DUNHAM AND HIS DUMMIES : There’s Sourpuss Walter, Vivacious Peanut, Sad-Eyed Jose--Not to Mention the Worm That Lives in the Tequila Bottle

When ventriloquist Jeff Dunham added a curmudgeonly old character named Walter to his act three years ago, he figured Walter would be worth maybe a two-minute bit. But the dummy with the perpetual scowl and the sour-grapes attitude advanced almost immediately from cameo to starring role.

How sour is Walter?

He’s the kind of guy who, having just come back from his second honeymoon at Disneyland, grumbled that “they should turn ‘It’s a Small World’ into an international shooting gallery.”

How sour is Walter?

When Dunham debuted on “The Tonight Show” in 1990, and Johnny Carson praised him for his technique and control and invited him over to the couch for a chat, Walter responded with a scowl: “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I come back to this show!”

He apparently reconsidered. Dunham and Walter have been back three times, a “Tonight Show” record for a ventriloquist act.

As did Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy during the Depression, grumpy Walter has struck a chord in the economically troubled ‘90s. America, it seems, can identify with a character whose catch phrases are “Who the hell cares?” and “I don’t give a damn.”

“Walter gripes about everybody and everything, and I guess people just enjoy laughing at their problems,” says Dunham, who’s headlining at the Improv in Irvine through Sunday.

Walter is the 180-degree opposite of Dunham’s other popular dummy, Peanut, a vivacious, potbellied creature with one red sneaker. (“Peanut, do you know you lost a shoe?” “No, man, I found one!”)

Then there’s Jose, the sad-eyed jalapeno -on-a-stick who joins Dunham in his piece de resistance: a six-way conversation that also includes a worm that lives in a tequila bottle, a couple of cockroaches, Peanut and a dummy that resembles Dunham.

Despite such vocal dexterity, Dunham prefers to be known for his comedy rather than his technical mastery of the ventriloquism. Although audiences are impressed by technique, he thinks “people are more impressed that they can come in for an hour and laugh.”

A Dallas native, Dunham knew at an early age what he wanted to do in life. In the third grade, he used a toy Mortimer Snerd dummy to do an oral book report on “Hansel and Gretel.”

Actually, he recalls with a laugh, “I did two minutes on ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and 10 minutes berating my classmates--which is kind of the way my act goes. I have three minutes of material and for the rest of it I have fun.”

His dummies have become so popular that Dunham often goes unrecognized off-stage. He says he’s been mistaken for a waiter when he’s walking around a club before a show. “But as soon as I pull out Walter or Peanut, people go, ‘Ooh, I know him!’ ”

He says he doesn’t mind being upstaged by his dummies. Indeed, he prefers it.

“The people are there to see the little guys. If there’s some way I could leave the stage, I don’t think people would care.” His goal is that, when his show is over, people will “be thinking to themselves: ‘Those guys were great.’ ”

Who: Jeff Dunham.

When: Thursday, Sept. 24, and Sunday, Sept. 27, at 8:30 p.m.; Friday, Sept. 25, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 26 at 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Where: The Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and go south on Jamboree, then left onto Campus Drive. The Improv is in the Irvine Marketplace shopping center, across Campus Drive from the UC Irvine campus.

Wherewithal: $7 to $10.

Where to call: (714) 854-5455.