Have I Got a Guest for You!

We’ve all asked the same question. Where do television and radio talk shows get their guests?

One source is the “Directory of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons,” now in its fifth year of publication by Broadcast Interview Source of Washington, D.C.

Short title: the “Talk Show Guest Directory.”

The directory contains more than 6,000 listings and ads, predictably weighted toward such topics as drugs, sex and religion.

But there’s far more. Where else could you learn about the Prisoner Appreciation Society, an organization that celebrates the 1968 cult series, “The Prisoner”? Or find an ad touting Lady Sabrina, high priestess of Our Lady of Enchantment, the “first public school of witchcraft”? Lady Sabrina’s talk show credits naturally include “Geraldo.”

You say your talk show needs oomph? Well, as one ad shouts. . . .

“If you want to touch something basic in your audience . . . move them to action : phone, write, praise, damn, cheer, etc. . . . bring something new, exciting and controversial to your broadcast market . . . make your airwaves crackle with the electricity of audience response . . . then you need to present Real, Live COMMUNISTS on Your Show!”

Another would-be guest with open dates is Lena Ellen Rudder of Ft. Worth, Tex., who believes there is another world within the one we live in: “WOULD you like your listeners to be aware of the threat of an ALL-OUT WAR with the troops of this KING OF THE WORLD?” she asks. “If the SURFACE GOVERNMENTS continue with NUCLEAR DEVICES, The King and his TROOPS will invade the SURFACE and make it into a desert. THE SURFACE GOVERNMENTS have been notified! WILL THEY LISTEN?”

An inner world? Robert W. McCoy of Golden Valley, Minn., is dubious. McCoy is a “professional skeptic” who has appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, “Late Night With David Letterman” and numerous local TV and radio shows across the country. “I can’t talk long,” he said from his home, “because I’m about to go on with Ken and Bob on KABC.”

Oh, sure .

The “professional skeptic” says he also operates the Quackery Hall of Fame and the Phrenology Co., but I doubt it. “I have these machines I set up in an antique mall and read people’s heads at $2 a throw,” he said. “The machine measures the bumps on your head and prints out a paper tape rating your character on a scale of 1 to 5.”

McCoy said he recently turned down an invitation to appear on “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” and talk about UFOs. “My family said I couldn’t come back in the house if I appeared on that show,” McCoy said.

A likely story.

How would McCoy view “international radio and TV guest” Norman Bergrun, who claims in his ad that the rings around Saturn are “grossly incomplete”? Bergrun adds: “The incompleteness owes to the presence of slender mobile objects whose exhaust appears as rings. Repeated renewal of major rings with consistently constant radial dimensions implies intelligence.” Exactly.

Meanwhile, I placed a call to St. Louis, Mo. “telephone doctor” Nancy Friedman, who is billed as “bubbly and sharp on the air.”

“I would kill to get on national television,” said Friedman, who makes the local talk-show circuit advising business people on phone friendliness. “Jane Pauley’s producer has not called me yet, but I’m waiting.”

Joan and Lydia Wilen--who advertise themselves as the “chicken soup sisters”--have already gotten the call, sharing their “well-researched” home remedies on “Today” and “Hour Magazine.”

What would they tell someone with high blood pressure? “Get out the garlic,” Lydia Wilen said from New York. The “chicken soup sisters” have written two books touting their home remedies and are writing a theatrical feature for Paramount starring Ted Danson, according to Lydia.

“Remember--garlic,” she said.

On to something a little more serious--an ad for A. L. Schackelford that asks: “What would be more interesting and informative than having Dr. Al Schackelford answer questions about embalming, autopsy, organ transplants and related topics?” What would?

Maybe he can be paired with the anti-embalming advocate who appears in another ad. That would be a show: To embalm or not to embalm?

“Everybody thinks they know what embalming is, but they don’t,” Schackelford drawled from San Antonio, Tex. Has he been on any talk shows? “I’ve gotten three offers so far,” he said, “but I’m not going on until my book is finished.” Shrewd marketing move.

Somewhat more in demand, apparently, is Alan Caruba, the rather dry and uninteresting executive director of the Boring Institute of Maplewood, N.J. Among other tedious things, the institute annually names “The Most Boring Celebrities of the Year,” with Geraldo Rivera and Morton Downey Jr. leading contenders to make this year’s list, Caruba said.

“I have to call you right back,” he said. “I’m about to do an interview with a radio station in North Adams, Mass.”

When Caruba did call back, he confessed in a monotone that running the institute was only part-time work and that his real job was in public relations. “How does one deal with boredom?” I asked. “One buys my book,” he replied.

Bo-r-r-r-r-r-ring.

Speaking of literati, there’s “Peoplehood Products” founder Gloria L. Hoffman who, according to her ad, is listed in such publications as the “International Directory of Distinguished Leadership,” “International Leaders in Achievement,” “5,000 Personalities of the World,” “International Who’s Who of Intellectuals” and “Personalities of the Americas” and has received the “1987 Limited Issue Hallmark Commemorative Medal of Honor.”

She began by writing a booklet titled “I Belong to Me,” Hoffman said from Kansas City, and thereafter began marketing clothing and jewelry bearing her inspirational sayings.

“I just got into the ‘Directory of Distinguished Americans’ and the ‘International Register of Profiles’ and just today the ‘Distinguished Leadership Hall of Fame,’ ” Hoffman said. Next year, who knows? Maybe the Nobel Prize.

If you think that was snide, try Virginia Tooper, founder of Sarcastics Anonymous. “She’s speaking in Dallas,” her husband said from Pleasanton, Calif. Oh? Like, I’m sure someone in Dallas would want to hear her . Does she think she’s the only proponent of sarcasm?

Also advertised is “Not Safe,” which calls itself the “world’s most sarcastic organization.” Its goal? Use sarcasm to “abolish bureaucratic overregulation.” Founder Dale Lowdermilk, an air traffic controller, could not be reached at home in Montecito, Calif. “He’s been on hundreds of shows,” his wife said.

Other aspiring talk-show guests can only dream.

“Any nibbles yet?” I asked Andrew G. Miller, spokesman for Ripon College, whose president, William R. Stott Jr., is advertised in the directory as a Shakespeare scholar. “Unfortunately not,” Miller replied. “Nothing seems to work.”

Maybe if they tried garlic.