2002 Update: This hoary Internet rumor was revitalized by Steve Burns' permanent departure from the Blue's Clues TV show in April 2002. Needless to say, it's still not true. More...
Dear Guide:
I don't have any direct experience with this one, but a coworker mentioned that he was watching the "Today Show" or "Good Morning America" or some other breakfast TV show, and heard that there was a rumor going around that Steve Burns (Steve from the Nick Jr. show "Blue's Clues") was dead.
Apparently, panicked parents were calling and emailing the producers by the hundreds. The morning TV show had both the producer of "Blue's Clues" and Steve himself as guests to debunk the rumor.
Dear Reader:
Nothing puts a crimp in your day like finding out you're dead, as Steve Burns can well attest. Since 1999, in countless newspaper interviews and TV appearances, he has had to deny kicking the bucket. For some reason, the public won't buy it.
The claim that Burns died of a heroin overdose first popped up on the Internet in 1998, according to the producers of "Blue's Clues," the kids' show that made the actor famous. No one knows precisely how or why the rumor began. At one point it was spreading so fast that Burns' own mother heard it and phoned him to make sure he was still alive (details from E! Online).
The whole episode is unsettlingly similar to fellow actor Scott Baio's experience earlier that same year. His parents called him, sobbing, after hearing rumors that he'd died in a car crash the same day that comedian Chris Farley passed away. Everyone seemed absolutely convinced of Baio's death except the "deceased" himself.
"After a while I started answering the phone, 'I'm not dead,'" he told New York Times Magazine.
If it had been me, I'd have left a message on my answering machine and simply refused to pick up the phone until the hysteria passed. How many times a day do you want to have to tell people you're not dead? Even one is too many.
