The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I’m not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject.
It was well after college that I learned about depression. I got my first job for Jack Paar. I realized I was sleeping 14 hours a day and just living for the Paar show.
You can, after all, reduce the reasons for watching TV to but two: to be lulled, and to be stimulated. Some people do one sometimes, the other sometimes. Some people do all of one or all of the other.
I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.
I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, ‘Kid, don’t make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you’re like David Frost. Make it a conversation.’
