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Merrill Markoe

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Author

The Resume

    (August 13, 1948- )
    Born in New York City, New York
    Author, TV scriptwriter, and stand up comedian
    Writer for The David Letterman Show (1980) and Late Night with David Letterman (1982-88)
    Created the recurring bits ‘Stupid Pet Tricks’ and ‘Viewer Mail’
    Wrote episodes of ‘Laugh-In,’ ‘Newhart,’ ‘Not Necessarily the News,’ ‘Moonlighting,’ ‘It’s Garry Shandling’s Show’ and ‘Sex in the City’
    Wrote the books ‘What the Dogs Have Taught Me: And Other Amazing Lessons I Have Learned’ (1992), ‘How to Be Hap-Hap-Happy Like Me!’ (1994), ‘Merrill Markoe’s Guide to Love’ (1997) and ‘Cool, Calm and Contentious’ (2001)
    Panelist on Animal Planet’s ‘Who Gets the Dog?’
    Appeared in the second episode of ‘Friends’ and for 10 seconds in ‘The Aristocrats’

Why she might be annoying:

    Before moving on to writing comedy, she briefly taught art at USC, commenting that her students ‘couldn’t have been brattier or less interested in art.’
    She noted that a lot of her early writing consisted of spec scripts for sitcoms that she didn’t really like.
    She admitted about simultaneously dating Letterman and writing for his shows, ‘I don’t think it was a smart thing for me to put work and love together.’
    She stopped watching Letterman’s shows after she stopped writing for him (and stopped dating him), but that did not stop her from appearing on The Late Show a couple of times to promote her books.
    She said, ‘I spend my life in dread of my obituary, which is gonna say, ‘Letterman’s ex, creator of Stupid Pet Tricks, dies.’

Why she might not be annoying:

    She said about her tastes in comedy, ‘My personal preference is towards cerebral silliness…. [But] I need to add that I like pure stupidity.’
    She generally had a more absurdist style of comedy than Letterman.
    She was able to get Letterman to go outside his comfort zone, which resulted in many of the more offbeat and groundbreaking episodes of ‘Late Night’
    She won three consecutive Emmys for her writing for ‘Late Night.’ (1984-86) and a Daytime Emmy for ‘The David Letterman Show’ (1980).
    When Letterman’s affair with Stephanie Birkitt became public, she wrote, ‘As you can imagine, this is a very emotional time for me because Dave promised me many times that I was the only woman he would ever cheat on.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 9 Votes: 22.22% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying