“Yeah, I did a year in Fort Lauderdale.”

Pardon Bob Golub if it sounds as though he’s talking about a prison sentence. Thing is, he had just gotten sprung from prison when he hit town in 1979, and the patois comes natural. Golub’s still a tough guy. Might clean the clock of a guy who uses words such as patois.

But it was in Fort Lauderdale that Golub got clean after doing 18 months in Pennsylvania on a drug charge, getting away from “guys I owed money” to settle in with sister Cindy, then a waitress at Christopher’s nightclub. It was also in Fort Lauderdale that Golub learned that he could make people laugh for a living. But not at first.

“I still have a tape of my first night at a place called Friendly’s at Oakland and Federal,” the 52-year-old stand-up comic said from his home in Hollywood, Calif. “You can hear a guy off to the side: ‘Man, this guy is [expletive] horrible.’ “

Golub persevered. He’s now a touring stand-up who can casually drop names like “Damon,” “Affleck” and “Buscemi” into a sentence, as well as an in-demand actor in commercials. He’s the bartender at the start of the current Guinness ad who sets the sliding pint in motion, and when we spoke he had just shot scenes in another spot: “Citibank. Trying to get me some of that [expletive] bailout money.”

Golub likes the f-bomb.

The project that brings him back to Fort Lauderdale this weekend is an advertisement for himself: An award-winning documentary about his hard-scrabble Pennsylvania family, specifically his late father, an intimidating “one-eyed roofer” whose nickname gives the film, “Dodo,” its title. Golub will do stand-up shows, riffing on material in the film, Friday and Saturday at Cinema Paradiso in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and follow that with a screening of “Dodo,” some stand-up and a Q&A session at Gatsby’s in Boca Raton Monday night.

Golub recently scored a distribution deal for “Dodo,” which won the best docu-comedy award at the 2006 New York International Film Festival, and the film will hit Amazon and Netflix on April 20.

“Dodo” was inspired by a simple gesture from Golub’s son: He told his dad that he loved him.

“Basically this is a movie about why I was never able to do that,” Golub says of his journey back to the steel mills and coal mines in western Pennsylvania. “I’m a tough guy. I’ve had knives pulled on me. Guns pointed at me. Gotti’s guys after me. Toughest thing I ever had to do was try to tell my dad I loved him.”

The closest they came, Golub says, was their mutual love of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Their bond was strongest “when we talked about Clemente,” he says.

Alcohol abuse and domestic violence are also themes, but “Dodo” is not without humor, including the part where Dodo passes out while waiting for his food at a fast food restaurant.

“And the [expletive] Ronald McDonald is a [expletive] off-duty cop,” Golub says. “My drunk dad gets [expletive] arrested by Ronald McDonald. That’s not funny?”

Golub says the intent of the film is “breaking the cycle” of domestic violence and estrangement, and he has taken his campaign to others.

“I did my thing at York College [in Pennsylvania],” Golub recalls, “and this guy comes up, Puerto Rican kid. Tough guy. And he says he’s afraid to tell his dad that he loves him. I look him in the eye and say ‘You gotta do it before he dies.’ “

“A few months later I got a call from the kid saying he finally did it,” he says. “That was pretty emotional.”

Golub says the cycle is definitely broken in his house: “I tell my kids I love them every day. I drive them [expletive] crazy.”

IF YOU GO

Bob Golub performs his stand-up routine at 9 p.m. Friday and 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday at Cinema Paradiso (503 SE Sixth St. Fort Lauderdale). Tickets: $15, $22 (VIP). Info: fliff.com, 954-525-3456. The shows are part of a monthly comedy collaboration between Cinema Paradiso and the New York Comedy Club in Boca Raton. Golub also will perform in conjunction with a screening of his film, “Dodo,” Monday at 8 p.m. at Gatsby’s (5970 SW 18th St., Boca Raton). A Q&A session will follow. Admission: $10; includes half-price happy hour drinks and not a whiff of irony. Info: gatsbysfl.com, 561-393-3900.