It also wasn’t Jerry Springer who compared the fears of public speaking and death

People sometimes have faulty memories, and attribute a famous Jerry Seinfeld quote to the wrong comedian. On May 28th I blogged about Did Woody Allen ever compare the fears of public speaking and death? and on June 6th I blogged about Did Jay Leno ever compare the fears of public speaking and death?

Yesterday my Google Alert on public speaking led me to a different variant of attributing that quote to another person named Jerry - syndicated tabloid talk show host Jerry Springer. A June 24th blog post at Speechstorming from Barcelona, Spain titled Glossophobia: You can overcome the fear of public speaking claimed that:

“JERRY SPRINGER ONCE JOKED ’At A Funeral, Most People Would Rather Be Lying In The Casket Than Giving The Eulogy!’ ”

They didn’t say who they got that nonsense from, but two possible sources from 2013 are a May 1st post by Ryan McLean titled Introduction to the Public Speaking Power podcast - helping you (and me) become a more effective communicator and a September 21st post at Pancakes and Parachutes titled Public speaking = a necessary evil for managers? 

It also wasn’t comedian Jerry Lewis. And it wasn’t California governor Jerry Brown, or televangelist Jerry Falwell,  or Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, or ice cream guru Jerry Greenfield (of Ben and Jerry’s), or singer Jerry Lee Lewis.

The image of Jerry Springer came from Brett Weinstein at Wikimedia Commons.