Secret garden of delights

Richard Carson is a game show fan after my own heart. His I've Got a Secret episode guide is an invaluable source for my favorite black-and-white game show ever.

The guide provides detailed production and content information for hundreds of IGAS episodes throughout the show's 1952-67 run. Even more handy are the links to dozens of clips from the show on YouTube, many of them uploaded by Richard himself. I spent hours yesterday watching some of the very best clips from one of the funniest shows ever to grace American TV.

One of the most hilarious bits came from the November 12, 1958 episode. With the panel not in on the secret, host Garry Moore and guest Peter Lind Hayes read incredibly bad jokes that had been written years before by...none other than panelist Bill Cullen.

At first befuddled by what was going on, the panel soon started ripping the jokes as downright awful (which they were). This naturally led to gales of laughter from the audience. Bill Cullen in particular dumped on the jokes as material he wouldn't be caught dead using. Bill said the jokes must have been stolen from jokebooks authored by men long since dead.

By now the audience was helpless with laughter. Bill suddenly realized that they were laughing at him, and that he must have written the horrible jokes himself. As always, the self-deprecating Cullen then joined in the hilarity. To give Bill some respect, Garry and Peter finished the bit by reading a pretty funny routine that Bill had also written years before.

It's times like these that I really, really wish GSN would bring back the black-and-white IGAS. Maybe we'll get some episodes around Christmas, as the network has done in recent years.