Jean Shepherd. I know this sounds like utter BS but I swear to God that for at least a 4 year period Jean Shepherd read almost every story I sent him each week. Once I was listening in on the car radio with a date and she was utterly amazed that I could recite what Shepherd would say about a second later. The reason is that he was reading another of my stories (that one was about a Killer Perch called "Gums") so I already knew what he was going to say. I know this is making me sound like Speed_Addiction but if someone can pull up radio tapes of a bunch of Jean Shepherd shows I can match some of the stories he told with stuff that I had published in a local newspaper at the time.
You know, PJ, once again it seems you and I have similar tastes in humor. I became a big Jean Shepherd fan back in the 1970s.