Is there anybody else out there who listens? My god, when he’s on, he’s the funniest thing on the planet. Almost drove off the road this morning listening to Bobbie Dooley.
Looked for threads on the SDMB, and was surprised not to see any. Tell me I’m not alone…
You are not alone.
By far the funniest man on the planet.
Some of the stuff he’s done recently from “Afghani” or “Palestian” guests has been hilarious. “I have freedom of speech – shut up!”
And his Jim Rome show is spot on.
He’s got to lose “Bud Dickman’s Weekly Top-Ten.” That got old fast.
Agreed. Bud and RC Collins are not my favorites.
Hmmm… who is?
Steve Bozelle
Mavis Leonard
The Citizens Auxiliary Police guy
Rev. whatzis name – I’ll never forget the “Jesus was black” bit.
Jeeeez…I thought I was the only one who’d heard of him!
But in my case, only recently did I even know he existed. More to the point, I only found out recently he was supposed to be FUNNY!
You have no idea how infuriated and shocked I was the first few times I listened to his show. I about drove off the road I was so damn mad. I kept thinking, These people have got to be out of their MINDS!
Then one day I asked my husband if he’d ever heard of that horrible Phil Hendrie. He started laughing and said, “Well, yeah, but you do know it’s all a joke, doncha?”
I was insulted. Of course I did not know it was all a joke. I even argued with him for about ten minutes. Then I planted my butt firmly in front of the computer and proceeded to find something on the web about him to prove Mr.Smartypants wrong.
<ahem> I couldn’t, much to his delight.
Now I listen to Hendrie every chance I get, and am much comforted by the fact that it is supposed to be funny and it is a parody of sorts.
Still gripes my ass that I couldn’t prove my husband wrong, though.
First time I heard it, it was something horribly racist, and I just sat there with my mouth open and amazed.
I drive a taxi part time, and leave it on the radio – and you would be amazed how many people say they listen to him “all the time” and don’t get it.
I’m sorry I can’t receive him. I didn’t know who he was until I opened this thread, so I googled until I found his site at http://www.philhendrieshow.com.
Lovelovelovelove that landscape scene at the bottom of the page.
I’ve noticed the callers are starting to get less and less credible. There’s always been many who “play along”, but you could tell they were in on the joke. I wonder if the show is starting to fake the callers as well. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them. (There’s been a couple of times when I could swear that it was Hendrie doing all three. The man is amazing.)
I miss the old days when the “guests” were very subtle. Nowadays there’s too much bantering, like when the “guest” keeps getting interrupted by something or someone in his/her house.
I think possibly when I first started listening, they may have been old repeats, because these people were definitely not in on any joke. They were very obviously just as taken aback and aghast as I was! I simply couldn’t believe they would let this man on the air.
And, furt, that was my exact reaction. My jaw literally dropped open and I caught myself staring at the radio like it suddenly grown antlers, legs, and was tap dancing across the dashboard.
I haven’t gotten to listen to him lately, however. He comes on about nine in the evening. I’m not usually out or driving that time of night, and I never listen to radio in the house.
I might start, though, since I’ve evidently missed quite a bit of hilarity.
IIRC, he’s admitted doing the callers once or twice, but says he doesn’t do it anymore, because it’s not as funny.
He defintely is a little more brazen – which of course makes the callers look all the stupider. He’s lately taken to finally just picking the last caller and telling them they’ve been had.
My impression is always been that it grows; he starts off with something small, then the guest gets weirder and weirder until it’s finally just impossible. I think that’s part of the way he hooks people.
Steve Bozelle and Jay Santos(?)(The C.A.P. guy) are two of my favorites but my all-time favorite Phil Hendrie bit is The Darryl Weber Funky Chicken Cacophony and Liquor Jamboree. Has anyone ever heard him do this? OH MY GOD, I seriously had to pull over I was laughing so hard.
Phil Hendrie is a true original. Remember when Art Bell suddenly up and quit his show? A few nights later, Phil announced that he too had decided to quit his radio show. After making a long, heartfelt goodbye speech to his listeners, he said his final farewell & got up to leave the studio. Unfortunately the door to his studio was jammed, and he couldn’t get out! He spent the rest of the night having an absolute nervous breakdown on the air! But the funniest part was that his assistant, Bud Dickman, would occasionally come into the studio from the back door to bring Phil a glass of water or something. Phil would insult Dickman for being a moron, and then go back to ranting about the awful state of the radio industry—never noticing that there was another door to the studio. It was truly the most original piece of radio theater I’ve ever heard. I hope they have a spot in the Radio Hall of Fame saved for him…
…one night he had his “program director” on the line and the guy was giving Phil pure hell about the show. I was a Hendrie virgin until that show, and I gotta tell ya’, I was literally squirming in the driver’s seat of my car, I was so emabarrased for “poor” Phil! 
That and the time Bobbie (um-hm) Dooley “took a dump” in her neighbor’s house while she was burglarizing it are a couple of my favorite shows.
Quasi
That’s nothing. There was one time when he had five or so of his personalities going at it. This man must be a conscious scizophrenic in order to do what he does…
YES. A lot of his ethnic humor is way funny. He makes almost anyone else claiming to be “transgressive” look pathetic. If I had to pick one favorite bit, it might have been the new marketing scheme for “Soul Coke” sold in 40 oz sizes. Or Mavis with her harmonica.
He’s a gay man and a gay journalist!
The first time I heard his show I heard a female caller (Bobbie) claiming she believed strongly in the benefits of breast-milk and still breast-fed all three of her sons. One or two of the kids were even in high school! She would show up at their school during lunch and push up her bra to feed her teenagers their milk! If she couldn’t make it down to the school, she’d put her milk into a thermos for them. Listeners were calling in to redicule her - it was great.
The next day I caught him talking about hobbits and speaking with a black minister who rented a highway billboard telling gays that Jesus hates them. After two more shows I firmly thought all of the callers were staged. It took a week or so before it dawned on me that all the guests had very similar affected voices and Phil would sometimes lose it while talking “to” them.
Man, that’s a great show. I too, liked it better when he didn’t reveal the joke to his callers every other day. Thankfully, the callers STILL don’t get it!
The man must indeed have complex personality disorder.
I subscribe to his web site so that I can listen to the webcast live from 4 to 7 p.m. pacific time and then listen to the tape of the same thing on radio from 7 to 10 pm.
I agree he is a genius, and one I had never heard of until I discovered his show by accident one night driving home about a year ago.
I have never heard anything this funny in my life. As I stated earlier I pay the 6.95 a month so I can also listen to his archives any time I want. It is the only thing I pay for online.
He talks about his wife and his “kids” (stepkids) all the time so he actually leads a normal life away from the studio. And what astonishes me is that there are people who think his guests are real. Amazing.
“I’m Ted Bell”
Hmmm. Dissenting opinion here. I heard him a few times when he was on the air in Chicago. I got the joke, but I didn’t think it was funny. Not “that’s not funny!” in the sense that it offended me, just…not funny.
That’s not all that original. Don & Mike did the exact same thing, and Don Geronimo is the laziest man in ray-dee-o (still love the Radio Gods, though).
I agree, though, that Hendrie is an absolute riot. I listen to a fair amount of radio at night, mainly because it’s not TV, and I really wish we had him where I live. On the other hand, I get a kick out of the current evening lineup my hometown CC-owned blowtorch, WRVA, has: Dr. Laura 7-10, Lionel 10-1. Speaking of quite entertaining but underrated radio personalities, there’s Lionel…
Just to clarify, I get a kick out of the juxtaposition between the two shows; I don’t find Dr. Laura interesting, informative, or (considering her infamy) even that provocative.
I’m in the same boat. I listened to him for a while. He was funny for about a week. Now it’s just old.