Greg Burks, one of the referees in the Ohio State-Oregon College Football Championship Game. To those who thought he was Bob Newhart, the old comic virtuoso said several things, but my favorite of his lines was: “I had to do the game. I lost a bet with Don Rickles.”
Most of you may already have seen this doppelganger story by now, but all of us who’ve grown up watching comedian Bob Newhart on television have been herded into the same united reaction, thanks to the quick response of social media to that referee in the College Football Championship Game last Monday night, January 12, 2015. Yeah, we are talking about the one who impressed us all as a dead ringer for the younger comedian Bob Newhart during his successful double series run on television during the 1970s and 1980s. – This guy, Greg Burks, not only looked like the doppelganger ghost of Bob Newhart, but he also explained calls during the game with the same kind of flattened-out-for-comedy voice style that Newhart used to portray his always understated, in-over-his-head reaction to the things that happened in his sitcoms as both a clinical psychologist and later, as a New England innkeeper.
Referee Greg Burks and Comedian Bob Newhart
~ apparently separated at birth ~
Newhart’s a trooper. He knew how to play along with the joke about his mistaken identity with referee Greg Burks. When someone else asked him why he had agreed to officiate the big game, he quipped, straight face and all that “I had to take the job. You have to remember. These days, at age 85, I no longer have a TV series.”
Bob Newhart’s great. So’s life. When you cut through all the crap that all of us have to deal with at one time or another, or even adjust to for the rest of our lives, it’s still a juicy fact that life is still great – and a whole lot sweeter with stuff to smile and laugh about in the here and now on a daily basis. – Keep smiling, everybody!
And thank you, Greg Burks and Bob Newhart, for making so many of us smile over the past week with your much stronger than passing resemblance to each other.
One more last thought – about 18 hours beyond the original publication of this column ….. Maybe, Greg Burks really is ….
THE LONG LOST SON OF BOB NEWHART!!!
The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 19, 2015 at 4:37 am |
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was recorded live in 1960 at the Tidelands Club on South Main in Houston, which I believe was managed by Dick Maegle, a former Rice Owls football star.
January 19, 2015 at 10:40 pm |
Tom is quite correct. I still have a vinyl copy of that performance.
January 21, 2015 at 7:16 am |
Dick Maegle did manage that hotel. He used to work out at the same President’s Health Club where my father and I worked out. That hotel used to book a lot of first-rate acts. Fred, if you’d like that vinyl digitized, I have a Harmon-Kardon CD burner I use to digitize old vinyl. Happy to make you a copy – if I can make one for myself also.
January 21, 2015 at 7:17 am |
For personal use only, of course!