NPR may be having a bad week, but my favorite NPR program had a very, very good week. The “Not My Job” guest on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” is the legendary Dick Van Dyke — a man who has done so much for entertainment that host Peter Sagal joked that the DVD was named after him.
The very clever “Not My Job” quiz they concoted for him included a question about “Dick” Nixon, a question about a new Chrysler van, and a question about the world’s largest dike.
But the highlight comes at the very end of the segment. As Peter is wrapping things up, Mo Rocca begins cheerily humming the “Dick Van Dyke Show” theme song, which leads Dick to reveal that it has lyrics — and then, he offers to sing them.
Listen to the whole show at the NPR web site or your local station, or listen to just the Dick Van Dyke segment here:
By the way, I think I’ve passed along this story here before, but the “Star Trek” theme also has lyrics — but for a mercenary reason. When creator Gene Roddenberry hired Alexander Courage to write the theme, the contract reserved the right for Roddenberry to write lyrics for it later. Once the show had become a modest success, Roddenberry exercised that right — not so that the lyrics could be used on the show, or even used at all, but because writing the lyrics made Roddenberry the co-writer of the song and entitled him to half of the royalties! Courage resented this maneuver and, reportedly, refused to write any incidental music for the show after that.
