It's been a bad month for the Usual Gang of Idiots. Tom Koch, who wrote for MAD for close to forty years died March 22 at his home in Laguna Woods, California. If that alone doesn't impress you he was a great comedy writer, try this: He was also one of the primary writers for the great radio comedians, Bob and Ray.
Koch wrote an estimated 3,000 comedy spots for Bob and Ray, mailing them in from his home in Indiana. Only rarely was a submission of his not used. Said Bob Elliott of the team, "Everything he did was funny. He was a gold mine of funny thoughts and exactly what we needed to punctuate what we had already been doing."
In 1957, MAD was trying to lure readers with articles "written by" top humorists of the day — Ernie Kovacs, Henry Morgan, Stan Freberg, etc. With one or two exceptions, MAD just secured the right to adapt existing material performed by these folks. Bob and Ray were also featured and their short routines, illustrated for MAD by Mort Drucker, fit in better than any of them. Most of these routines were written by Koch (pronounced "Cook," by the way) and he got involved with their adaptation to magazine form. Al Feldstein, who was then the editor there, was short on writers and he suggested Koch could also contribute on his own to MAD. Koch began doing so and his presence in MAD long outlasted that of Bob and Ray.
He wrote over 300 pages for the publication and several paperback books, his most memorable piece being "43-Man Squamish," which appeared in a 1965 issue. He was reportedly as proud of that as he was for all the work he did in television for Pat Paulsen, George Gobel, Jonathan Winters and so many others. He even wrote for situation comedies including Petticoat Junction, My Living Doll and My Mother, The Car.
Koch rarely socialized with the rest of the MAD family and many of its other contributors either didn't know him or didn't know him well. They all respected his work though and envied his very clever mind and sense o' humor. I sure liked what he did.