"Johnny asks some unusual and sometimes penetrating questions, and tends to stutter when excited. He still needs to control his silly behavior."
- Stuttering John's
4th grade teacher
Stuttering John Melendez is an assistant producer of the Howard Stern Show. His primary responsibilities are answering the phones, screening the calls, and otherwise helping out Baba-Booey. This "Hero of the Stupid" first became an intern on the show in 1988. Soon enough, John had become one of the most popular personalities on Howard Stern's program, due to his humorous stutter and his knack for truly offensive celebrity interviews.
John's interviews, which usually encompass embarrassing questions about drug use, masturbation, disease, race, homosexuality, and other such controversial topics, are now feared throughout Hollywood. A celebrity showing up at a Manhattan party can expect to be treated to such lines of questioning as "Are there too many Jews in show business?" and "Ever date a black guy?" For the truly washed-up celebrities, Stuttering John falls back on the most humiliating question of all: "Who are you?"
Says Penthouse:
"A stuttering interviewer was a godsend. For one, in the interests of political correctness, stars would have to be nice to a stutterer. On top of that, because he would invariably garble the question the first time, John would get to ask and the celebrity would be forced to listen to the outrageous question a second time. Another of John's virtues was that he was basically culturally clueless. He could approach Ally Sheedy and innocently ask her, "Have you puked today?" totally unaware that she was reportedly in the midst of battling bulimia. Basically, John was a programmed assassin."
John has now branched out into music and has two lousy rock albums: an eponymous 1994 debut, and 1998's Everybody's Normal But Me. You can visit his website at http://www.stutteringjohn.com/