I think for people that are dealing with this out there, the important thing to know is that this is real. It's called CIU, and there are solutions out there for you.
I always tell people I went to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.
Some talk shows have become so exploitive and tabloid, I wonder if I can believe some of their guests. Where do they find these guests, and why do they deserve air time?
I much prefer doing comedy. I get a little paranoid when the audience is not laughing.
Even though I was in close proximity to everything, it never really dawned on me to pursue a career in show business.
People would get Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence all mushed together in their brains, and, bless their hearts, it would come out Carol Lawrence.
I went to Vietnam during the Vietnam War to visit all the troops. We would fly into a hospital and serve mess to the guys, and we ate whatever they were eating. Then we slept there and flew out the next day to little bases where there were maybe 10 or 20 guys. Then we flew to another hospital.
We all know him: everybody has an Archie Bunker in their family, so you love to laugh at him, and you never take it personally; everybody just has a ball laughing at him.
Making people laugh is what I really enjoy.
I am interested in a lot of the same things people are interested in. I am trying to raise kids without them self-destructing. I am trying to hold the marriage together, and I am trying to take off the same 10 pounds everyone else is.
Tim Conway was a little different from the rest. He was always in the back of the studio building something with the prop man, rewriting his lines, or plotting our demise.
I wanted to study to be a dental hygienist, marry a rich dentist, and hang it up.
Dick Clark and I had such a hysterical relationship with each other.
It took me a lot of years on the 'Burnett' show to feel like I had earned the privilege to play in the sandbox with the grown-ups.
