The late comedian George Carlin — famous for those “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV” — was honored Monday with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the only award he saw as a legitimate comedy prize.

Jon Stewart, Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers and others saluted Carlin at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for inspiring their own comedy, and they took up his cause of pushing the boundaries of free speech.

Actor and comedian Dennis Leary said he grew up in a church that listed banned books and records in the bulletin each Sunday, including Carlin’s “Class Clown” and “Seven Words.” Leary said he and his fellow altar boys immediately pooled their money to listen to Carlin’s “Seven Words.”

“That was when I realized you could make money for saying things my dad used to say when he was fixing the car,” Leary said.

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Mother fights off a robber by locking him in a storage room and hitting him with a baseball bat.

Nichola Burke said she had a “horrible day” working at the Betfred shop in Leeds and “just snapped” when a raider then tried to steal the days takings as she was closing the store.

The manager said: “I was fuming, it had been a horrible day at work, with people moaning at me all day. There was no way I was letting an idiot robber get me down, as I saw him coming towards me, I said: ‘Not on my shift’.”

The man, who was dressed in dark clothes and a black ski mask, took a handful of money and ran to the door but it was already locked.

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