They’re my favourite lines in TV comedy.
Woody to Norm: “Can I pour you a beer Mr Peterson?”
Norm: “A little early isn’t it Woody?”
“For a beer?”
“No for stupid questions.”
Here’s my second favourite.
“I need to kill time before my second beer. Give me my first one,” says Norm.
We felt sorry for Norm but we all loved him.
And now Norm has left us and there’s a few flat suds at the bottom of the glass.
George Wendt had a New Zealand connection. He took a cameo role in a Geoff Murphy film Never Say Die, meaning he spent a good deal of the summer of 1988 in Auckland.
He was a sports fan and especially liked baseball. So his friends from the movie brought him to a cricket test match!
Inevitably he finished up in the TV commentary box with us during the New Zealand-England match at Eden Park. It was one of the most boring cricket test series ever played. Three matches, three draws with no prospect of a result in any match.
With the action in the middle being decidedly tedious, having Norm in the commentary livened things up no end. Thirty seven years on I don’t recall a lot of what we talked about apart from him being a guest baseball commentator in his hometown of Chicago when he joined the legendary Harry Caray in a match call.
The punchline to that exchange is that it sounds funnier than it reads. Harry Caray’s name is pronounced “Hari Kari” – as in the ancient Japanese ritual.
What did strike me about George at that time was his size. He was a young man back then, not even 40, yet he was grossly overweight in an era when obesity was not common. I seem to remember him saying though he didn’t like beer all that much and much preferred red wine.
In 1988 Cheers and Norm were at the height of their 11-year popularity so it was a coup for Murphy to get George Wendt to his New Zealand movie. It didn’t have a huge impact though. Never Say Die is never mentioned among the classics of Kiwi movie making and grossed only $378,000 at the box office.
I doubt George will remember his day at the cricket test but it was fun having him there.
Norm was a tragic figure with the unseen Vera the ultimate long suffering wife. George had the comfort of a stable family life and a long standing happy marriage to Bernadette, ironically the voice of Vera.
I don’t know whether it’s serendipity or synchronicity but remarkably George died on the 32nd anniversary of the final episode of Cheers.
We’ll always know his name.
“How’s a beer sound Norm?”
“Dunno. I usually finish them before they can get a word in.”
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
