Professor Irwin Corey, R.I.P.

Boy, I wish I had a good anecdote about meeting the man who billed himself as "The World's Foremost Authority" and didn't even seem to be an authority on anything, including what he was the World's Foremost Authority of. But I sure thought he was funny and anyone who can make it to the age of 102 deserves a certain amount of respect.

There was a time in the sixties when talk shows would fight over who was going to book the Professor next because he was always hilarious. But he was almost always disruptive, hijacking the show and taking it into an utter chaos that the producers did not expect, leaving the host (whoever it was) unable to control or even participate in his own show.

I remember one time on The Mike Douglas Show when the Professor — and this was obviously unplanned — suddenly decided to seize control of one of the cameras and show the world the right way to do that job. As Douglas tried in vain to conduct a serious interview with the next guest, there was the previous guest giving us views of audience members' knees, grungy parts of the studio, the nostril hair of the host, cue cards telling the host what to ask as he was asking it, etc. I think they finally stopped Corey as he was trying to shove the camera he'd commandeered out the studio door and down the hall towards a men's room.

They didn't have him on for a long time after that. One by one, a lot of those shows decided to not have him on. Sometimes, you can be too funny for your own good.