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Remembering Jay Thomas

DUBBED “the greatest talk-show story of all time” by David Letterman, Jay Thomas’ account of his earlycareer meeting with Clayton Moore, TV’s Lone Ranger, was an annual holiday segment of “The Late Show.”

Thomas, who died Thursday at age 69 from complications of cancer, was a DJ working at a radio station in Charlotte, NC, and hosting the opening of a car dealership where Moore, dressed in his TV costume, was making a personal apperance.

After Thomas introduced the Lone Ranger to the crowd, he went behind a Dumpster with his friend Mike Martin and got “herbed up.” When they left in Thomas’s Volvo, they noticed Moore waiting for a ride that never came.

The two guys ended up giving the Lone Ranger a lift. The traffic was miserable and the driver in front of Thomas backed his Buick into the Volvo. “I heard the headlight break,” Thomas said. He took off after the fenderbender, eventually pulling up in front of him.

Thomas and the Buick driver argued, with the future “Murphy Brown” guest star threatening to call the cops. The Buick driver dismissed him. Looking at Martin’s tie-dyed shirt and long-hair and Thomas’s “white-man Afro,” he said, “Who do you think they’re going to believe?”

Out stepped the Lone Ranger from the back seat. “They’ll believe me, citizen,” he said.

The guy from the Buick took one look at the man in the cowboy hat and black mask and said, “I didn’t know it was you.”