Who is not as famous as your favorite Las Vegas comedian but exactly as funny?

The guy who writes his jokes. The majority of today's headliners collaborate on their material with friends; some even pay professional gag writers.

"Many of the Vegas acts are so cranked with TV work that they turn to some trusted writers for some lines," says comic Jeff Cesario, "sometimes from their writing staffs, sometimes from old stand-up contacts."

Although they say they write most of their own material, Louie Anderson, George Wallace and Carrot Top all admit to occasionally using writers. (Cesario says he helped Anderson organize material for his current Excalibur run, but doesn't know if any of the lines remain in use.)

"I'll write with anybody," Wallace says. "I'll write with you, I don't care, if we're coming up with some funny material. Everybody needs jokes. David Letterman, Jay Leno, you think they write those jokes every night?"

Of the top comics in town, only Rita Rudner and David Brenner say they don't use writers, although Brenner says he has "a close friend" that he "bounces ideas off of."

Carrot Top's collaborator is comedian Charlie Viracola, who opens for comedy's famous redhead tonight through January 22.

"We're like Elton John and Bernie Taupin -- except we don't sleep together," says Viracola, who writes the majority of Carrot Top's prop jokes.

"I build them, too," he says. "I don't know if that makes me more of a writer or a carpenter."

Like most comedy writers, Viracola lives in Los Angeles, where he's working on his own stand-up career and spotlight dreams.

At the low end of the scale, comedy writing pays about $75 per joke, $200 if it's televised. But if the headliner is earning millions, he or she will frequently pay as much as $10,000 to spend a week with a writer whenever a "punch-up" is desired.

"I'd rather not say the exact amount," Viracola says, "but let's say that if I just wanted to write for Carrot Top alone, over the years, I could make a living just doing that."

In Las Vegas, headliners don't need regular punch-ups, because the stream of new audiences is constant.

"They're not doing a whole new show all the time," says Bruce Fine, who worked on material with Shawn Wayans for his gig at The Venetian in November, the same month he was hired to condense Gordie Brown's material to the four minutes necessary for the impressionist's "Late Show with David Letterman" appearance.

"They might want a new five or 10 minutes and get rid of some older material," Fine says. "You can get together just for a couple of days and they're gonna end up with a new 10 minutes."

Most of the call for writers is driven by TV appearances.

"Once it's on TV, people who come to your show don't want to see the same thing they just saw on TV," says Michael Goudeau, who has written comedy material for the Las Vegas productions of Lance Burton -- in which he also appears -- and Penn & Teller.

You won't find "joke writer" listed in the want ads. Mostly, the job goes to friends.

"Friends know each other's personalities," Wallace says. "We know what joke is gonna work for us. And you feel comfortable talking to your friends."

Wallace says he'll give a writer pal, such as "Simpsons" staffer Marc Wilmore, a subject.

"And we just go back and forth," he says. "That's how we write jokes. I just get on the phone and we just start talking about things and all of a sudden, it just evolves."

Fine says Brown called on him because they used to work crowds years ago at the Improv in Los Angeles.

"And he remembered that he liked my style and my joke-writing ability," Fine says.

The job of joke writing fell out of favor with the emergence of observational comedy in the '70s, when Brenner and George Carlin graduated from telling jokes to waxing philosophical about things in their everyday lives.

"In the old days, Milton Berle, Jack Benny and those guys used to talk about their writers, how they were the frontmen for this team," says Matt Harawitz, a Las Vegas-based comic who says he has written jokes used by Jeffrey Ross and Dane Cook.

"But these days, I think people just want to believe the illusion that you're just hearing one person confess about his or her frailties."

Most of the time, part of what the writer gets paid to do is shut up.

"No way!" says one unknown comic -- who writes regularly for a well-known headliner -- in response to an interview request. "That's my bread and butter!"

Carrot Top freely admits to Viracola's contribution, however.

"He helps me out a lot," he says, acknowledging that he comes up with the majority of his prop gags. However, Carrot Top says his act is not all about props.

"He doesn't write my stand-up," Carrot Top says. "In the old days, we did more, because I'd be on the road he'd have stuff for me when I got back. But now I'm back, the majority of the stuff is mine because I have to come up with stuff every night."

Writers say they don't mind when their work is not only attributed to their client, but held up as an example of how funny they are.

"What that means is that you've just become that much more valuable to that person," says Goudeau.

Fine adds, "I know for sure there's a couple of things that I worked with Gordie on that he's getting laughs with, and I'm proud of that."

And that pride often goes a lot further than the money.

"I never said I make a great living," Viracola says. "I live in an apartment the size of an SUV, and Carrot Top has three mansions.

"And Bernie Taupin's house is just as big as Carrot Top's."