Oh my gawd, I’ve just seen Jiminy Glick for the first time and I’m giggling like a loon. I don’t know that I could take a steady diet of this, but this kind of silliness cracks me up sometimes. Reminds me a bit of Dame Edna Everage, and got me to thinking: the celebrities who appear on these mock-talk shows seem to take them seriously enough to play along, and are generally great sports about it. Meanwhile, in the guise of their characters, the hosts are often able to ask off-the-wall and sometimes impertinent questions and actually get answers!
I know I’m missing at least one comic who does this sort of thing, besides Martin Short and Barry Humphries. So who am I forgetting, and who else thinks this stuff is a riot?
Currently on BBC America is a show about an Indian family in England that runs their own talk-show, the Kubars, which is very funny. I presume it ran in Britain about 5 years ago (WAG) considering the transatlantic translation lag. I’ve only seen two episodes so far, with guests Mick Jagger and Patrick Stewart.
Clearly, guests on a fake talk-show are told to play the comedy, but to keep within the fake reality.
Garry Shandling did it on his show, “The Larry Sanders Show”. Also, while I take it incredibly seriously, and am glad that he’s found work again, ALF has a new talk show.
I think Jiminy Glick is a hoot and a half. As you say, I’m not sure a steady diet wouldn’t kill me, but in small measures he’s hilarious.
In the same vein, though not a talk-show host, is (my hero) Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. A friend of mine has the DVD, which is hilarious One of the features is a montage of guests on Conan interacting with him. Some people (like David Hasselhoff) play along and have fun with it, and others (like Fabio – amazingly enough) come across as total tools.
Fernwood 2Nite, with Martin Mull? I seem to remember “real” guests on this show, but weren’t there also “fake” guests? My memory is bad (I’m 40 now) but wasn’t this the show where Gary Burghoff (Radar from MASH) was on talking about his real-life yogurt shops, and another guest was on talking about felafel-on-a-stick and tahini being sesame seeds that “are like, really into being liquid”?
Suddenly I realize this is its very own comedy genre. I’m a little slow, I guess.
At least one series of his show in the UK was formatted as the character having been given his own chat show. By this stage he was sufficiently well known here that the guests were presumably in on the joke, though it was all still very much at their expense.
Also in the UK, there’s currently The Keith Barratt Show.