Obviously one of the big entertainment news stories of recent days has been the death of Johnny Carson – the king of the late night talk show.
Here in Britain of course, we’re not quite as knowledgable about Carson as Americans since the show basically didn’t get shown here. How many Briton’s realise that Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining is quoting Ed MacMahon introducing Johnny Carson nightly on The Tonight Show.
Anyhow, this is a roundabout way of pointing the interested listener to a piece of entertaining audio from the Paul Harris Show on KMOX (a great show by the way which sadly isn’t webcast – I have to make do with occassional mp3s that Paul Harris puts up). He has a great interview with a guy called Mark Evanier which last a good half an hour – so is quite a download. As well as having some fascinating stories about Carson, there’s a bit which British listeners will be familiar with. Most will be familiar with the famous encounter that Michael Parkinson had with Rod Hull on his TV show. And we all know that Parkinson’s hostility towards the act was not fake. Listen to Carson’s take on Hull in the middle of this audio (Yup, Emu appeared on the Johnny Carson show!).