uh ladies and gentlemen uh what can i tell you other than yes tonight
is audience fish cleaning night here at nbc yes
that's right now a lot of you are probably asking yourselves about this time what is audience fish
cleaning night ladies and gentlemen it's an annual event held here at nbc
and it's just our way of saying thanks for 365 days of loyal viewership for the network how does
this work well people in our audience tonight have received these special byof invitation tickets
the tickets were mailed out a couple of weeks ago and there are certain rules on the back
let's quickly read the rules on the back no more than 12 fish per audience member will be cleaned
here tonight all fish must be freshly caught and free of genetic abnormalities so-called trash fish
such as carp chub and gar will not be accepted no betting is permitted at any time we had a
lot of trouble with this last year and finally all fish entrails become the property of the national
broadcasting company and will not be returned ladies and gentlemen let me remind you once again
we are only cleaning fish here tonight there will be time for no burning or filleting all right
also when these special invitation tickets went out there was enclosed a memo which indicated
we will not be able to clean catfish or sturgeon uh these are very difficult fish
to clean i have been informed by the ushers that some of you tonight in our audience did
bring some catfish in sturgeon i'm going to have to ask you at this time to give them to
the ushers as they go through the audience with the pails and just relinquish the fish if we can
there they are just pass over okay i'm sorry we we sent out the memos uh nearly three weeks ago
once again this is all fish that has been brought by our studio audience that we'll be cleaning
tonight uh all right if they've collected the unacceptable fish uh we'll give them back to you
at the end of the show ladies and gentlemen uh the magic moment is just about here uh get a good grip
on your fish ladies and gentlemen because now it's time to begin audience fish cleaning night
okay if you're ready to come down here one at a time and have your fish cleaned let's meet
the woman who will be conducting the ceremony for us you have everything you need here yes
okay do you want to work this end or that in what right right in the middle okay so
i'll just i'll just go over here and uh your name is marielle hemingway and uh what do you
what's uh and what do you do for a living i clean fish you clean fish okay great um
uh all right let's just get started now uh bring on the fish and uh we'll start
cleaning them one at a time that's right just
there's some ugliness taking place up there oh my these uh
yes come on down ma'am come on around this way if you will what is your name orange
florence where are you from new jersey and do you know what kind of fish you have there for us
a seatrout a sea trout okay florence this is uh muriel she'll be cleaning it for you and remember
once again we can't fillet right now and we do no boning we're just going to clean so uh muriel
if you just go ahead and clean the fish it's now it'd be a good time to phone the neighbors
we'll be on the air cleaning fish until two o'clock tonight is it two or how late are we on
till two o'clock cleaning fish and if you can get a nice tight shot of that hal
oh my yes oh wouldn't the tuna melt hit the spot just about now
okay you do a lot of fish cleaning muriel oh yeah all the time all right
and now we're a little scaling so you're getting a little extra there
oh watch it
you nearly hit someone there i'm sorry that's all right for all you late night eaters
now that'll be nice uh when you get it home maybe a little batter and uh-huh
okay would you like some coleslaw uh you are you
are you're not going to take the the head and the tail off or you just oh i thought you wanted it
oh yeah a lot of people do ask for the head and tail as kind of a souvenir
okay
how much time do we have for this okay 30 more seconds and so come on put that down here man
what is your name lana lana and boy that's a beauty what is what is this guy they told me
it was a flounder and they you said this was a pet no no you didn't say that uh okay there
you go so now she can get that now the next is a flounder mariel have you ever cleaned the flounder
this one's a little more difficult okay a little more difficult all right so we're gonna watch uh
watch now she cleans the flounder it's a good eating fish isn't it this is hard
okay
look at all these folks lined up with their bright faces and their fish and
i tried this a couple of months ago a ted koppel over at nightline and it
wasn't nearly this much fun when they did it over there i uh david brinkley brought
in a couple i'm sorry no no you don't need to apologize it's all right we're here oh
okay now that's a that's an old ocean fish isn't it
for such a big fish it has very little guts yeah that's a lot of meat on that fish actually
yep yep yep it's too bad we're not in 3d isn't it it would be uh
well that looks good just put that on a bun and you're ready you're ready to go thank you very
much thanks mark all right we have to go away for a commercial come on insert and put your put your
fish on the counter uh so to speak uh we'll be right back ladies and gentlemen yes it's fish
cleaning night uh ladies and gentlemen i need to make another announcement we've been getting some
complaints from the nbc news department please do not put any discarded fish in the evening
news studio uh apparently according to this john chancellor's chair has been ruined please use the
disposal facilities right here in our own studio and uh we we want to make this an annual event so
let's don't screw it up okay uh you know we've had a lot of fun tonight and we certainly have cleaned
a lot of fish and that's all well and good but i have a simple philosophy clean a man's fishing
eats tonight teach a man to clean a fish and he eats for the rest of his life now the audience
has seen plenty of old-fashioned cleaning tonight but there's a real trick to filleting a fish so
i brought in a short film that i made over the weekend on this subject and you're going to see
me paul came out to the house and we went out and got some pretty good sized striped bass and let me
just now show you via this film uh the technique to filleting a fish this was fun wasn't it paul
there it is we just got it right out of the boat you need a really good sharp knife and you cut
forward to the just behind the gill and then the trick here is to keep it right up next to the bone
and when you begin to pry it away this was good eating wasn't it paul um yeah you you want to
watch for all the tiny little bones and we had plenty of sun that day i tell from my hands now
just just cut it back to the tail like that there you go and there you go ladies and gentlemen just
that's how you say that was fun we i didn't realize you were such a fisherman
well you know it's just one of the many things that you don't know about it was great wasn't
it i liked it we had to do that again let's have you and me and the whole band will do it these
guys have been asking me when you're gonna take us up to dave's house to go fishing and i said
you know be cool but that's nice i will do that don't you worry you mark that on your calendar