Bob Barker, the legendary host of the long-running TV game show, The Price is Right, is dead at 99.
Bob Barker, the legendary host of the daytime game show The Price is Right, is dead at 99. Barker famously hosted the enduring game show from 1972 to 2007, when he retired and was replaced by Drew Carey, who still hosts the show. Barker was indeed an icon, with a career in broadcasting that spanned generations, with him a vital presence on-screen for over fifty years. According to Deadline, he was just a few months shy of his 100th birthday. Many of us grew up watching Barker chat with contestants on the Price is Right. He’s a figure a whole lot of us associate with sick days, as whenever we had to stay home from school as kids, in the days before streaming, we’d inevitably end up watching The Price is Right (and Oprah) from our sick beds. Dane Cook even had an iconic routine about how invested you’d get into the show while hopped up on cough syrup and medicine.
Barker was always keen to poke fun at himself and famously played a fictionalized version of himself in the Adam Sandler classic Happy Gilmore, in which he’s on the receiving end of one of the great one-liners: “The price is WRONG bitch.” He also popped up as himself on Family Guy (three times), How I Met Your Mother, Futurama, Monday Night RAW, and even as Bob Barnacle on SpongeBob SquarePants. He was also a lifelong animal rights activist, always famously signing off with a reminder to get your pets “spayed or neutered.” In 2012, PETA opened a new West Coast location called the Bob Barker Building, made possible due to his lifelong support of the organization.
Truly, he was one of a kind and will be missed.