Name: Joey De Leon
Location: .
Relationship Status: Single
Record Label: .
Sounds like...: .
Hangout Places: .
About Me: José María Ramos de León, better known as Joey de Leon (born October 14, 1946) is a multi-talented Filipino comedian/TV host. Famous for his wit and sarcasm, he is one of the popular hosts of the long-running noontime variety show Eat Bulaga!. He is a member of the famous comedy trio Tito, Vic and Joey that has made several hit comedy movies and TV shows. As a songwriter, Joey has penned a number of Filipino hit songs that many in the Philippines now consider asclassics, notably "Ipagpatawad Mo" (Forgive Me), "Awitin Mo, Isasayaw Ko" (Sing and I Will Dance), "Boyfriend kong Baduy" (My Geeky Boyfriend), "Iskul Bukol" (School is Tough. Contents Joey spent his early childhood in Sampaloc, Manila with his mother. His father, Jose Suwani de Leon (of Spanish descent and birth), never lived with them. Instead, the elder de Leon sent financial support (through his pension as a member of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East that fought alongside the American forces on the islands during the Second World War) to Joey's mother so that his son would be able to attend school. Joey's early childhood experiences ranged from the traumatic to the comical. His most traumatic experience occurred at age four when he almost drowned during a family beach outing. Because of the incident, he developed a phobia for bodies of water. Among his funny childhood experiences were playing pranks on his female classmates when he was in Grade 4. During his teen years, Joey and his mother lived with his mother's relatives. His aunt and his godmother shouldered his high school expenses. But when he took up architecture at National University, his father's pension at completely covered his college fees. After two years, Joey quit dropped out of college (because he wasn't keen on Math) and took several odd jobs. Upon the prodding of his cousin and best friend Freddie Villareal, he went with him to a radio station to see radio personality Karina Afable. But instead of meeting her, they chanced upon an audition for radio announcers. Joey wasn't interested but his cousin secretly enlisted for the auditions that he passed and that led to a career in radio broadcasting. 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 parodied 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 in the ratings. Although Joey continued to do movies alongside his showbiz team mates Tito and Vic, he started doing solo performances for other TV shows. He topbilled Joey and Son in the '80s, a sitcom on RPN where he played father to a very young Ian Veneracion(who later metamorphosed into a teen heartthrob and action star in the '90s). He was also one of the gag performers on TODAS where his co-stars included Jimmy Santos and Val Sotto. Other TV shows that Joey did as a solo host/comedian included Apple Pie, Patis, Atbp., The Sharon Cuneta Show, and Let's Go Crazy. He was launched by Viva Films as a solo comedian in She-Man: Mistress of the Universe, a parody of the foreign animated series He-Man. The movie was a big hit, and Joey went on to do more solo movies, mostly with his favorite sidekick Rene Requiestas. He also tried his hand at directing movies like Romeo Loves Juliet and Small, Medium, Large. Joey topbilled movies that are mostly spoofs of foreign movies or takes at American and Filipino pop culture. When Starzan became a box-office hit in 1989, he did two more sequels on that same year with tremendous box-office results. Because of the phenomenal box-office standings of the 3 Starzan movies that he made, he was named Box-Office King for that year. He also earned the title Sequel King because most of his movies (Barbi, Elvis and James, Long Ranger en Tonton) each spawned sequels. When Rene Requiestas went solo with his movie career (and later died in 1993), Joey concentrated on TV. He did several TV shows for major networks, mostly with GMA and ABC. In 1995, Joey made a movie comeback via the comedy Bangers for Viva Films, which teamed him up with (the late) comic legend Chiquito and rapper/comedian Andrew E.. This was later followed up by a series of comedy films that had him topbilled alongside other comedians like Leo Martinez (Pipti-pipti) and Dennis Padilla (Ang Tipo kong Lalake and Takot ako sa Darling Ko). However, with the Philippine movie industry slowly losing its grip on the audience, Joey decided to concentrate on TV again, although he still appears in movies every now and then. Currently he still hosts Eat Bulaga which is now the longest-running TV program in the Philippines, and appears in other shows like Mel and Joey, Startalk, Nuts Entertainment and just recently started a new show for ABC, Teka Mona, which replaced Wow Mali, his long-running TV show on the same network. Another show is in the works for Joey this time on GMA's sister station Q. He started hosting Takeshi's Castle with Ryan Yllana. He is also the resident judge of the annual reality-based star search StarStruck and writes the entertainment column De Leon's Den once a week in the Philippine broadsheet Manila Bulletin. 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, 2007, 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.
Links: .



Band Members: .
Fave Artist / Influences: .
Genre: .
Music Affiliations: .