AUBURN – Felon O’Reilly didn’t panic when no one in the audience laughed at his first jokes about his poor Irish family and his drunken grandfather.

He knew he’d get them with the one about his mother’s bumper sticker.

“My mother was real proud of me,” he said. “She had a bumper sticker that said, My son earned 54 days of good time this year.'”

A few people in the room clapped, and nearly everyone in the cold, barren basement of the Androscoggin County Jail laughed.

O’Reilly won them over. He showed them that he can relate to being stuck inside, told when to get up, when to eat, when to go to bed.

The 50-year-old carpenter from South Portland spent 10 years in and out of state and federal prisons before becoming a stand-up comedian.

He performed his first shows at bars and comedy clubs in Portland before realizing that his jokes about doing drugs and doing time could benefit a different crowd.

“It took me 25 years to get out of bars,” he said. “That wasn’t the scene for me.”

After a couple of successful acts at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, he started traveling to other prisons and jails in Maine and Massachusetts.

By making fun of himself, his 15-year heroin addiction and his seven prison terms, he hopes to send a message: “If you ever get sick of it, there is a solution.”

O’Reilly’s visit to Auburn on Monday was his first stop at the Androscoggin County Jail.

Dressed in their light brown uniforms, about 60 minimum-security inmates sat against the walls of the gym as O’Reilly shouted his jokes from a corner of the room.

“Usually when I do a show, I ask how many people have been arrested,” O’Reilly told them. “I guess I don’t need to ask that here.”

Then he proceeded to tell them that he had been arrested nearly 100 times for everything from larceny to dealing drugs.

“They got me once on a seven-year warrant for writing a bad check,” he said. “How was I supposed to know it was bad? It wasn’t mine.”

Now free and sober for more than four years, O’Reilly has been performing since 2002.

It all started when he was building a stage set for Maine humorist Bob Marley. After watching a few comedians in Marley’s opening act, he realized that he was just as funny as they were.

At the time, he was known as Al Joyce. He explains in his act why he decided to use a stage name.

“I still had some warrants out for me,” he said.

O’Reilly considers himself a motivational comedian. His business cards include a mug shot of him taken by the U.S. Marshal’s Office in 1994.

His life of crime began in high school when he started selling speed for beer money. Within years, he was trafficking cocaine and automatic weapons.

“Some people have bad days,” he said Monday night. “I had a bad decade.”

Although he is careful not to preach, he always tries to leave his audience members with something to think about when they return to their cells.

Before wrapping up Monday night, he talked about his last Christmas behind bars.

“I remember watching the moonlight reflect on the razor wire,” he said. “And I remember liking it. That scared me.”

It scared him so much that when he got out, he stayed out.