talent search "Starstruck".

After "Itaktak Mo" became one of the most requested dance tunes this year, Joey followed it up with "Kagat Labi Song", which was launched on "Eat Bulaga" on September 22, 2007. The "Kagat Labi" dance craze was already sweeping the whole country by storm before Joey wrote it. On February 24, 2008, Joey released a single entitled "Walang Daya" (No Cheating) with lyrics comparing his love to his rival host Willie Revillame's misfortunes (Wilyonaryo, Ferrari and Ultra stampede). He first sang it at his own program "Mel and Joey". "Walang Daya" will be included in the album version of "Kagat Labi" will be released under EMI Philippines.