Baldwin City resident Diana Gish, in character as Pearl the Singing Mermaid Queen, performs on an episode of ABC's The

Diana Gish may not have swum away with the top prize on Thursday night’s episode of “The Gong Show,” but the Baldwin City resident, who performs as her alter ego Pearl the Singing Mermaid Queen, has no regrets.

“This time, I felt like the gong liberated me, you know?” Gish says of her elimination via the show’s titular gong. “I faced the gong in front of America, and I survived. So, what’s next?

Gish, 58, made her national television debut earlier this week on “The Gong Show,” ABC’s revival of the wacky 1970s talent competition. Perched on her throne, Gish — or her character, the “smart aleck” Pearl the Singing Mermaid Queen — sang, strummed the ukulele and cracked a few fish-themed jokes for celebrity judges Megan Fox, Andy Samberg and Maya Rudolph.

Evidently, it wasn’t much to their liking. As in the original “Gong Show,” contestants who fail to impress the judges are “gonged.” Rudolph, of “Saturday Night Live” and “Bridesmaids” fame, didn’t enjoy Pearl’s puns at first, but seemed to enjoy her post-gong bit about being “hard of herring,” Gish says.

The joke even spurred Rudolph to say she regretted gonging her, a moment Gish initially missed amid “the excitement and the rush and the nerves.”

“One thing they cut out was that Andy Samberg said, ‘You were funnier after we gonged you,'” recalls Gish. “The encouraging thing was that Maya Rudolph said she regretted gonging me.”

Looking back on the experience, Gish says she accomplished what she set out to do. She made the audience laugh, she says, and she conquered her own fears of performing on camera. Gish, a former radio broadcaster, hopes to parlay her lifelong love of entertaining into a successful showbiz career, and “The Gong Show” gave her a platform for it, she says.

Since the show’s airing Thursday night, Gish says she’s already received an outpouring of support, both from her friends in Baldwin City and from people all over the world. Folks from as far away as Singapore, she says, have reached out to her online.

As for any business offers to come out of the experience, Gish says she’s still waiting. “Maybe Maya Rudolph will call,” she quipped.

For now, it’s back to the drawing board to figure out her next career move. Gish thinks “people are ready for more Pearl,” and she’s happy to oblige.

“I just think it’s so much better to go out and face that fear than to live with the regret of not trying,” she says of her “Gong Show” experience. “Hopefully I gave someone else the courage to do something they’ve always wanted to do.”