I LAUGH easily and loudly, but like so many of us, sometimes not sincerely.
But with Tim, you responded with more than just a belly laugh – you’d end up in hysterics with tears streaming down your face.
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December 1983, it was the bachelor party for George Arzt, then the New York Post City Hall bureau chief.
It was at the Italian Rifle Club in Greenwich Village, and anyone hearing the raucous laughter must have thought it was taken over by members of Animal House.
Carl Pelleck, the newspaper’s crime reporter, got up and roasted George to a fine crisp, and there was laughter all around.
But when Tim got up, the dinner turned into mayhem. Tim’s routine was a skit – a Q&A with the then-senator of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whom Tim was working as a press aide.
Tim played the role of the reporter, and he also played the role of Moynihan, which he did in the most incredible mimicry of the senator’s very unusual trans-Atlantic accent complete with every physical gesture.
“I can’t remember a comedy routine so hilarious,” Arzt, now a political consultant, told me yesterday of that night. “It was one of the most spectacular nights of my life.
“It was hysterical. You know, to have a drink with Tim could actually be a little bit like an ordeal, cause you know you would end up laughing yourself hoarse. But if you were gonna have a drink with some guy, he was the guy to have a drink with.”
Morty Matz, a veteran p.r. consultant who was there that night, said, “Tim would just take over a room by his very presence.”
And it wasn’t because he would be blustery; he would slide into a room, stone-faced, and quietly deliver a bombshell of comedy.
When he would later work for Gov. Mario Cuomo, he would do the same mimicking routine with absolute good nature.
When he first worked for NBC as an executive, I was merciless when we would have a drink at Costello’s. I was worse when he started on “Meet the Press,” naturally because I see a liberal under every bed.
But it never showed on him on those wonderful Sunday mornings.
I will leave the journalistic accolades to those more lofty than I, who like all of us, sometimes go on a little bit too much talking about values.
Tim, believe me, didn’t talk about values, he simply lived them. With those beautiful Irish smiling eyes.