Double Dare

I was at dinner last night with some friends and the topic of Double Dare (the Nickelodeon game show from the 80’s) came up. One of the guys at dinner said that he had heard that the host of the show, Marc Summers, had had a bad cocaine habit during or right after the show stopped being filmed (show years were 1986-1992). I thought this was interesting, so I looked into it this morning. I wasn’t able to find anything out about drug habits, but I did find out that Summers has OCD (obsessive compusilve disorder) – a disorder that he struggled with seriously while hosting Double Dare. Early on in the show, he refused to take part in any slime-throwing or messy challenges, but then the producers threatened to fire him if he didn’t participate more. At that point, he started participating more, but as soon as filming ended he would immediately remove his shirt, jacket, and tie in front of the entire audience (nothing better for a kid’s show than a topless man in front of 300 8-11 year olds). Apparently, he also would shower multiple times right after a show in order to get any traces of green slime out of his hair.

Immersion Therapy

More recently Summers has hosted Unwrapped on the Food Channel (good show), History IQ on the History Channel, and is on the board of overseers at Emerson College. In my opinion, he’s probably as well known as any modern game show host (at least with a certain demographic). Still, it’s ironic that someone with OCD had to get his big break hosting such a messy show.

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