Here's a couple of clips of me cursing on the BBC Panorama show (kinda like their version of 60 Minutes). How it came about was kind of strange. I was helping to run a comedy night in an art gallery in Belfast. One of the women in the audience worked for BBC NI. Apparently there was a shortage of Americans in Belfast at the time and I fit the bill.

They weren't going to pay me until I asked them to do it. I earned the money, for sure, since I had to do each line about 20 different times, mostly because they made no sense what so ever.

Ok, I'm an idiot. I had no idea what "CSMF" meant either, and had to ask one of the BBC producers to explain it to me. But, come on, "Generality Infested"??? What does that mean? I've never heard anyone use that phrase.

The next one, though, is the one that REALLY got me....

WHAT?? "many new (torn worn to wall) assholes"? What does that even mean? Beyond that, it's REALLY hard to say. Try it.

Anyway, I got my £50 (that's $75) for about an hour's worth of work. And it was kind of fun. And I got to curse on the air.

The BBC guys were even nice enough to send me a copy of the DVD that I used to rip the files from.

UPDATE - NOVEMBER 2019

Like hearing about Yelling LBJ? Did you know we have a whole YouTube channel dedicated to your favorite presidential found audio?

Check it out! This is the President on YouTube!

UPDATE - JANUARY 2018

Weird that this post has been up since 2012. The SEO is pretty good for "yelling LBJ" so sometimes I get random emails about this picture, as I did in December 2017. I had a nice reader who was there email me his experience. So I explored a little more and I managed to locate an audio copy of the speeches from that day. And man is that plane LOUD. We talk about it our podcast This is the President. Have a listen!

Were you there? I'd love to hear your stories - drop me a line!

Been doing a little research on LBJ lately, and the photo of him yelling kept popping up. I was curious about getting a copy of it, so I talked to the folks in the know, the fine staff at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. The real story, as it turns out, it actually better than the rumor.

From the folks at the LBJ Archives:

The photo has frequently -- and incorrectly -- been described as Johnson shouting back at a heckler. What it actually depicts is Johnson yelling at pilots of nearby planes to cut their engines so that Kennedy could speak.

Also, the photo sometimes appears online with Lady Bird Johnson cropped out, putting the focus squarely on LBJ's legendary temper.

There is some debate as to whether the pilots' actions were intentional. The Johnson biography on the U.S. Senate web site describes it this way:

(Johnson) also pressed for a joint appearance of the Democratic candidates somewhere in Texas. They arranged the meeting at the airport in Amarillo, where campaign advance men stopped all air traffic during the brief ceremonies so that the candidates could address the crowd. But they had not counted on the Republican-leaning airline pilots, who deliberately ran the engines of their planes in order to drown out the speakers. At the close of the ruined appearance, a photographer snapped a concerned Kennedy placing his hands on Johnson's shoulder, trying to calm his angry, gesticulating running mate.

Kennedy made light of the noise during his speech, quipping "That is Dick coming in" (Richard Nixon was also campaigning in Texas that day) and "They can't stop the truth anyway. I don't care how much that engine warms up."

The picture was taken by Richard Pipes (who passed away in 2015), a photographer for the Amarillo Globe-News, who described the scene as "a noisy mess."

Not that LBJ couldn't be uncouth at times, but it's always interesting to get the truth behind things.

Sure would like me a poster of this image, though.