There`s no joke about it: one of the costliest and roughest senate races in the United States is between comedian and Democratic activist Al Franken and an incumbent Republican using all his old lines against him.

One of the original writers for the iconic comedy show Saturday Night Live, Franken is now best known for the political commentary of his best-selling books and syndicated radio show.

And after a rough campaign, where he has been attacked for failing to pay his taxes and writing a raunchy article in Playboy magazine, Franken is currently running neck and neck with Norm Coleman to represent Minnesota in the US senate.

Coleman won his seat in 2002 after Franken`s friend and long-time Democratic senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash 11 days before the election.

Franken has skewered Coleman for voting with unpopular President George W. Bush nearly 90 percent of the time and for accepting free trips and discounted rent from lobbyists.

Coleman has chided Franken for his `vicious` and `dirty` campaign smears -- including tying him to a lawsuit alleging that a top donor funneled money to Coleman`s wife -- and used expletive-filled clips from Franken`s radio program to declare him `out of control` and unfit for office.

The candidates have spent more than 30 million dollars on the race, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and millions more has poured in from the national parties and independent groups as Democrats vie to gain a majority in the senate and Republicans struggle to block them.

Minnesota is no stranger to electing unorthodox entertainers, having tapped former pink-boa wearing professional wrestler turned actor and commentator Jesse Ventura as governor in 1998.

Franken has mostly eschewed comedy on the campaign trail, focusing on policy proposals and the problems with the current Republican administration and his plans to rebuild the `middle class economy` and make college and health care more affordable.

Born in New York in 1951, Franken moved to Minnesota when he was four years old.

He mixed comedy with politics at an early age, running for president of his seventh grade class with the slogan: `never spit in a man`s face unless his mustache is on fire.`

Franken began working in comedy after graduating from Harvard and spent two decades at the Emmy-award winning Saturday Night Live as a writer and then performer. His creations ranged from the silly self-help guru Stuart Smalley to a bitingly satirical portrayal of religious right leader Rev. Pat Robertson.

His first serious political work was in 1988, when he hit the campaign trail as a celebrity surrogate for Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis.

Franken published his first best-selling attack on Republicans in 1996, a year after Republicans took over Congress amid a bitter cultural war.

He wrote his next best-seller, `Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,` in 2003 while on a fellowship at Harvard`s Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

Franken joined the liberal backlash against conservative talk radio in 2004 with a five day a week, three hour show on the newly launched Air America Radio station.

He was soon ranked among the most influential radio talkers in the country with his sarcastic attacks on the right.

`What I do is jujitsu,` Franken said recently. `They (Republicans) say something ridiculous and I subject them to scorn and ridicule.`