Who is Cliff Clavin in Cheers?

Show

Cheers

Played by

John Ratzenberger

First episode

“Give Me a Ring Sometime”Season 1, Episode 1, aired September 30, 1982

Role

Main cast

Network

NBC

Occupation

Mail carrier, U.S. Postal Service

Show run

1982 to 1993

Also known as

Clifford Clavin, Cliffie

Cliff Clavin is a proud employee of the U.S. Postal Service and the self-appointed expert on absolutely everything at Cheers. Played by John Ratzenberger, he is a lonely, boastful, oddly lovable barfly whose trivia is usually wrong and always delivered with total confidence.

On Cheers, Cliff Clavin's story runs through Norm Peterson (Best Friend), Carla Tortelli (Tormentor), Sam Malone (Bartender and friend), Woody Boyd (Bartender), and Frasier Crane (Fellow regular).

Who is Cliff Clavin?

Cliff is a Boston mail carrier who takes his job and his uniform very seriously. He spends his evenings on the stool next to his best friend, Norm, and he lives with his mother, Esther, well into adulthood. His father walked out when Cliff was a boy and resurfaces later as a con man on the run.

Cliff is desperate to be respected, and he tries to earn it by knowing things. He fills every pause with "facts" about history, science, and nature, most of them half-remembered or invented, and the rest of the bar has long since stopped listening.

Personality and comedy

Cliff's comedy comes from his unshakable confidence in information nobody can trust. He tells tall tales about his own adventures, brags about his romantic prospects, and corrects people who are right. Carla treats him as her personal punching bag, and his patience is matched only by his inability to take a hint.

Underneath, Cliff is lonely and a little sad, and the show lets that come through. His friendship with Norm is one of the warmest in the series, and the regulars, for all their teasing, always let him back onto his stool.

Key storylines

Cliff's most famous moment comes in season eight, when he appears on Jeopardy! and builds a huge lead with categories that seem written just for him. He then loses everything with a wildly wrong Final Jeopardy! response, one of the show's best-remembered gags.

Other storylines dig into his odd family life, including meeting his long-lost father and losing his childhood home. From season seven onward he has a gentle romance with fellow postal worker Margaret O'Keefe. In the final season she comes back to Boston pregnant, and Cliff stands by her and prepares to help raise the baby until she returns to the child's biological father.

Behind the scenes and legacy

Cliff was not in the original pilot script. John Ratzenberger auditioned for the small part that became Norm, lost it to George Wendt, and pitched the producers on a bar know-it-all instead. The character was first written as a security guard and became a mailman shortly before the pilot was filmed. Ratzenberger was a recurring player in season one and a main cast member from season two through the end.

Cliff later reappears on Frasier, most memorably in "Cheerful Goodbyes," a 2002 episode built around his retirement party in Boston.

Cliff Clavin: frequently asked questions

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