R.I.P.: Bob&Ray Radio Script Writer Tom Koch

Tom Koch

Tom Koch, a creator of the vexingly convoluted game 43-man Squamish for Mad magazine and unheralded author of thousands of comedy scripts for Bob and Ray radio programs that in his words parodied “pompous versions of real people,” died on March 22 at his home in Laguna Woods, Calif.

He was 89 years-of age, according to The NY Times.  The cause was pulmonary failure, said his son, John.

He was prolific writing for Bob and Ray’s regular radio programs, turning out almost 3,000 sketches in the 33 years after he was recruited in 1955 as their silent partner.

“He certainly contributed a big part of the Bob and Ray repertoire on radio,” Mr. Elliott said Wednesday.



“They usually ad-libbed their stuff,” Mr. Koch told The Los Angeles Times in 1996, “but NBC didn’t want things going out over the network without knowing what was coming in advance, so they asked me to start writing for them.”

As a result, in three-and-a-half-page, five-minute scripts, radio audiences were introduced to the president of the Slow Talkers of America; the hapless detectives in Squad Car 119; a bridge builder who went bankrupt (listeners could hear cars splashing in the background); the executive secretary of the Parsley Society of America bemoaning the per capita decline in consumption; and the bumbling correspondent Wally Ballou’s report from a prefabricated igloo factory in Greenland where the temperature was kept at 30 degrees below zero to keep the components from melting.