Get ready to say ‘Hi Bob!’
Newhart’s new audio chat series is a blast.
He’s one of the true kings of TV, stand-up and recorded comedy, but his regular-guy approachability is signified by a simple salutation: “Hi, Bob!”
The frequently heard phrase from “The Bob Newhart Show” is the appropriately welcoming title of Audible’s new audio series (available Wednesday at Amazon’s Audible.com/HiBob), in which Newhart compares notes on comedy with a generation of stars who followed him.
Newhart, 88, engages in relaxed, informative and, least surprisingly, funny chats about comedy careers with actors Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow; talkshow hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman and Conan O’Brien; and writer-director Judd Apatow.
The legendary star of two sitcom classics (including the later “Newhart,” in which he played a Vermont innkeeper), displays an ingratiating modesty by assuming listeners want to hear more from his guests.
“I had to stop Judd and Conan a couple of times. I said, ‘I’m supposed to be interviewing you,’ ” he says. “Judd was asking me all the questions: ‘You know, you had that first album …’ I said, ‘Judd, wait a minute. This is about you, not me.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re more interesting than I am.’ ”
Newhart, the first comedian to win the Grammy for best album (1960’s “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart”), plans to do more chatting. (Zach Galifianakis is on his wish list).
But he turned down an opportunity to appear on another comic-conversation show, Jerry Seinfield’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
“I saw Don (Rickles) do it,” Newhart says of his close friend, who died last year and is the title and topic of Newhart’s reminiscences in one “Hi Bob!” chapter. “Jerry approached me, and I didn’t think it was my thing. I probably should have done it, in watching it. It sounded like something, I don’t know, (that was) more Don than me.”
Newhart has connections to some of his guests. Before “Friends,” Kudrow appeared as the wife of one of the famed Darryl brothers on the “Newhart” finale, considered by many to have the best series-ending twist ever.
Ferrell, who co-starred with Newhart in 2003’s “Elf,” share some laughs discussing not-so-successful, precomedy financial careers, Newhart as an ac-
“I had to stop Judd and Conan a couple of times. I said, ‘I’m supposed to be interviewing you.’ ”
countant and Ferrell as a bank teller. As Newhart explains in a 1960s stand-up clip in the series, “I had kind of a strange theory of accountancy. I had always felt if you got within two or three bucks of it …” he says, trailing off as the audience roars. “But this never really caught on.”
As Ferrell tells Newhart facetiously, “We’re both great with numbers.”
Newhart also knows something about the hosting work done by Kim- mel, O’Brien and Silverman because he was a frequent guest host for Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.”
“After the monologue, you really had to interview people – singers, actresses, comedians, authors. Having done it 80 times and from watching Johnny, you learned how to do it,” says Newhart, who still does an occasional stand-up show and guests on “The Big Bang Theory.”
Stories range from light to serious.
Silverman talks about the progress women have made overcoming standup barriers, and Kudrow discusses the dismissiveness and condescension women in entertainment have faced.
Newhart says he looked up to radio icons Bob and Ray and the iconic Jack Benny early in his career.
“They say my timing is very similar to Jack’s. I don’t think you can teach timing. Jack was the bravest comic I’ve ever seen work, because he wasn’t afraid of silence,” Newhart says.
But Newhart grew up in a different comedy world, and he says he learned from his younger colleagues.
“I talked to some of the guys who were in comedy clubs or improv (groups). They didn’t exist when I broke in. It’s a world I’m not familiar with, so that made it interesting,” he says.
But there’s a shared bond with anyone whose job depends on getting laughs.
“We’ve all died,” he says, using comedians’ euphemism for bombing. “Anybody who’s a stand-up has died many times. It’s great when it works, (but) there’s a danger to it. It’s not quite skydiving, but it’s pretty close.”