Kathleen Madigan might best be remembered as a contestant on the 2004 edition of Last Comic Standing, but she’d been making audiences laugh long before then, receiving the Best Female Comedian award from the American Comedy Awards in 1996. And how’s this for a bragging right: Lewis Black considers her the funniest woman in America.

The Missouri-born Madigan grew up in a large Irish family, a rich source for material for any comedian. And Madigan gives her material a likability that’s almost universal. As she talks about being single when all her friends are married and sending out those annoying Christmas letters, or when she remembers jonesing for a drink at Disneyland, or when she muses that if God hadn’t intended us to eat cows, he would have made them harder to catch, you can’t help but nod and smile. Go see what Lewis Black was talking about this weekend.