Ricki Lake – Nostalgia Central

1 9 9 3 – 2 0 0 4 (USA)
2574 x 60 minute episodes

This long-running daytime talk show made its official syndicated debut on 13 September 1993. The show ran for 11 seasons, airing over 2,000 episodes before concluding on 21 May 2004.

Ricki’s show – taped at Chelsea Studios in New York City, replete with a Jerry Springer-style rowdy studio audience – targeted Generation X – teenagers, young adults, and college students rather than the older demographic typically served by hosts like Oprah Winfrey or Phil Donahue.

The show focused on relationship-driven issues, family dynamics, and social topics like teen pregnancy, gangs, and personal transformations

One of Ricki’s most memorable guests was a thirtysomething woman named Gwen Marreo, who came onto the show to talk about AIDS. After revealing to the audience that she was HIV-positive, Gwen was asked by Ricki what impact it had had on her life.

As the audience jeered and booed, Gwen said that she was planning to have unprotected sex with as many men as possible. She said that she wanted her gravestone to say, “She took ten thousand men with her when she died.”

Unsurprisingly, this caused shock and outrage in the studio, but Gwen wasn’t finished. She told gaping viewers that she had slept with half of the vice squad in New Orleans, which is where she lived. “One half of the New Orleans Police Department is going to die,” she said.

When pressed as to why she wanted to do this, Gwen replied, “I want people to remember me for what I did. When I get together with men, I say, “Do you want a condom?” They say “no”, and I smile and think, You’re going to die.”

The story had a sort of happy ending. Two days after she appeared on Ricki’s show, the Associated Press ran a story that read, “Gwendolyn Marreo, who claimed to have infected half the New Orleans Police Department, does not have AIDS.”

Incredibly, the seemingly vengeful Gwen had made the whole thing up because she wanted to get on national television, and she felt that the best way of doing that was by creating the most sensational story she could!

A major part of the series was the “doorbell surprise”, where guests were confronted by someone who knew the “truth” about their situation.

Lake eventually decided to end the program in 2004 largely because she was tired of the commute from her home in Los Angeles and wanted to spend more time with her family.

The show was immortalised in several 90s songs, most famously in The Offspring‘s Pretty Fly (For a White Guy).

Host
Ricki Lake