Jim Zippo Biography Page
Picture (at left) Is Jim and his Wife Lori who works as Co-Host on the "Zippo in the Morning" radio show. Lori, was a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader (Touchdown Jim!)
At KFXM, I broke the world handshaking record in September 1976 (copy of the tunesheet with photo provided) – I officially shook more hands in one day than the previous record holder at that time, President Teddy Roosevelt…I shook hands with 8,513 people in one day. I shook everyone’s hand at an Alice Cooper concert, plus area school kids, businesses, etc. The last hand I shook was that of Mike Matthews (Jolstead), who was afternoons/PD at KFXM at the time.
I did my show in the nude one day! Al Anthony thought it
would be funny for me to take off all my clothes to do a morning
show in the KFXM studio. There was a huge glass window overlooking
the Holiday Inn swimming pool, and adjustable blinds from top to bottom. The
day I did it, I mentioned on the air I was totally naked, and dozens
of people (mostly female) swarmed by the large window, hoping to
get a glance. About halfway into the show, I noticed a slight amount
of daylight peeking through the upper right corner of the blinds,
so I got out of my studio chair to try to adjust them. I must have
pulled on something too hard, because the blinds came crashing down
completely, and all I could do was stand there, looking outside at a
crowd of girls staring right at me from poolside. I ran out the
back of the building, and charged away for home. Hard to forget
that! (Webmaster's Note:) I was there
the day this stunt took place. There's a little detail that's missing
from this story. During Jim's on-air promo of the fact he was doing the
show in the nude he got a call on the phone. The call was from members
of the Olive Dell Ranch Nudist Colony in Reche Canyon located just south
of Colton. These people invited Jim to come out and visit them. I was
curious and so was another salesman who's name escapes me. We followed
Jim Zippo out to the nudist colony. They threw Jim in the pool as an
initiation to their group and called him a "cotton tail" because he was
a newbie and his buns were stark white. Surprisingly, I ran into a girl
that I went through school with in Riverside. She said her family had
been nudists and members of Olive Dell Ranch for years.
While working at KFXM, I appeared on network tv, on the GONG
SHOW. I was a singing, dancing shark. This happened somewhere
around the time the movie JAWS was a hit. I made the shark suit
out of a grey canvas, using a stapler, duck tape, and spray paint. It
was pretty bad, but it did look like a shark, sort of. I was so
bad, host Chuck Barris declared me the worst act of the week, and I set
a record: I was the first person to ever get TRIPLE GANG-GONGED! I
was gonged out by panelists Rip Taylor, Susan George, and Peter Lawford. It
was a blast.
The other funny thing I can remember about KFXM actually happened
while I was doing mornings across town at KMEN. Mike Matthews (PD
of KMEN) stole me from KFXM, and I went to do mornings for the competition. Mike
and I came up with the on-air KMEN phrase “the rock has moved from
KFXM to KMEN.” Mike and I painted small boulder (maybe 3’3’,
weighing more than 100 pounds) with those exact words, and drove it to
the KFXM studio under shadow of night. We placed the rock on the
walkway right in front of the KFXM studio windows. We went home
and just waited for a reaction. We got one, alright. KFXM
management (Al Anthony) called us and told us to remove the rock immediately
or he would call the police. We did. He didn’t.
~Jim Zippo
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