Coyle & Sharpe offer a respite from the real world

I work at a newspaper, so the past few days have found me inundated with the increasingly horrific updates from TERRORIZED BOSTON.
By the time for bed, I've reached my limit of the sinister "real world," so to speak, so I've been falling to sleep to the sounds of the sinisterly silly.
JAMES P. COYLE AND MAL SHARPE introduced radio listeners of the early 1960s to a style of man-on-the-street prank that has been replicated thousands of times since but never bettered.
I've been enjoying a recording of their pioneering comedic experiments the past couple of nights before bed.
The straight-faced pair would ask random strangers if they would be willing to baby-sit a bear, what they think about elongating their foreheads to create sugar bowls and if they care to hear an afternoon's worth of a man droning into their ears.
The pair recorded the varied responses, and a bizarre and utterly hilarious form of radio comedy was born.
I've written about Coyle and Sharpe before, and I'll doubtless write about them again. I turn to them when I've had a little too much seriousness.