Don Giller

My Norm Macdonald story: On May 12, 2015, I received a note from someone requesting that I contact Norm regarding help he was seeking. I was given his contact info, so I emailed him and asked what he was looking for. He wrote back:

"Thanks, Don. All I am looking for is Dave's stand-up jokes, before he was a talk-show host." So I sent him some audio files from Dave's radio days.

Two days later, May 14, Norm performed his last stand-up for Dave (taped this day, aired the next). He ended it by retelling an old Dave joke he says he heard growing up while watching him on Canadian TV.

It wasn't among the audio files I had sent him. He had evidently reached out to others besides me for help, and chose what someone else had sent him.

So his entire setup to retelling an old Dave joke was completely made up. He hadn't heard it while growing up in Canada; he had acquired it a couple days before his stand-up from someone else whose help he had requested.

The following morning I contacted him again, praising his performance. Norm replied: "Thanks, Don, for the kind words. Also, thank you for the stuff you sent me. Fascinating. Reminded me of Bob and Ray. Where do you live, Don?"

I responded; and our conversation ended. A couple years later, in late July 2017, I wrote to Norm again, soon after his online interview with Dave. I talked about Dave's wordplay, specifically his running jokes on "Words you'll never find in the Bible."