Pat Sajak’s Drinking Jokes Fall Flat

For most of us, an admission of regularly drinking on the job would be cause for dismissal, but for longtime game show host Pat Sajak, it was just a colorful anecdote.

Sajak, who’s been at the helm of Wheel since 1981, recently admitted in an interview to hosting the show drunk in the past – and on more than one occasion. When talking on ESPN 2’s Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable, he told stories of how he spent his long dinner breaks back in the show’s early days. Sajak admitted he and letter turner Vanna White would kill time by tossing back margaritas.

“We had a different show then,” Sajak explains. “You didn't win money, you won fake money with which you could buy cheesy prizes.” Sajak went on to call the prize-awarding segment “the most boring two minutes in television,” blaming it for his questionable work practices.

“Our dinner breaks would be two-and-a-half hours long while they drove in new cars and boats and gazebos and stuff,” Sajak explains. So he and White passed the time at a Burbank spot called Los Arcos where he admits he’d have “two or three or six” margaritas, suggesting the “average number was cuatro” (Spanish for “four”).

The host continued to make light of his drinking on the job, joking that video of some of those early shows where he was tipsy can be fun to watch. “They're really good tapes to get a hold of,” he says.

While we all make mistakes, it’s a bit uncomfortable to hear Sajak turning his past proclivity for drinking on the job into a joke, especially while alcoholism, underage drinking and binge drinking are all consistent or growing problems in the US. While he hasn’t set himself up as a role model, many addiction experts question whether or not the 65-year-old should have known better than to make light of such a serious subject.

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