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Last Summary Update: 09-20-2026

Salute to London, Battery in India, English Newspapers, Airlines
Airdate: Tuesday - October 19, 1971 (Airdate Confirmed)

WOR Show
Original Airing

audio

(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)

First Spoken Line After Theme Ends

Oh, gee, I so sorry, I have a note here. . .

Show Description

[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]   
  This late-period monologue (WOR, October 19, 1971) is a loose, digressive comparison of glossy advertising and commercial promises with the rude, inefficient, or absurd realities of ordinary transactions, anchored by a long reading from an English newspaper column about buying a car in London.

Opening and London Motor Show
Shepherd jokes about Scorpio's lucky flower being the Farkleberry and invents insulting variations on the Air Force song ("off we go into the damp blue smoggy / Jersey crud"). He notes that New York pollutes with commercials (over 12,900 recorded in two weeks). He then salutes the London Motor Show, where automakers displayed total nudes alongside the cars; one firm had nudes performing every ten minutes and another invited spectator to spray the models with cellulose paint. He finds the honesty refreshing.

Battery in India
A brief anecdote: trying to buy a battery in India required an epic journey through cities, ox carts, and the Ganges. The battery was dead on arrival; when he returned it, the salesman who had spoken English earlier suddenly spoke only Hindi.

English newspapers and the car-buying column
He praises English papers for their blunt criticism (unlike the polite New York Times). He reads and comments on a "Sunday Telegraph" piece by Richard Ensor describing visits to six central London showrooms (Dagenham Motors / Ford, Stuart Morris, Henley, Jack Barclay / Fiat, Warwick Wright / Chrysler, etc.). Salesmen are grudging, leave customers wandering, discourage cheaper models, refuse test drives, leave doors locked, and sometimes lack basic knowledge (one cannot recall the word "carburetor"). Items have been stolen from display cars. The contrast with American commercials is implicit throughout.

Commercials, plugs, and reality checks
He is forced to read a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer commercial and then a romantic Les Champs restaurant spot (instructions specify "slowly and romantically," then "louder and a little faster"). He plugs his annual Princeton University show (November 6, Alexander Hall, benefit for WPRB, $3 reserved seats). An airline flight provides the opposite of the commercials: a grandmotherly stewardess, a "pink lady" that turns out to be the passenger behind him's Pepto-Bismol, paper-mache eggs, and clear-air turbulence. A Village supermarket has a frozen-food locker thick with ice containing cigar butts, gum, and other debris; a cockroach peers out of a can of peas with pearl onions and looks at him "beseechingly."

Closing
He returns to the English car-buying piece, salutes the Farkleberry's comeback in the Morris Town area, and wishes Scorpios better luck in their next incarnation. He notes the "ineluctable disappearance" of Hugh Downs (joining Judge Crater and Milton Berle).

Overall tone and point: Rambling, observational, and gently satirical. Shepherd uses the London auto-show nudes, the India battery, the outspoken English column, the airline meal, and the cockroach in the peas to illustrate the persistent gap between advertising fantasy and everyday experience. The monologue treats that gap as both comic and characteristic of modern life.      
  