Larry the Lobster (Saturday Night Live skit)
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Larry The Lobster was the subject of an April 1982 comedy routine by Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live. In an early example of interactive television in the mold of American Idol, Murphy held Larry, a live lobster, aloft and declared that the show's audience would determine whether he lived or died.
Murphy then read two phone numbers, one for those who wanted to spare Larry, and another for those who wanted to see him cooked. In the span of 30 minutes, viewers made nearly 500,000 calls, sending phone traffic soaring.[1]
The spike in traffic perplexed AT&T employees, who eventually figured out that Larry was responsible.[1]
Though the phone network survived the spike, it was sufficiently threatening to operations that AT&T established communication with the television networks so that they could be warned of potentially disruptive future events; this system remains in use to this day.[1]
Larry, for what it's worth, was initially spared by about 12,000 votes. 239,096 callers voted to save him and 227,452 voted for him to be boiled.[1]
On the next week's episode, however, Eddie Murphy raised the subject of Larry the Lobster again, saying that he had received letters protesting the crustacean's treatment the previous week, including one that contained the racist barb "I didn't even know you people liked lobster." Murphy then displayed a boiled lobster on a plate, announced that Larry's stay of execution had been revoked, and ate it.[2]
