Don’t be sorry. If it turned out you were Giorgio Tsoukalas, I would have a billion questions for you. I probably wouldn’t be the only one here either.
I was on High Quiz Bowl (college bowl, but for HS kids) all four years of HS, and was team captain when I was a senior. I had incredible teen self-consciousness and never watched the episodes. I think I would have died seeing my dorkass self. It’s been long enough (46 years) that I’m over it and sure would like to now, but whaddyagonnado?
One I didn’t was when, sometime about 1993, I was visiting Mt Rushmore someone come up to me and asked me what I thought. I said “They have the best fudge of any national park.” (well, they did! Probably still do.) He wanted me to say it on camera, but I’m no dummy. Nothing on video ever goes away, and I wasn’t about to become an internet meme (even if the internet hadn’t been invested yet.). So I passed my opportunity for fame.
Long strory but I was on TV when the final goal was scored in the 1990 FA cup final.
I shared a house with someone who was a steward at various concerts at Wembley Arena, and did it enough that she could arrange for friends to also go. I am not into concerts but one day I saw her list of events and saw they included sports events events at Wembley Stadium. Knowing it would be impossible to get spots for the FA cup final (there was a note priority would be given to those that had stewarded at a number of other less popular events that had already passed) I asked if me and a couple of frieds could Steward at an England international, my firend got the date wrong and phoned up to request the FA cup final minutes after the poice had requested more stewards.
There were 3 stewards at each entry point (from behind the stand to the seatting area) and for most fo the game we rotated one behind the stand and two at the entrance but just before the end of (regulation) time there was a signal for us to come to the edge of the pitch to prevent fans entering the field. The game went into extra time so I was there for the final 30 minutes. When Mark Hughes scored he ran right past me
I tried to find what the total viewship would be, UK viewship of the FA cup final peaked in 1970 at 28m, it was still a big event in 1990 unlike today where the premier league and Champions league dominate (current UK viewship is about 8m), if was also shown live in dozens of other countries.
You can see me at 4:06 of this highlight video
It was mostly just answering phone calls and discussing sports. The only big name I had on the show was former boxing champion Emile Griffith. I also had Dave Conteh, brother of UK heavyweight champion (and cover boy for Band on the Run) John Conteh.
I gotta say, this is kinda choking me up, it’s so sweet. 
I’m trying to go through life anonymously. So far successfully. I’ve been in the background of a couple of local news stories.
I was on an episode of Check, Please, a local PBS panel-discussion type show hosted by a moderator where three guests recommend their favorite restaurant and everyone visits each others’ picks and reviews it.
I was an assistant puppeteer on a children’s TV show once. I wasn’t on camera, but the operations of my hand did. I was credited in about 12 episodes.
I also co-wrote a segment for a different children’s TV show, that also had 13 or so 5-minute episodes, but I didn’t appear on camera at all for that one.
I gave blood for the first time at the age of 18, and it just so happened there was a camera crew there doing a news story on the importance of blood donations. I answered an interview question on camera.
I also appeared with the rest of my class in an anti-bullying commercial when I was a kid.
Huh. I had totally forgotten that I was on a quiz team in high school. We were on radio my junior year and television my senior year.
Aww, thank you.
I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It was a nice free trip to NYC.
Did you make it into the Hot Seat?
Me, too!
They based an episode of the History Channel series Clash of the Gods on part of my book Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon. They dramatized the myth, but they also had me come in to a tiny studio in Manhattan to record my explanations of portions of the myth. It was a wild experience – they needed to get the camera far away from me and the black curtain background, and the only way they could do it was to shoot through a doorway. But they also needed to hear me, so the sound guy was extending the boom mike through the doorway and trying to keep it out of the shot. You had me alone in a room and all the production people crowded around a doorway with camera, microphone, and other assorted equipment.
It’s available on DVD. You can see part of the show here, but I’m not in this clip – they have one of the other talking heads there, though:
Here’s a longer one, with me:
I also appeared many years earlier when my first published piece, The Physics of Karate” , appeared in Scientific American, but it’s not on YouTube. But you can watch my advisor talking about it in 1991:
Three or four times depending on how you count.
When I was a child, I appeared on an episode of the Trooper Yancy Show, a local kids show.
When I was in high school, I appeared in two episodes of Scholars for Dollars, a local quiz show.
When I was in college, I appeared on one episode of another local quiz show, whose name I don’t remember.
I am on the list of Jeopardy contestants.
I was also in a local PSA for public libraries. They were filming at our library, and I got to be in it because they wanted a male librarian “for contrast.” I started in profile, and then slowly turned to face the camera. I got paid $50, which I had to check with the ethics person at the library to see if I was allowed to keep it. I was.
The local NPR affiliate does a staged reading of a Christmas play every year, which is also broadcast on the local PBS station I was in it one year.
Back in ‘78, there was a local access cable channel in my town. I got to see myself walk across the stage at my high school graduation.
In the town where I used to work is another local cable channel. The guy who runs it does man-in-the-crowd style interviews at local events, just the how’re you doing today, what brings you out, there you have it bit. He did one with me and my (then) wife at a local festival back in ‘94.
Way back when, high-school days, Heavenly used to set up a guy with video camera right in the middle of the Face about 3 pm and shoot the Face Rats hammering down the moguls and would show the footage in the bar later that night. Some of it got played on the local public access channel and my friend says he saw it and it was awesome!
It was a run I vividly remember, as after about 7 bumps, I caught an edge and flopped hard to the right into the trough of a mogul. I bounced right back up in a big spray of snow, hit the line right towards the camera, launched off a big bump and kicked my left leg out almost hitting the tripod.
I remember that run like it was yesterday. I wonder if that tape still exists??
Twice that I can recall, both related to med-evac stuff.
Once was when a national newsy show (I can’t remember: 60 Minutes? 20-20?) was doing a feature on emergency care and caught me carrying one end of a patient stretcher out of a helicopter. On seeing it, my mother called me all the way from New York to say, “do you know how much I spent on your orthodontia, and you’re carrying IV bags in your teeth?”
The other was on the Maureen O’Boyle Show, a daytime talk show along the lines of Phil Donahue. They had a show on people who wanted to thank their rescuers. The interesting part of this was that they flew me from Alaska to New York City and had a limo take me to and from Long Island, all for about 15 seconds of air time. Yes. I spoke 1 sentence, in answer to 1 question, about 15 seconds total. Gawd, the money that must be floating around in that industry, if they can pay all that for 15 seconds. !
When I was in 8th grade in 1997, my junior high history class took place in a Model UN meet with three or four other schools. I was the United States representative on the Security Council, and I must’ve been so into my impassioned speech about Zaire (this meetup was literally the same week that Mobutu’s government fell, so it was a hot topic) that I didn’t even notice a cameraman from one of the local news stations filming me. Later that night, I’m doing something in my bedroom and my sister yells “JOHN! YOU’RE ON THE NEWS!”, and I come out to the living room just in time to see the end of what was about a 30-second clip of me talking while the news anchor described the event.