Bill Cosby On Comedians, His Show, And J-E-L-L-O!
April 24, 2009 – 10:00 am by Tas Melas
People can spin Bill Cosby however they want but there’s one thing that will always be true of the man, he made people smile. Whether it was hideous ‘dad’ sweaters, his catch phrases, or just his dumb facial expressions, you had to curl up those lips. He spent many years of his life putting grins on kissers worldwide as he rambled in to cameras. When I catch a re-run now, I realize his show isn’t as funny as I thought it was, but how many of those 80′s sitcoms are, really? Bill Cosby joined WFAN in New York to discuss his one and only favorite comedian, what the phrase ‘J-E-L-L-O’ can do for people, and when he knew his show had made it.
Which comedian of all time would he pay to see:
“There’s only one and I don’t think anybody else has a vote. That’s Jonathan Winters. Jonathan Winters will make every last one of us stand there in awe. Some of us will not laugh because we’re looking at Merlin the Magician while we’re looking at the Wizard of Oz all in one. God gave this man that special, special — and Boomer has seen it in linemen, offense, defense, he’s seen it in running backs, he’s seen it in receivers and he’s seen it in quarterbacks and he’s seen it in coaches — that there are some that God put a little bit of extra in there which nobody can define. He’s John Coltrane. And Jonathan Winters, that’s it.”
On when he knew that The Cosby Show was a hit:
“I think it was the day that I was watching the TV channel and they used to give the ratings, the national ratings for TV would come out on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, I’m not sure. In those days they only had four channels and then the fifth one was PBS and you felt like you had to go out into the garage to get that. I remember the guy saying, “Here we go with the TV ratings. Number one: we’re not even gonna say the name of this show anymore because you already know who it is, so we’ll just go to two, three, four, five and six.” And he didn’t announce our show that night.”
On requests to say “Jello Pudding”:
“It’s a ton of them. And oddly enough, if I walk into a school in a densely populated, lower-income area and the school is in trouble, the kids are in trouble, the teachers are in trouble, so I walk in and there’s this auditorium and these kids, they have a look that’s protective of themselves so they try to look tough but I know that inside there’s a great deal of sadness and wants and things, and the one thing that will bust that place up will be, out of nowhere, when I’ll say, “JELLO PUDDING POPS!” and they’re gone.”
Listen to Bill Cosby on WFAN in New York with Boomer and Carton
Tags: Bill Cosby, celebrity, comedians
