Gene Burns thought I was messin' with him in 1978

THAT'S HIM, GENE BURNS

He was a radio talk show host we listened to on the job who was talking about how to make good coffee. I called him on from a house we were building and asked him to go through it step by step.

When he got to Step 17, or however many steps it took to get the coffee into the pot, he said, "Then you stir the pot."

 A lightning bolt!! Maybe I stirred the cup but never the pot. Could that be why my coffee was awful?

John Oliver demonstrates:

I expressed my enlightenment to Gene in profuse terms. (He talked like a Thesaurus.) After I hung up, the Burns baritone was beyond exasperation. "And Gene in Natick" -- instead of "Gene" he might have said, joker or idiot; you decide -- "never thought to STIR the coffee."

He was the calm before the storm of Jerry Williams, the talk-show host whose show aired next. Gene sometimes got mad but Jerry was constantly apoplectic about whatever bug had flown up his ass in the last five seconds.

JERRY WILLIAMS

By the way, stirring the pot wasn't it. My coffee is still awful.

Later when I saw pictures of Gene,  I learned he had kyphosis (a bent spine), and was severely hunched over. He never talked about it. Probably didn't want it to define him. He died in 2013, age 73.