So these two guys are out hunting and they come upon this big hole in the ground. They looked over the edge, they can’t see the bottom. One guy says, “I wonder how deep that thing really is?” The other one looks around and sees an old anvil. He said, “I know, let’s drop this in.” So they do and they can’t hear it hit bottom. But, all of a sudden, a goat comes whizzing by them, and jumps into the hole.
Then you hear the old farmer. “Billy? Billy? Where are you?” And he comes up to the two hunters. “Did you guys see a goat come by here?”
And the guys say, “Yeah, a goat came whizzing by and jumped in this hole.”
And the farmer says (wait for it) “I can’t understand that, I had him tied to an anvil.”
I don’t care who you are, that’s funny. It’s visual comedy and I stole it from Jay Leno. In my career in TV I met a lot of so-called “show biz” people. Every “star” who ever went through Atlanta wanted to be on WSB-TV to promote something. And I interviewed a ton of them. I never met one as nice as Jay Leno.
I used to sponsor motorcycle charity rides to benefit children. We had lots of Hollywood types as the “star” attraction, obviously to add some national stature to the rides, and it worked. I did those rides for 11 Years and we raised millions of dollars for charity. But absolutely the nicest person (from Hollywood) that I ever met was Jay Leno. It was a hard job getting him here. His agent was named “Helen” and you didn’t talk to Jay Leno unless Helen approved. Helen was a first class bitch. If she’s still alive, Hell is holding a special place for her. I’ve never dealt with a nastier person. So, of course, I didn’t get Jay Leno the first year I tried.
But, Helen notwithstanding, I had an ace in the hole. The second year I contacted a PR person at NBC who had worked in Atlanta at my TV station and I knew her well. Since Leno was on NBC, I asked her to intervene with “Helen.”
It worked. The night before the big ride we chartered a plane and flew to Nashville where Jay was doing his stand up comedy. After the show, he came out in his Levis and was ready to go. We put him up in a plush hotel across from the mall where the ride would start. That morning I went over to pay his bill. He had not charged a CENT for room service.
So we do the ride and Jay is up at front on a big Harley we got for him, because it is one of his favorite bikes. (He has over 300 cars and motorcycles in his collection). The ride ended at a big arena. On the way in, Jay asked me if I had a blank check, which I did, and I gave it to him. Now, we had already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Jay gets up on the stage, tells some funny jokes, and holds up the blank check. He says to the audience. “Let’s dig a little deeper. Here’s my check for a thousand dollars to get the ball rolling,” and he drops the blank check in a box which is then passed around and we collected even more money. We helicoptered Jay to the airport because he had another gig to go to.
Two days later I got his personal check for a thousand dollars made out to the charity. Jay Leno is the finest Hollywood personality that I ever met in a career that lasted over 40 years.
johnbeckmanbooks 