Benjy Bronk

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Benjy Bronk (born Benjamin Percival Bronk) is an American comedian, radio producer and one of the writers for The Howard Stern Show.

Early life

Bronk is Jewish and was born in Pumpkintown, South Carolina on September 4, 1967.^[1] He grew up in Gullah Island, South Carolina and in Clemson, South Carolina and once camped in a mall parking lot with his family. He attended D. W. Daniel High School. Benjy was a high school wrestler, played in a Shofar band and was a South Carolina State Hula Hoop champion (first non African American ever to win in SC) In 1993, he earned a bachelor of arts in general arts and sciences from Penn State University, where he was a member of the Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity. His father is a college professor with a PhD in physics from Princeton.

Joining Stern

In 1998, Benjy began working on the Howard Stern Show as an intern , doing pre-interviews of guests appearing on the show and gathering articles for Robin's news. By 2001 Benjy took over Jackie Martling's former role in writing jokes and funny lines for Stern live as the show progresses (on rare occasions Bronk also writes jokes for cast member Artie Lange, who was a more official yet figurative replacement for Martling).^[2] Benjy sits in the studio between Lange and Fred Norris. Benjy is perhaps best known on the show for his state of "schtick coma", in which Bronk will continuously do something he believes to be humorous, with little regard for the reaction of the world around him. This is also sometimes dubbed the "Benjy vortex". Benjy is a past FM-ie winner for a phone call in which he pretended to be Bill Clinton, fooling an elderly black woman into having phone sex.

• Benjy appeared on The Anna Nicole Show after her appearance on the Stern Show. According to Anna, they " had a drink, and the next thing I knew, my head was in Benjy's lap and I loved it"
• On December 10, 2008, Benjy started a fast in support of Bubba the Love Sponge being re-signed by their mutual employer Sirius Satellite Radio. Bubba, a personality on Howard 101, was in the midsts of contentious contract negotiations. Benjy said he would only drink water until Bubba was re-signed by Sirius. Benjy soon broke his fast, as was discovered during intense interrogation by Stern. Benjy confessed to breaking his fast by consuming an entire tomato and seaweed. Benjy claimed that Bubba sanctioned his binge.
• On April 17, 2007 Bronk interrupted a live CNBC newscast urging people to vote for Sanjaya. He was then dragged off camera by two CNBC cameramen, while still yelling.^[3]
• On May 7, 2007 Benjy won the Stern Show Battle of the Blobs competition, losing 64 lbs over the course of the competition, dropping from 267 lb (121 kg; 19.1 st) to 203 lb (92 kg; 14.5 st), almost a 24% weight loss.^[4] Since then, Howard revealed he gained most of it back.
• Bronk often insists he is 1 year younger than his actual age. On September 3, 2009, reporter Steve Langford of Howard100 News revealed that his research had uncovered numerous pieces of compelling evidence showing his birthday to be September 24, 1970. In spite of this evidence, Bronk still insisted that he was actually born on September 24, 1971.

The Benjy Bronk Show

On December 19, 2005, WXRK General Manager Tom Chiusano fulfilled an agreement with Stern to let Benjy run the show for part of the day, dubbing it "The Benjy Bronk Show", during which Benjy interviewed several people, including original Beatles drummer Pete Best, Howard Stern Wack Packer Daniel Carver, and a person imitating a 12-year-old black girl. Benjy also interviewed Fran Baskerville, the singing psychic who claims to have predicted the September 11, 2001 attacks. The show could be heard on frequency 92.3 until Chiusano prematurely called an end to the show before its scheduled 10AM finish.

Political statements

Benjy declared to be a Libertarian on the November 8, 2006 "Howard Stern Wrap-up Show". In the November 7, 2006 elections, he claimed to have voted for every Libertarian on the ballot and manually wrote in votes for himself or colleague Doug Goodstein wherever Libertarian candidates were not an option. Benjy received two write-in votes in the 2005 election for New York City Civil Court Judgeship, as well as one vote for the office of Manhattan Borough President.^[5][6]

Paris Hilton's new best friend

Benjy Bronk has submitted himself for the contest of becoming Paris Hilton's new "best friend", in her reality tv-show. On Wednesday, March 19, 2008 two days after joining, Bronk, under the username "BenjyBenjy" was ranked in first place with over 18,000 votes, after having the poll mentioned two times on the show. When voting closed in May 2008, Benjy was solidly in first place with over 400,000 votes.^[7] However, Bronk did not appear on the television show because it would have required him to miss nearly two months of work. Stern said that Benjy's contribution to the show was too important for him to go missing for that amount of time.

See also

• Howard 100
• Sirius Satellite Radio
• Detlev Bronk

References

External links

• Benjy Bronk at the Internet Movie Database
• http://parisbff.com/people/BenjyBenjy Benjy Bronk's profile on Paris Hilton's New Best friend
• Howard Stern Wikia A Howard Stern Wikia Project -- "You Take That Back"