The Springer thing was an interesting ride. It all went down at the height of Springer-mania in 1998. I had a friend who was a scout for Jerry Springer guests. He says to me, “Jay, you are a ham – you should go on the Springer Show.” I said, “Sure.”

A few days later, one of the Jerry Spinger producers called me and said that they wanted to cast me for a boyfriend who was jealous because their girlfriend was posing for Playboy or some shit. I told them that I was not the guy for the part, but if they wanted a pimp, a drug dealer, or any other kind of scumbag — I was their man. They asked me to send in a headshot and when they got it, they agreed — I looked like a total scumbag.

A few weeks later, they call me and want to cast me as a pimp who will not let his hoes out of servitude until they pay back the money they owed. I accepted this role. A few weeks after that I am holed up in a motel room in downtown Chicago with a friend of mine and a bunch of people I didn’t even know whom were all going to be on the show with me.

This was back when Jerry was still showing all of the fights — my friend and I agreed that we were not going to fake it and would really try to kick each other’s asses. The show taped on Monday and we were in Chicago from Thursday till then rehearing for a few hours a day in the hotel room with the producer — but, really, most of that time was spent at various bars in Wicker Park District getting hammered.

Monday came around and we had to be at the studio at 9AM – we had all partied all night and hadn’t really slept at all. I didn’t bring any decent clothes, so they had to rush me to a mall just and hour before they show taped to buy me a brand new Armani suit. I looked pimp as fuck. Right about then reality started hitting me – hey, I’m not an actor…I’m not a pimp…what the fuck am I doing here? I was actually pretty nervous.

When the show started taping, I sat backstage and watched the girl who was supposed to my prostitute do her thing. When Jerry was asking questions she actually started crying…it was great! She set me up so well. When I went out to play my part as a pimp, I was still pretty nervous. I just went out, acted like the biggest asshole bastard you’ve every seen (not a big stretch), and when I saw I was getting a reaction from the audience I just started dominating and talking mad shit. My friend came out, we beat on each other, talked about slapping hoes, and the show ended with me doing a big improve monologue about how pimpin’ ain’t easy. It was pretty classic.

The episode aired on Halloween 1998 (which was a Friday) – when the ratings came out on Monday…it was the first time Jerry had ever beat Opera in the ratings. The Springer Show was thrilled to death, needless to say — they were now the #1 daytime talk show and they had done it on my episode. My first show actually wound up being the highest rated Springer episode of all time. By Monday afternoon I was getting a call to come back and shoot more shows. I wound coming back and shooting 2 more shows playing the same character for them which both went over really well.

After I did my shows, the producers cut the guy who originally got me on and started calling me to get guests for the show. In the next few months I had gotten half of my scumbag and stripper on the show. During that same period, I started getting followed around by all of the news media and undercover reporter dudes that were trying to be the first to break the “Springer is not real story” – (I mean, seriously, why don’t they just do an expose on how there isn’t an Easter Bunny?) – It was surreal. I never talked to them though.

A few weeks later 20/20 was the first to break that story with another “fake” group of guests. The Springer People made the producer that I worked with the scapegoat for all of the “fake” episodes and said that it was all the actions of “one rouge producer”, but that was all a bunch of BS. Everyone on the Springer staff, including Jerry, knows the shit is bogus – hell, I even wore one of his Armani suits because, at $2,500 a piece, they were too expensive to get ripped up in brawls. Do you think Jerry couldn’t notice that?

Castles made of sand, fall in the sea…eventually…

It was a fun ride while it lasted.

That was the Springer Incident.