The Roaster and The Roasted
Don Rickles is getting his own grilling in a special tribute on Spike TV’s One Night Only on May 28. “The Merchant of Venom” is a longtime celebrity roast veteran, having been a frequent guest on the old Dean Martin roasts and here, in a 1968 Kraft Music Hall Friars Club broadcast. Rickles is roasting Johnny Carson in this clip (with Ed Sullivan and Groucho Mark on board), but maybe the most fun here is the late, great Alan King introducing the insult comic king as “someone whose soft-spoken manner and delicate delivery is the very essence of humility and gentleness. Don Rickles is a man who will go down in history — with such names as Heinrich Himmler and Attila the Hun.” – Eric Gould