There were several "regular" acts that came on as well, one being The Unknown Comic, a guy who wore a paper bag over his head with eye and mouth holes in it, who'd come out in a really bad polyester suit and tell terrible jokes. So bad that you laughed at him anyway, I think mainly because the whole concept was bizarre.
My son was about 12 or so when one night, thinking he was going to be funny, came into the family room with a paper bag on his head, with holes poked in it for the eyes and mouth, and started dancing around and acting silly. I looked at my husband and he at me, and at the same time, we both said, "It's the Unknown Comic!" and laughed hysterically. Meanwhile, we watched our son, who had no idea what we were talking about, literally "deflate" in front of us. The dancing completely stopped as he slowly removed the bag from his head, looking completely confused.
"Who's the Unknown Comic?" he asked, which of course, sent us into another round of laughter, so we explained the whole thing to him. He didn't seem very impressed, however.
Parents are so mean sometimes. You try to be entertaining, and they just ruin everything.
In Australia we had a similar TV variety show called "Hey Hey Its Saturday" which ran for nearly twenty years nationally throughout Australia.
ReplyDeleteOn this show they has a segment similar too what you described as the "Gong Show".
Our version called "Red Faces" ran within this "Hey Hey its Saturday show" and went for about twenty Minutes with three acts.The special guest on the night along with a couple of others would vote out of ten but one fella who was the show Music Director, would bang the gong if he felt the act was crap and toss them out.
Most times the acts were terrible but so funny.You had to admire the acts for there courage.
They actually made a spin off from this and did half hour shows of "The Best Of Red Faces" that went on for a while.Very popular in Australia.
It still amazes me how popular "The Gong Show" was, especially at how terrible most of the acts were! My guess is that it was simply mindless escape for a half hour, and just plain amusing!
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