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CULTURE
Fess Up; Did You Ever Play ‘Hi Bob?’
The culture phenomenon known on college campuses
We can’t talk about the TV classic comedy The Bob Newhart Show without talking about the drinking game Hi Bob. supposedly this game started in the early 1980s and is known as one of the very first documented drinking games on college campuses.
The Bob Newhart Show (originally broadcast in 1972–1978) was in syndication in the early 1980s. It caught a cultural wave of fun with college students. As they watched The Bob Newhart Show, every time a character would say “Hi Bob,” players of the game would drink. Whether it was shots or just a gulp of beer was left up to the party participants. Sometimes game players picked a character, and every time their character was on, they had to drink.
According to sources including Bob Newhart, this game started in 1984 at Southern Methodist University. A few board college students who had too much time on their hands, watched The Bob Newhart Show. As each character would say “Hi Bob,” players would drink an alcoholic beverage.
Saturday Night Live sketched this cultural phenomenon back in 1995:
