And the news interviews you 6 or 7 times a year? That’s rather alarming. Do you live in the United States?
Yes I’m in the US.
Why is it alarming? I’m not unusual and honestly I do less media humping than many of my colleagues.
I also got to the History Channel via a book I’d written, though I was really not an expert in the subject. They contacted me just before Thanksgiving and wanted to talk about the topic with me then and there. They were not very happy when I said I needed time to consult my notes, but when it became clear I just was not ready to talk off the cuff (not a formal interview, just to see what I knew), they acquiesced and we scheduled a time for the following Monday.
The first problem was that my contact called the wrong number on Monday. An hour after the start time I called her. “Oh,” she said, “guess I wrote the number wrong. Oh, wow, I did!” We chatted for about half an hour. She called me an “eloquent storyteller” and pronounced me “very knowledgeable” on the subject and asked if I’d like to appear on the show. “It’s pretty tight,” she said, meaning the timing. “We’d probably fly you out here to LA. Do you think you could be here on Wednesday?” “You mean like the day after tomorrow?” I asked. “Um–”
We spent the next few days going back and forth on details. Turned out that all the footage was due Friday. Turned out that they didn’t yet have a script. (As a freelance writer who bumps up against too many deadlines, I got it. But I didn’t have to like it.) They decided to have me stay home in NY state and hire a camera crew in NYC to come film me while they asked questions remotely. “Does your house look like it could be a studio?” my contact asked. “Um…” I said, looking around at the mess (both kids were in high school).
Scratch that. They would fly me out to LA after all. On Friday. No, make it Monday. They never called when they said they would, and they forgot to get the producer to sign off on having me at all, so I had to pass another interview test on Thursday. All was set. Sunday arrived. I left for the airport.
I had a reservation, no problem, but they had forgotten to pay for my ticket. I called my contact. Woke her up, I think. Could I front the $600 and they’d pay me back? “Um…” Sure. Why not. Good thing I’d paid off the card.
They put me up at a fine hotel in Beverly (Hills that is) where I couldn’t find the elevator as the rain forest motif in the lobby was too busy. I was, however, on the private floor. Go, me! The desk clerk asked if I wanted to leave a key for “Miss Charleston,” the producer. I must have looked incredibly confused, because he hastened to add, “It’s a suite, sir, and the filming will. be in the adjoining room.” Ah. I settled myself in my room and went out to the balcony. Right across the way was a billboard with the single word “Orgasms.” (I think it was a show.) I began regretting not having them leave a key for Miss Charleston. Oh well.
The filming mostly went well. I live in short sleeves, but they insisted I wear a sweater; oh well. The producer, Miss Charleston, was sick and spent the entire session lying on her back. They fastened me to a chair (I really couldn’t budge because of all the wires, probably just as well as I am an animated speaker and would have gone in and out of camera range). The assistant asked question after question, which I was supposed to answer by repeating the question, sort of: “What state entered the Union in 1848?” “Wisconsin entered the Union in 1848,” that kind of thing. Mostly I remembered to do it that way.
They asked mainly about subtopics I knew well, and let me consult my notes when necessary, which wasn’t actually all that often. They also asked me to say short sentences about subtopics I didn’t know anything about. That was fine, too, but I did push back when they asked me to say something that I couldn’t believe was true. “It’s accurate,” said Miss Charleston from her back. “I don’t think so,” I protested. The assistant finally said to the producer, “There are so many things wrong with what you’re saying. I think we have to leave it out.” And so we did.
The room was on the seventh floor (the PRIVATE floor, lest we forget), but it wasn’t insulated from traffic noise. At several points I had to do a retake because of trucks or sirens. (At other times I had to do a retake because of disfluency, but let that pass.) I gave a terrific answer to one question, but had to do a do-over because of a fire engine wailing outside. I didn’t do the retake so well, unfortunately.
At last I was done. Shook hands with everyone except the producer, who was still on her back. Everybody thanked me and said I’d done great. Walked around Beverly (Hills that is) for a while and then took a cab to the airport. Called the editor of the book (she worked/works in San Diego) to play “Guess where I am and why?” Since I’d paid for the flight, there were no problems getting home. Very very late Sunday night or maybe it was early Monday morning.
They did use many clips of me in the show along with a few other people, most of whom were much more expert than I. Despite everything, it was a good show! I had fun and memories to last for a while. And yes, they ultimately did pay me back for the airline tickets…
Do we have an unusually high amount of mosquito-borne diseases in the US?
Wait, for those of you on the History Channel: did they remunerate you for being on there?
Compared to what? Compared to Southeast Asia or South America, no.
However, we do have WNV (which was a big deal 20 years ago but now not so much), multiple flavors of viral encephalitis etc… But just because something isn’t happening in the USA doesn’t mean it’s not important.
A couple folk died of Eastern equine encephalitis a few years ago on the east coast and people were losing their friggen minds. We had a couple cases of malaria on the east coast last year and I was interviewed about 5 times about it. These days its screwworm.
We have incredible amounts of tick-borne disease though. I also work on that.
You’re right, of course. My bad.
I did not get paid. I asked. I was told they had no budget for that (though they did have the budget for my travel and lodging). Decided to do it even so “for the experience.” Occasionally I think I shouldn’t have, but hey…
So, you’re the Lucy Jones of mosquitos?
As a 13-year-old, I was an extra in two scenes of the episode “Reunion” of the TV show Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.
This was the culmination of my mother’s two-year-long effort to get me into TV commercials (this was not a vanity on her part, it was one of her attempts to rein me in through this extracurricular activity or that). I had a few tryouts for commercials for which I was unsuccessful. Then one day, someone from the talent agency I had been signed up for (and that would, I believe, shortly go bankrupt) phoned to say I should go to a filming as an extra on the above TV show.
My grandmother accompanied me to both filmings. The first one was a scene where a gangster discusses business with one of his associates at his daughter’s birthday party. It was filmed in a long room in the Westin Harbour Castle, a luxury hotel on Toronto’s Harbourfront. This would have been in December 1992; it took several hours, basically the whole afternoon, to set up the shoot, make up the actors, etc. I had the chance to talk with another boy about our lives, and recall looking at polo shirts in the hotel store’s display case, which went for over $100. Finally, I was instructed to sit at a table at the back of the room with a girl, where we chit-chatted during the filming (we are almost not visible in the scene). A friendly director gave the cast some instructions and they went through several takes. Finally, the actors with speaking parts made voice recordings as well.
The second filming was perhaps the next week. It was at a soundstage in Mississauga, just outside of Toronto, and was a scene of one of the flashbacks to the Shaolin temple where the main characters lived in the past. I was an extra with a slightly more active role, as a teenage martial arts student in the temple. Wardrobe gave me either different jeans or a different plaid shirt than the one I was wearing, which they thought looked more 70s. A competent martial arts instructor gave me instruction in some moves. There was a lot of time to kill. A boy I had gotten talking to gave me a ride in a rickshaw around the soundstage and we toured the different sets: the police station (complete with wooden bars painted silver in the lockup and the facade of the building it was supposedly in) or Peter’s apartment, with a model train in the living room. Finally, the filming took place in the set that represented the temple. A monk teacher guided me through my moves. Present that day were David Carradine (as main character Kwai Chang Caine), Nathaniel Moreau (as young Peter Caine), and Laura Bertram (a then-well-known young Canadian actress).
Damn.
They flew me to New York and we did it all in one day before they flew me back to Boston.
Like you, I didn’t get paid for the gig. But I was on TV.
I DID get a really good deli cheeseburger out of the deal, though.
Every now and then some relative or old acquaintance will call and tell me that they were haunted by my face and voice on a late night TV show.
Twice.
Once, in the Sixties, on Bozo’s Circus.
Then in the early 2000s, a local TV station set up a kiosk with a camera, to record local opinions.
I went off topic & called for reform in finances.
Two times other than happenstance crowd shots that might or might not have ever occurred.
Back in the mid 90s I was a member of a club that volunteered, or was invited, to provide a squad of workers to staff the phones during the local PBS station’s telethon fundraiser.
So I, my wife, and about 5 friends joined about 20 folks from other orgs to staff the phones on a set at their studio for a couple hours one evening. We took very few calls. A few times the camera panned over us at our little desks on risers and before it did the director waved a sign at us that said “Look busy on the phones!” So we all got to try our hand at acting. 
