Almost as horrible as you've imagined

I did something different last night: I sat down and listened to an episode of Queen For a Day. 

Having never heard the show before (nor seen the television show of the same name) I had no idea what to expect.

Jack Bailey is the goofy gadfly on the right

I never heard any rules or even the purpose behind the show but after checking with Wikipedia I found out what I needed to know; although the episode I listened to didn't quite follow the protocol.

What did occur was the host (Jack Bailey) who was WAY too chatty and talked WAY too fast and though cordial, was annoying, talked to about 5 or 6 different women, asking them what they would like to do if they were "queen for a day."

Each woman got to speak for 3 or 4 minutes in a give and take with Bailey.  Each gal talked way too fast and was nervous; but I give them a pass because, well you know... Some of them had some sad story about how their husband was hurt in the war and they were having financial troubles and things like that (to be honest, I really didn't listen too closely to that stuff for the most part as to why they wanted to be queen - I got bored.)

Their "ambitions" were small.  One woman wanted a chef to come over and cook a dinner for her new mother-in-law who would soon be visiting because she decried her own pathetic newlywed cooking skills.

Another woman (from Australia) was particularly nervous and Bailey didn't help matters by almost making fun of her (of what I thought was a) cute accent.

The 1940's audience of course, roared with laughter at anything that was even a wee bit personal but really, I heard nothing that I would deem anything close to embarrassing.  A smarter, funnier host (for instance, someone like Groucho Marx) would have had the entire female audience rolling in the aisles but Bailey just had cornball comebacks and questions, sorry to say.

One interesting thing did happen: one of the prospective queens asked Bailey to empty his pockets and he did; although he seemed to have alibis for everything in there, some of the items seemed suspicious and I'll be dag-gone if it didn't sound like he was explaining things to his wife whom he knew was listening in.  That part of the show was really very entertaining.  If you do listen to the show, I would really like to read your comments about that particular situation.

Queen For a Day was a Monday-Friday daytime show that had a steady audience back in the day.  I'm not sure I won't listen in to another episode again sometime but with all there is to listen to (then and now) I am not sure why I or anyone else would waste time doing it.

Now that I gave the whole show away, you can listen to it here if you want to:

45-08-10 First Candidate is Mrs. Ruby Robinson

If you have the stomach for it, you can watch a television rendition on YouTube.