Mal Sharpe

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Malcolm Sharpe (born 1936) is a television and radio personality with roots in San Francisco.

Whether they realize it or not, many throughout the western United States are familiar with Sharpe from TV commercials, as a tall, bearded, genial man with a microphone seeking opinions from strangers on the street.

In the early 1960s, Sharpe teamed with the late Jim Coyle to create a series of comic on-the-street interviews for San Francisco radio station KGO. Armed with a tape recorder, Coyle and Sharpe accosted total strangers and asked them absurd questions, with which many were only too happy to play along. In one notable exchange, the interviewee was at a bus stop and they followed him onto the bus, continuing the "questioning" as they traveled. Some of these recordings have recently been rereleased on CD.

In 1971, Sharpe continued as a solo interviewer with a syndicated TV series titled The Street People.

As of December 2004, Sharpe currently hosts a jazz show, Back on Basin Street, from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. Sunday Pacific Time, available through streaming audio from KCSM at the College of San Mateo in California.