He’s a comedy legend, celebrating 55 years in show business. Over those years, Bob Newhart, the button-down comedian famous for making the first comedy album to hit number one on the charts in 1960, along with TV hits like “The Bob Newhart” show from 1972 to 1978 and “Newhart” from 1982 to 1990, and numerous cameos and a guest appearance as Professor Proton in “The Big Bang Theory,” has never stopped working, never stopped honing his skills.

“I’ve never understood people who say I don’t want to make people laugh any more,” Newhart said in a phone interview with the Record last week, in advance of his June 28 appearance at Snoqualmie Casino. “Why am I still touring? Well, I love it….. the mind is still there, in my estimation. I guess you’d get an argument from my wife and my children, but I think it is.”

At age 85, the comedian is still every bit the curious, deadpan observer of truth that’s stranger than fiction, but maybe even more subtle. A conversation with him roamed over broad territory, from advertising to politics, religion, Seattle, his craft and Richard Pryor, and was peppered with comments that started out funny, and just more so.

Take politics, an area he avoids these days, although in the 60s, he said, he supported John F. Kennedy for president. “He’s Catholic and I’m Catholic, and although they never said it from the pulpit, as a Catholic, you knew you were going to hell if you didn’t vote for Jack.”

These days, he says, he doesn’t feel qualified to tell people how to vote.

“For instance, as a comedian, I would like Joe Biden to run for President, but I have to think of the country,” he said. “I happen to like Joe. Maybe he’ll run. He’s a very decent man, if that’s what we want for President. I’m not sure that’s what we want.”

Newhart says what he does is to “point out weird things that are going on,” and then the audiences take it from there. Laxative commercials are a prime example. “I wouldn’t ask my best friend if he were constipated,” Newhart declares.

All his material comes from ordinary life.

“Thank God for people, because if weren’t for them, we’d be out of business,” he said. “What comedians do is, we watch you people, and then you pay us to watch us do you. I’ve often thought you should just watch each other and exchange money between yourselves.”

People not only provide the material for his shows, they provide the direction, too, he said.

“When I’m in Snoqualmie, about halfway through the show, I will decide which one of the old routines I will do,” says Newhart. “They tell you what they want,” in their responses. “An audience will take you places… It’s an interesting process, maybe that’s why you never get tired of it.”

Newhart added that one of the best audiences he ever had was at a Seattle club, but he can’t recall which one. “That became the bar you measured other audiences by… Some of the best shows I’ve ever done were in Seattle. Every so often, you run into where the audience is ahead of you, and that’s great — you get two for one,” he said. “You start to do a line, they start laughing, and then they laugh again when you do the line.”

He’s always had a preference for live audiences, he said, because “it’s where I started,” and because it gives him “immediate gratification.”

Although The Bob Newhart Show was filmed in front of live audiences, the TV world didn’t give him that same satisfaction.

“You’d go in for a reading on Monday, and there’d be a great line… I wanted to do it then, I didn’t want to wait until Friday when we had an audience,” he said. “In a stand-up world,… it’s immediate gratification. It’s the audience and you, and you can just go anywhere you want.”

Anywhere but Windsor, Ontario in 1960. That’s where Newhart, playing a club circuit just before his album came out, met the audiences that set an entirely different bar for him.

“I didn’t get a laugh, two shows a night, seven nights a week,” he said. “It just didn’t work.”

Finding out what works for an audience is the ongoing goal for Newhart, and to make it more of a challenge, he always keeps his routine clear of adults-only themes and profanity.

“I have no problem with comedians who work blue — that’s what we call it — I just don’t happen to work blue,” he said. “It’s like a sweater that never fit. There was something wrong with the shoulder… Not being clean, it just always bothered me.”

Also, he said, “It’s harder to be clean,” which is why he does it. “There’s the satisfaction when you’ve done a show and it’s clean and the audience has enjoyed it… What’s better striking out a triple-A team, or striking out the Yankees?”

So it might be surprising to hear Newhart talk about the late Richard Pryor as a comedian he respected and enjoyed watching, until he explains.

Pryor, perhaps best known for his controversial racial commentary and liberal use of ethnic slurs, was the first recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize, for making a significant contribution to American humor, in 1998. Newhart received the award in 2002.

“What he was doing, is what Mark Twain was doing in the 1900s,” said Newhart. “He was talking about life on the frontier… and Richard Pryor was talking about life in the inner city. You take away the words, and the concepts are just brilliant.”

Newhart appears at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 28 at Snoqualmie Casino. For tickets and information, visit www.snocasino.com.