Tim Allen chats two-year prison sentence for cocaine and being a conservative in Hollywood

Back in 1978, Golden Globe winner Tim Allen faced life in prison after selling 1.4lbs of cocaine to an undercover officer at Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan.

The 67-year-old comedian wound up only serving 28 months (1979-1981) in federal prison for drug trafficking because he snitched on 20 others, including four major dealers.

‘I was an eff up,’ Tim admitted on Monday’s episode of WTF with Marc Maron podcast.  

‘We were a bunch of college kids – a bunch of the kids who overdid it, [but] two of us took [the punishment] for about 20 guys.’

After serving eight months, Allen (born Timothy Alan Dick) got used to prison life day-to-day by doing what he was told and learning how to ‘shut up.’

‘Saturday we got better food. Eventually, I went from a holding cell arrangement to my own cell,’ the Home Improvement alum recalled.

‘[I called my mother at Thanksgiving and she said]: “Oh, that’s good. Steve graduated from Purdue. Jeff’s on his way to Michigan State. One of my oldest sons got his own cell.”‘  

Tim – whose father was killed by a drunk driver in 1964 – finally got sober after his 1997 arrest for drunk driving in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

‘I’m going on 23 years sober and clean of everything,’ Allen announced.

‘Alcohol never affected me like the other guys. I could drink copious amounts even [as] a young kid…I had so much shame at the things that I did, especially driving people around. Coming from a dad that was killed that way, it’s difficult to get past it.’

The Emmy nominee also discussed being a rare Hollywood fiscal conservative and, while he loves tweeting quotes to express his ideals, he has always tried not to be ‘preachy.’  

‘What I’ve done is just not joined into – as I call it – the “we culture,'” Tim noted. ‘I’m not telling anybody else how to live. I don’t like that. “We should do this.” “We should do that.”‘

Allen – who openly hates paying taxes – famously attended the 2016 inauguration of former President Donald Trump.

‘Once I realized that the last president pi**ed people off, I kind of like that,’ the Denver-born father-of-two laughed.

‘So it was fun to just not say anything. Didn’t join in the lynching crowd.’

Tim said former President Bill Clinton has been a ‘genuinely nice guy to me’ but he still didn’t think his wife Hillary ‘should be president.’

‘In the end, you go the other direction. There’s nothing personal about it. If you don’t like it then wait until the next election,’ Allen said.

The Western Michigan University grad executive produces and stars as sporting goods store executive Mike Baxter/Tim Taylor in the ninth season of the sitcom Last Man Standing, which airs Thursdays on Fox.

Tim also executive produces and co-hosts the 10-episode builder reality competition Assembly Required with Richard Karn, which airs Tuesdays on the History Channel.