This story was published in Radio Recall, the journal of the Metropolitan Washington Old-Time Radio Club, published six times per year.

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Twenty Questions was a popular radio quiz program running from 1946 to 1954. One of the original panelists has written a book titled "The Twenty Questions Radio Show". Although it's written as a novel, it's based on his actual experiences on the show and is obviously autobiographical. Two of the other panelists were his father and mother....and his sister was sometimes on the show too.

It's available as a downloaded e-book or as a CD-ROM, either priced at only $2.50, on www.stonegarden.net. On the left side of that home page, under Authors, you select Bob Van Deventer (authors are indexed by first name.) Next clicking "Buy Now" (the top one) will give info on the book.

You need to use Pay Pal and have some computer skills to utilize this web site (your editor has neither) and get this bargain. Stone Garden specializes in many types of e-books and CDs.

In the novel’s description on this web site, we read: “This was the 1940s. In that long-ago world of blurbs and press releases, young gods were given positions at the point of the pyramid, and during that simmering summer of 1947 Young Bobby was still ensnared by this problem. It had first emerged in early 1946. "Step right up, radio listeners. He’s smart and he’s only a teenager. He’s our amazing fourteen-year-old schoolboy." Oh, yes. He was billed as wise beyond his years.

One guest panelist that month was Harry McNaughton, star of a deliberately dopey radio show called It Pays To Be Ignorant. Harry was especially ruinous. "It pays us to be ignorant. It pays Bobby to be intelligent." Just what the doctor ordered for a teenage panelist’s id and ego. Show business lent to him fame and it also lent the illusion of importance. Though it was only an illusion, and Bobby seemed to know it, he could not help himself, believing what they told him.”