The Joke Man by Jackie Martling

Author:Jackie Martling [Martling, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2017-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

1990

The Channel 9 Show

The Channel 9 show, the first regularly televised attempt at television by The Howard Stern Show, accounted for two of the craziest and most creative years in my life.

Five hours of radio, give or take, five days a week, and somehow, with a skeleton crew of incredibly energetic cohorts and whatever juices we had left, we put up a sixty-minute television show on Saturday night about thirty-five times a year for two long, exhausting, draining, and wonderful years.

The story I always tell first is about the time we had Siamese twins booked. To be politically correct, let’s call them the conjoined twins, although I’d bet Eng and Chang Bunker, the Siamese guys connected at the chest who were the origin of the term, would appreciate being remembered.

It is of the utmost importance that you realize the show was violently understaffed. We were constantly working on a shoestring budget and writing and producing the shows in a nonstop time crunch. That will make it easier for you to believe that major facts could slip through the cracks and create wonderfully glaring situations later.

Such as with the booking of the conjoined twins. (It pains me to type that. I love the term “Siamese twins,” it’s so exotic.) Just before we called their agent (my God, they had an agent), our booker and a few of the crew had seen who they thought were these twins on a television show and thought it would be a good idea. They were attached on the side of their heads above the ear and faced forward and, aside from the obvious, were perfectly normal.

We writers immediately decided the way to go was to play “I’ve Got A Secret” and have the celebrity panel wear blindfolds. We would have Robin Quivers be a panelist and we’d try to book Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen, two of the original panelists from the classic television game show What’s My Line? when it originally ran in the late fifties.

When we got the twins’ resume, we couldn’t believe it. One of them had a high bowling average, the other was a nurse—it went on and on. The reading of their resume would have been great television. Man, were we screaming.

We figured the resume had to be at least a bit tongue-in-cheek, so that we could have a little fun with them.

Certainly one of my all-time low jokes was for Howard to have a regular carpenter’s crosscut saw behind the podium so after their secret had been guessed he could pull it out and say, “I have an idea . . .”

We had the saw there. It actually got that far.

On the fateful day, the twins arrived at the station, and a few minutes later our stalwart, priceless producer Dan Forman came flying into the studio to fetch me.

I can’t say enough about Dan’s energy, his talent, his dedication to the show and every show he’s ever worked on or with, or how thoroughly we enjoyed breaking his balls.

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