LEWISTON – Performers from away may stroll onto the stage of Portland’s posh Merrill Auditorium as if they’re on their way to Starbucks for a latte. Not Bob Marley.

The hometown comedian once led a team of oxen onto the stage. Other times, he pushed a Shaw’s grocery cart and followed a gang of bikers on Harleys.

“Then it was me on a little pink bike,” Marley recalled.

Those entrances are how Marley, 40, counts the years since he started doing the New Year’s shows that have grown into a Maine tradition.

Sitting in his month-old RV in the parking lot of the Lewiston Ramada – where he was scheduled to perform a corporate show Thursday – Marley ticked off the grand entrances: others included aboard a boat and as Saddam Hussein.

“This is the seventh year,” he finally announced. And it’s the biggest one yet.

On the last five days of 2007, Marley is scheduled to play eight shows at Merrill, which he calls a “cleaned-up, fancy place.”

They will likely sell out before Christmas, making him the most successful performer in Maine when you add up all those tickets.

“If you told me 17 years ago I was selling 16,000 tickets in a week and then going to Bangor and selling another 3,000, I would have been like, ‘Yeah, whatever. That’s crazy.'”

But Marley, who has built a national name for himself as a comic working on Comedy Central and often appearing as a guest on late-night TV talk shows, has made the New Year’s show into something extra-special.

“It’s really become a monster,” said Marley, who begins preparing months in advance. A special notebook devoted to the show is 200 pages long, with each bit carefully annotated and the transitions finely tuned.

“Merrill Auditorium named it a couple of years ago,” he said. “They called it ‘Bob Marley’s Holiday Classic.'”

“What is this?” he asked. “A golf tournament?”

It’s nothing so snooty.

In person, Marley seems like a guy you might run into at Home Depot, helping other customers figure out how the gadgets work.

He seems unaffected by his celebrity status. Being a Mainer – one who also performs here – keeps him grounded, he said. Folks here have little patience for prima donnas.

“You’d never get away with that in Maine because people here are nice people,” Marley said. “If you’re nice to them, they’re nice back. If you went out of your way to be kind of a jerk, they’d just wash their hands of you.”

Marley started working here 17 years ago, after graduating from the University of Maine at Farmington with a health degree.

He first moved to Boston, where he learned his craft in the same bars where Denis Leary, Lenny Clarke and Jay Leno first worked.

Then he spent 11 years in Los Angeles. He made “The Boondock Saints” and had roles on several TV shows. He also built a reputation as he traveled around the country, refining his stand-up skills. He moved back to Maine two years ago, settling in Falmouth with his wife and kids.

He still travels all over, but no shows are bigger than the Merrill events.

“They’re kind of the ideal size for me,” he said. In 2000, he sold out the Cumberland County Civic Center on New Year’s Eve. That was too big. When the 7,000-plus crowd roared, it overwhelmed him.

“That was a scary night,” he said. “It felt like I don’t have any control over this.”

Merrill Auditorium is not small, either. It seats about 2,000 people.

“That stage is huge,” Marley said. “It’s like 70 feet wide and 35 feet deep.”

So he gives folks the biggest show he can.

“I’m all over the stage, and I get so amped up for it,” he said.

He promised that this year’s show would be all new and would have some contemporary bits. One will be built around the quarrel about Portland’s decision to let King Middle School give kids contraceptives.

The show will also be clean: no “F” words.

Last year, after listening to a recording of a show, Marley said he was struck by the profanity.

“I dropped the ‘F’ word,” he said. “I got rid of that, not because I object to that or I found Jesus or anything. It sounded like lazy comedy.”

Sensing a good line, Marley contorted his face and lapsed into his over-the-top Maine accent.

“I’ve been 14 months,” he said, “‘F’-free.”