John Mayer takes plenty of heat on Comedy Central's 'Roast Battle'

HOLLYWOOD — John Mayer didn’t sign on to compete in Roast Battle, but that didn’t stop him from getting burned.

The singer serves as a celebrity judge, alongside Sarah Silverman, on Comedy Central's diss-off tournament , Roast Battle II: War of the Words, airing Thursday through Sunday (10 ET/PT).  After Snoop Dogg, Anthony Jeselnik, Whitney Cummings and Ken Jeong pick winning comics in the first two episodes, Mayer and Silverman determine quarterfinalists Saturday, before Sunday’s live finale with Patton Oswalt, TJ Miller and Jason Sudeikis voting on a champion.

The show, presented by "Roastmaster" Jeff Ross, works this way: Comics battle in pairs to fire jokes at each other. After a few funny insults are dished — with interruptions from guerrilla comedy trio The Wave — Ross and celebrity judges choose which battler advances.

"This is a safe haven for free speech,” Ross warned the crowd this week at a  taping of Saturday's episode. "Nothing is off limits."

And so vulgar one-liners were delivered, even to the guests seated at the judges table. (Well, mostly to Mayer; the only dig about Silverman — that she's all too familiar with "horse-face jokes" — came from her).

“In college, I would listen to your live recordings,” comedian Matthew Broussard told Mayer. What did he learn? That "you can be funny, while staying true to yourself as a cocky, pretentious douchebag.” The audience on the Sunset Strip howled at the joke.

Comedian Joe Dosch asked Mayer,  “Don’t you have to go sing for a pair of Ugg boots?”

Mayer laughed at the digs, and had a few witty retorts. When Ross asked why he's working so hard, promising to continue releasing monthly installments of music, Mayer responded,  "Because I have a crippling void inside of me that will never be filled."

Those jokes were no harsher than the regular competition insults: Olivia Grace compared another contestant to someone who watches the creepy dutch horror film The Human Centipede "from a technical standpoint,” and Frank Castillo joked that his opponent "could pass for a Trump: She’s got the body of Melania, the brains of Ivanka and her womb is Barron.”

But after four rounds of disses, it was time to make nice. Opponents hugged, Silverman embraced her comedy “family” and Mayer met with the comic who went at him hardest.

“Don’t forget: It’s a performance,” Mayer said after chatting backstage with Broussard, who happens to be a big fan, about the difference between performing comedy and playing live music. He wrote nine  comebacks for Broussard, he said, "but now the forum is over."

Broussard agreed: "Saying it now would just be mean."