Craig Kilborn Once Taught Comedy Traffic School?? …to a Member of Devo?1?!

A caller named LA June got through to the show with an opener that demanded follow-up.

In 1988, Craig Kilborn was her traffic school instructor.

"Comedic traffic school, that is correct," Kilborn confirmed.

Rich asked what comedic traffic school even was, and Kilborn happily walked through the model. If you got a speeding ticket back in the day, you could go to traffic school for eight hours, pay whatever you had to pay, and keep the violation off your record.

You had to learn for eight hours, Kilborn pointed out, which meant the instructor had to fill eight hours. He had a method.

"I would go through the traffic manual," Kilborn said. "But I would first start by saying, let's go around and meet everybody. Because I had to kill time. And you have to say your name."

The format ran like an AA meeting that happened to be about left-lane camping.

"Hi, I'm Rich, and I'm a traffic violator," Kilborn modeled. "I was speeding on PCH, and I work in radio. You'd have to say your occupation."

One of the introductions in that classroom stuck with him for almost 40 years.

"He said, hi, I'm so-and-so, I was speeding in Beverly Hills, and I'm a musician," Kilborn said. "I'm in a band called Devo. I said, oh, cool, like the cover band of Devo? He goes, no, I'm in Devo."

He had a creative read on the curriculum, too. The official option was to screen the gory crash videos meant to scare drivers into compliance. Kilborn opted out.

"I didn't want to show those," Kilborn said. "So I showed something that was traffic-related. Planes, Trains and Automobiles."

LA June's actual reason for calling, before the bit ran away from her, was that she remembered Kilborn telling that classroom in 1988 he was going to make it. And he did.

"I'm surprised I said that out loud," Kilborn said. "Did I whisper that to you?"

"No, you said it out loud," LA June replied.

Rich landed the moment.

"That's what happens when you're on the Rich Eisen Show," Rich said. "I didn't even know that about you. You're the very layered Craig Kilborn here on the program."