But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.

So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.

I wanted to be a radio announcer.

Everything's getting homogenized. It seems to me like music and behavior and everything else is getting homogenized.

All of us involved say 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play.

One day in '61, I was looking in the Santa Monica phone book for a number, and there it was: Stan Laurel, Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went over there and spent the afternoon with them. And pumped him with questions. I must have driven him crazy. I spent a lot of happy hours at Stan's house on Sundays just talking about comedy.

I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.