Durwood Fincher went to an open-call audition to be an entertainer for an IBM corporate event.
The late Allen Funt, host and creator of “Candid Camera,” was holding the audition in Atlanta.
Fincher walked in, introduced himself and did a bit of double-talk — meaningless speech that consists of nonsense syllables mixed with intelligible words. Funt was reading the newspaper.
Click here to see Durwood Fincher in action on "Live with Regis and Kelly"
All the sudden, Funt’s secretary started snorting and laughing, which got Funt’s attention.
“We’ll call you Mr. Doubletalk,” Funt announced.
“The planets were lining up,” Fincher said about his career as Mr. Doubletalk, which began in 1981.
His teaching career started in 1969 when he got a full-time job as an English teacher at Hardaway High School.
Fincher, who now lives in Atlanta, has returned to Columbus for this weekend’s reunion of Hardaway’s classes of 1969-71. He taught at the high school until 1974.
At the Butler’s Pantry on Friday, he met with former Hardaway journalism teacher Regina Block and three of his former students, Barbara Berry Whitten of Jasper, Ga., Lynn Carter Richardson of Canton, Ga., and Fran Hempstead of Chesapeake, Va.
“He’s a funny, funny man,” Richardson agreed. “And he’s very kind.”
His humor caught the attention of Macon Telegraph columnist Ed Grisamore who wrote a biography of Fincher’s life called “Once You Step in Elephant Manure, You’re in the Circus Forever.”
The two of them are on a book tour that started at Hardaway’s reunion Friday night and will continue today with a book signing at the Hardaway reunion dinner at the National Infantry Museum and another book signing Sunday.
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