
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 6, 1993                   TAG: 9309170426
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ON THIS TV SHOW, TALK ISN'T CHEAP

What this country really needs is a talk show that has only normal people on it - people who have never taken their mother's boyfriend away or have urges to wear the clothes of the opposite sex.

This normality should extend to the show's host as well, which certainly leaves out Geraldo. There. Don't you feel good about my idea already? For all I know, incidentally, Oprah may be normal, but she won't do, either.

In our show, all of the women in the audience will be genteel people, who don't speak until they're spoken to and in no way act like loud-mouthed vindictive fishwives who were reared by wolves and who yell things like: "What you're doin' here, Mac, ya know, is tryin' tuh mess with huh mind. Ya know what I'm sayin' here?"

Listen, this is the kind of show Billy Graham would like. No sex. No weirdos. No kinky stuff.

I'm not much of a television presence - I once went into a coma when the red light came on on the camera - but let's just call it "The Bennie Beagle Hour" for now.

As I see it, I would have a very small part in the show. I would merely be lending my name so that it would catch the attention of television watchers all over the world. And getting some of the dough, of course.

Most of the questioning would be done by a young woman who never shows her legs to mid-thigh when she sits down to interview a subject. This young woman can have legs like a linebacker, and it won't matter because nobody is going to see them under the modest Mother Hubbard she is going to wear.

I don't mean to be sexist here, but this show is not going to have a male host as long as I have anything to say about it. I don't need some white-haired egomaniac arguing with people on the telephone while he is on the air.

I think our young woman would remind most of you of Snow White. Or Shirley Temple. Or Deanna Durbin. She would have no weight problems, by the way. And you can tell she's into home permanents.

She asks only easy questions and thinks Barbara Walters is a jerk.

We would carefully screen our guests. If one of them, for example, had a tendency to say four-letter words in private, we would probably scratch him - even if he did love his mother, honor his father, been married to the same woman for 30 years and had the look of a person who bathes frequently.

I hear some of you now, saying that I have lost it at last and that nobody is going to look at shows with normal people on them.

And I say: OK. Go play in the dirt with Donahue.

by CNB