Somebody else from our club VHSed the broadcast & we all got to watch it at a subsequent BYOB & snacks party at their house. We were not a photogenic group and it was lame. But we all readily recognized ourselves.
My other appearance was both much bigger in audience and smaller in personal contribution.
Courtesy of an anonymous Doper I had the privilege of marching in the 2024 Macy’s Thanksgiving parade holding one of the lines on one of the balloons. So was seen by a hefty nationwide audience and a half-million New Yorkers in person.
I had a position near the perimeter of the line handlers on my balloon, but not fully out at the edge. There’s a brief window about a half-second long where as the marchers go by the stationary camera my face is clearly visible before being eclipsed by other marchers.
As fame goes, it ain’t much. But it’s all I’ve got.
I have no doubt I or my work have been video recorded countless times by countless people, posted to Facebook here and there, and perhaps even YouTubed a time or three. I, like most of my co-workers, consider it a successful career when we don’t feature on the news, not even once. By that measure my career was a success. 
My senior year of high school (1971/72) the A Capella Choir was invited to perform/compete at an international choral festival in Rome between Christmas and New Years. We had 10 weeks to raise $33K so we could all go, and we did it by various means, including car washes, spaghetti supper, battle of the bands, selling stuff, but mostly singing and passing the hat.
I’m pretty sure it was Channel 2 (Baltimore) that gave us a 30 minute spot one evening to perform a program of Christmas music. I don’t recall if there was a sponsor who made a donation or if we flashed an address on the screen. Anyway, we sang. And they made sure to get each student in a close-up for 3 or 4 seconds or so. It was recorded ahead of time, so I got to see myself with my mouth wide open in song!
Of course, this was pre-VCR days and I doubt that they kept the tape. But that was my moment in the spotlight.
Funny you should mention that: One of the two times I was on TV was in connection with that program, too. I was in a commercial for it, along with local celebrities Big Chuck and Little John. I think they actually wanted my more photogenic sister (she also got an interview), but including me was part of the deal.
The other time was on Academic Challenge, a quiz-bowl program for high school teams. We lost.
I was a producer on a local daily general interest show (think Regis & Kathy Lee, which was the model at the time) and for our Christmas special, I visited the hosts as Santa Claus - so not really me on TV, but I was in the suit and beard. It was entirely unscripted but I made some jokes about gifts despite missed time cues and so forth. I need to find that VHS tape.
Side note.
My brother & I made the front page photo of the Waukesha Freeman Newspaper, in the 1970s.
We were fishing near a small local dam.
That’s it.
Hey, it was a slow news day.
Back in 1996, I attended the Atlanta Olympics. I was milling about among the seemingly endless sea of people when, by an incredible coincidence, I happened to bump into a guy who did sports for a station in the Kentucky town where I lived at the time. So he did a quick interview with me.
My wife and I were on a “Newlyweds Special” of the local version of Jeopardy in 1999. It was us against two other young couples. We won, taking home around 14,000 shekels. It was pretty easy - by Final Jeopardy, we were so far ahead that I bet the exact amount of money that if the second-best contestants were right and bet everything, and we were wrong, we’d still win by 100. I think that annoyed everyone.
About 10 years later, I was walking my son home from preschool up the very picturesque Rothschild Blvd. in Tel Aviv, when we wandered past a film crew doing “person on the street” inserts for some wedding reality show I had never heard of. They asked me for a few minutes of my time, and started asking me questions about Georgia, the country, for some reason - I guess one of the show’s participants/contestants was an immigrant from there. I sat on a bench and answered as honestly, knowledgably and wittily as I could, while my kid sat on my lap and looked adorable. By the time we got home I forgot all about it, until about a year later I bumped into an acquaintance who looked at me funny and said, “Weren’t you on…” and I said, “Maybe?”
With this being the 40th anniversary of Challenger I just remembered another time I was on TV… sort of. There was a memorial service that somebody put on and my elementary school choir was invited to perform at the service. I was in fifth grade at the time. The local news covered it and you could see the choir in the background while the anchor was talking. I could see just enough of me to recognize the dress and knee socks I was wearing that day.