If any pleasure can be derived from saying “goodbye, kids, gimme another hug” to grandchildren, Hutson and Ellie, it is looking forward to listening to the NPR broadcast on the car radio of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, while driving back to Atlanta from Nashville.

It lasts less than 100 miles on our radio, and I notice we drive slower when it is on.

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! is a show with much laughter and applause. It features several well-known guests from the Sports Realm, the World of Showbiz, Finance, Literal or Journalistic Fame — or Just Plain Nobodies, including the host, Peter Sagar.

We seem to enjoy the program no matter who is on it because it takes its subjects from the more liberal and humorous side of the ‘news’ than our American counterparts might — for example “what were Joan of Arc’s last words?. And what similar thoughts did George Bush express when hading over the keys to the Oval Office to Barack Obama that cold January day in 2005?.”

Your first inclination might be that the entire concept is one of poor taste, and you would be right \ – except the answer, usually given by the host, is genuinely funny, especially when he emphasized the word ‘cold’. Try as you might to stifle it, you will laugh out loud, more so because the audience got it first and laughed as well.

Do we, aside from the one on NPR, have a commercial show with one of our network stations somewhat like Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!? I seriously doubt it.


Copyright © 2014 Robert A, Mills, all rights reserved, may not be published, nor re-written nor broadcast without author’s permission