I and three other members of the Toronto Esperanto club were on a talk show once on the Canadian channel TalkTV. Unfortunately this was when the channel was digital only and digital cable/satellite television was new and no-one we knew could receive it and we never got a copy…
Several friends of mine did a Top Ten on Letterman back in 1999, I think. They were diving at the Goodwill Games in NYC and did “Top Ten Things Divers Think Before Going off the Platform.” They were all really hungover at the time.
My best friend and I went down to Jamaica for spring break back in '98. MTV was there and so was Jerry Springer.
I did a couple of drunken wet t-shirt contests, and the Springer people approached me to be on the show. The topic was, “I am on spring break and will do anything for money!” They wanted me to let myself be dipped in honey and then roll around in feathers. I declined.
My mom would have killed me. The annual MTV footage is bad enough. :eek:
Let’s hear more about this story. What was the topic?
Haj
Doe’s local cable count? Many moons ago, when my son was two, he was first runner-up in a cute kid contest. I sat on stage with him while the shows host tried to interview him. Little mister’ never shuts up’ chose this occasion to clam up, and Daddy had to answer all the questions. My little buddy spent the five minutes picking a raisin off the bottom of his shoe, holding it up to the camera, and finally saying one word…’YUCK!’. 
The general topic was government, but it soon devolved into, “Why can’t our elected officials do anything about all those strip clubs you see springing up all over the place.”
So I got to explain about the city that passed a law banning nudity (aimed at strip clubs) that was so vaguely written that it would have made it illegal for parents to change a baby’s diaper in their own homes. It wasn’t a LOONG appearance, mind you, though it seemed like a long one to me.
Yep. Me.
A friend was a writer on a cable “comedy” talk show. He was working on a bit called “funniest guy in the office”, where normal folk are amusing enough to bring onto the set and interview.
Sure was funny during the prep interview.
Get to the studio, I’m all psyched. I live behing t.v. cameras for a living…how hard could this be? Hard…really hard. I and the other 3 Funny People were hung out to dry by the Host, whose wife had fallen that day while skiing and shattered her leg in several places. He was completely disinterested in the idea.
My debut. My retirement. Simultanously.
Cartooniverse
That segment was hilarious. Which girl was she, the one who acted very conservativly and said her father died, IIRC?
I saw that. That was hysterical.
Feeling that my aspiring gameshow contestant resumé was sadly lacking in celebrity-encounter stories, I borrowed one of a friend who once phoned Phil Donahue on the air to feign bleeding-heart outrage at the plight of that day’s guest, a convicted psycho killer who had an imminent, unbreakable date with a syringe. He (my friend) met Phil years later at a party and they laughed about it (the call, not the death sentence or the precedent murders).
I thought it a pretty decent story, but my interviewer’s rage at my having lied to get onto televison was at least equal to what my friend expressed on the phone.
Dave knows a local couple (knows = sees them occasionally at the local watering hole) who has been paid for their appearances on Springer. Totally fabricated stories.
I guy I work with was on Montell, and the episode aired the first week I was working here. I thought it was very odd that we basically closed down the shop for a half hour while he was being interviewed (something about his wife being a bigamist who kept faking her own death. Very sordid, very weird, and completely uninteresting to me.)
And I’m pretty sure one of the SDMB’s giants has done an episode or two of Rikki Lake. But IIRC, it’s a touchy subject, so I’m not naming this person.
Oh yeah, a married couple set of friends has performed with there band and with others on Conan serveral times in the last eight years.
A girl I went to high school with was on Jenny Jones many years ago in an episode dealing with cheaters. Supposedly her boyfriend at the time was a serial cheater and she didn’t understand why.
I’ve had a few clients on the Maury Povich/Ricki Lake “Who’s My Baby’s Daddy?” episodes. Every single one had the man who we had as father NOT the father.
A friend of mine was one a Maury Povich about people whose children are murdered by their other parent.
I think I’m just dense today, but could you explain this? Had you done paternity testing and determined those guys were the fathers, but the shows possibly faked some results and claimed they weren’t? Or had tests not been done and real testing done on the show showed they really weren’t the fathers?
You know the famous Andy Warhol quote about fifteen minutes of fame? My corollary to it is that in the future everyone will appear on a talk show, either as a member of the studio audience, guest or host.
My grandmother’s cousin, a priest who was excommunicated (because he spoke out in support of married and women priests, birth control and against the whole abuse scandal) and went on to start his own church, was interviewed on a local cable talkshow.
Also, my family’s parish made the headlines when it was found out that the pastor and his secretary embezzeled over 1 million from church funds (trips to Atlantic City, big fancy cars, you name it), and since he confessed on his death bed before going into a coma, the case was never really solved to anyone’s satisfaction. Later, the same talk show I mentioned above had the secretary on. She still proclaimed her innocence, continuing to lay the blame on another secretary, who had left due to a brain tumor.
Bitch. :rolleyes:
A group of my stepson’s friend’s were on the Sally Jesse Rafael show to discuss their weird sexual fetishes. All completely made up, of course, and all used an alias on the show. All I remember is one of my stepson’s friends insisting on being called “Natas” (“Satan” backwards; subtle he ain’t) and another friend wearing a clown costume as part of her fetish.
One day while in the process of packing up to move, I had the tv on for company. A Canadian talk show called “Shirley” was on, and on it was a guy whose girlfriend had brought him on the show to complain about his lack of doing anything at all productive around the house. I thought he looked familiar, but it was hard to tell exactly why - he had a fake moustache, wig, sunglasses, and hat on. It wasn’t until someone asked his job that it clicked. He said “I’m independently wealthy.”
The guy was my ex boyfriend, and the girl was the girl he’d left for me, and then gone back to after I kicked him out of my life. Trust fund worth more than I’ll ever see in my lifetime. So, at least I know that that show in particular wasn’t fabricated - because the type of things she was describing were exactly the sort of things he had done while we were together.