Montreal's Just for Laughs Comedy Festival has been a career launching pad for so many stars, including Drew Carey, Tim Allen and Roseanne Barr. Just not for Chelsea Handler.

"I was terrible!" Handler says of her experience at the talent showcase. Just 24 at the time, coming off a couple of years on the club and bar circuit, the New Jersey native says she simply wasn't ready. Handler's handlers disagreed.

"My manager strong-armed me in with the best of the best," she says of her hurry-up Montreal gig, where she played to an audience full of network executives and talent scouts. Things did not go well.

"After that it was like, 'Oh, my life is over,' " she says. "It takes a long time to get over that kind of humiliation."

Actually it only took 24 hours. Handler was back on an L.A. stage the next night and impressed studio executives from Paramount, who signed her to her first development deal.

Now she's hosting her own late-night series, "Chelsea Lately," airing in both Canada and the United States on E.

Watching her show, you'd never know Handler was afraid of anything. Her take on celebrity screw-ups is scathing and a big part of her show's gossipy round-table segments.

"I want to make fun of all the celebrities that are out there, the Nicole Richies of the world, all the people who are getting pregnant," she told critics when her show was launched in the U.S. last summer. "I think pregnancy is a huge responsibility. I think it's a five-year commitment, and you need to take it more seriously."

Now 32, Handler takes dead aim at tabloid targets such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Paula Abdul, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. But she doesn't just hold them up for ridicule.

"I think we are all so involved in a mesh of celebrities of the world and all these people who are so ridiculous, at this point all we can do is sit back and just make fun of ourselves for being that interested."

Handler does that each night on her show, usually with three guests. Howie Mandel, Gene Simmons and D.L. Hughley have all dropped by, but it is the sassy girl-talk with the likes of Ali Landry, Jillian Barberie Reynolds and Leah Remini that usually gets sparks to fly.

"I really want people on (the show) who are going to say something," she says. "I want it to be like sitting in on a conversation that a bunch of friends are having."

For that reason, Handler doesn't consider "Chelsea Lately" to be a talk show. She tries to avoid, for example, having guests on simply to plug their latest movie, book or whatever.

"I think we've all seen that a million times, an interview where J-Lo is talking about 'El Cantante' with Marc Anthony," she says. "I don't care about that. I want to hear from J-Lo's next-door neighbour about what's going on with J-Lo and Marc Anthony in the wee hours of the morning."

She's been a guest on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" and, while she's a big fan of the host ("He loves comedians - I love that about him," she says), she knows her take-no-prisoners style of comedy sometimes rocks the boat.

A bit she did on "Tonight" about Chinese drivers seemed particularly politically incorrect, but Handler says she's an equal opportunity slammer, especially when it comes to her own life. Handler has been candid about her alcoholism in the past, penning two books, including "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea."

Beyond that, just being able to come right out and say what she wants to say is important to Handler.

"It's just commentary," she says. "It's what any comedian does."

She finds the politically correct climate is getting "so absurd" and can't believe "the things people are getting in trouble for."

She's taken stands in the past. Last summer she briefly hosted Fox's short-lived filmmaking reality show "The Lot" before quitting after one episode.

"I quit because I smelled the disaster happening before it did," she says.

Handler was told she just couldn't walk out on a Steven Spielberg/Mark Burnett production, but she quickly realized "I wasn't on a show where I could be funny and have a good time."

She's always wanted to be a comedian, even back in the third or fourth grade when she would get sent out of the room for talking too much. That's when, she says, she discovered her comedy voice.

"I didn't know what voice it was, I just knew I had one and it was hard to keep my mouth shut. I've kind of run the gamut since then. You learn sometimes."

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Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.