"Principled Al" Yankovic turned down seven-figure offer to perform at Riyadh Comedy Festival

This is per a new interview with Pennsylvania’s TribLive, where Yankovic shares publicly for the first time that he was invited to perform at the festival in Saudi Arabia, “which is something that I obviously did not want to do.” Though he declines to name a specific dollar amount, “it was seven figures to do one show, which is way more than I’ve ever been offered in my life to do a show. But I just couldn’t be part of that.”

The Riyadh Comedy Festival garnered controversy not just because of the strict regulations that comics had to follow with their material, but for being sponsored by the Saudi government. That government was apparently willing to shell out much more for Yankovic than, say, Tim Dillon, who said he lost out on $375,000 when he was fired from the festival; per Variety, performers were reported as being paid up to $1.6 million for a single set. Yankovic is still pretty gracious to the people who went. “I’m not dissing anybody that took the money because I’m sure everybody that went there got a lot of money. I’m sure they had their own reasons and justifications for doing it,” he says. “But I’m doing enough that I don’t need to take any amount of money if it makes me feel icky, and that kind of did.” So shines a weird deed in a weary world.