Wearing his usual leather jacket and looking like any jock going to work, the TRN-syndicated personality wordlessly sat down at a table on stage with a microphone and a specially filtered telephone and went to work – creating a theater-of-the-mind universe of characters including his famous “Bobbie Dooley” and a minister who wants Oprah’s TV gig (“just give me a shot”). There were probably a half-dozen characters conversing with and sometimes fighting with each other, being catty and sarcastic and egotistical – and funny. It was an amazing live-with-no notes demonstration of Hendrie’s imagination, and a special NAB show capsule of what he does every night on his Talk Radio Network syndicated show. You could either close your eyes and listen, the way a nighttime listener would, or you could be amazed at the sight of the dead-pan delivery of some pretty crazy lines of dialogue – after which Phil just walked off the stage, his “shift” over.
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