It's an honor. Having known the Colonel, we were good friends before he died. I met him back in 1962. In fact, Colonel Sanders loaned me the money to buy my first Kentucky Fried Chicken store down in Florida and so we became good friends and I knew him up until he died. I never thought I'd look like him, never had any idea, but I sold my business and thought I had retired. But the Colonel's daughter saw me at a convention 12 years after he died and she said, "John, you're beginning to look like my father." The next year, KFC advertising came out with a program where they wanted all of the franchisees to get someone and dress them up in a white suit and do some Colonel-look-alike promotions. My son sent me a copy of the letter and says, "Dad, why don't you get your white suit and let's try this." So I did. I got the white suit and I fixed my hair and got the cane and the bowtie. My first gig was a Christmas parade down in St. Augustine, Florida and that just set it off. After that, I've been busy ever since.
How did you meet the original Colonel?
I was working with a franchise in Florida opening stores and we had a two for one sale, a grand opening for the store and I worked with him that day. Then my boss let me travel with him, going around Florida and helping franchises get their stores open and so I had a chance to learn some of his mannerisms and his philosophy—his way of doing things. You could say it kind of rubbed off on me.
What do you think makes KFC chicken so delicious?
The consistency. It's the same worldwide. I've been around the world three times promoting Kentucky Fried Chicken and it's the same in China as it is in New York. And the tight controls that the Colonel put on the recipe in the early days and his insistence that everybody do it his way or no way at all has kept it the same worldwide.
You've met a lot of people, obviously, as the face of KFC. What is the weirdest thing anyone has ever given you or told you?
Well, everybody's got their story. They want to tell you about Colonel Sanders. See, a lot of folks think I'm an actor and that I didn't know anything about Colonel Sanders, but I hear stories now that people tell me, things that the Colonel did or something relating to him. Some of these stories never happened. If they tell me they they met the Colonel in the Atlanta airport ten years ago...no, they didn't. When I was up in Minneapolis in a mall, a bunch of college students were coming down the escalator. I was going up. And one of them said, "Look! There's Orville Redenbacher." I've been called everything.
So we're here at this event for Guitar Hero. Have you ever played Guitar Hero? Do you know what Guitar Hero is?
Three days ago, I never knew what it was. See, my kids are all grown, married, and gone and we don't play video games at my house anymore because the boys all left. So I didn't know, until the KFC sent the information, what this was going to be. Now everybody I ask, at the bank or the pharmacy or Walmart, I'd ask them if they'd heard of it, and they said, "Oh, yeah."
Why do you think so many people are so interested in playing video games like Guitar Hero?
Everybody wants to be on TV, you know? Deep down inside, everybody wants to be a star. And this gives them a chance to respond to their dreams.
November 4th is coming up. Obviously it's an important day for America. Considering that KFC is such an American food, I'd like to know what the Colonel thinks of the presidential candidates.
Well, I'm still investigating both of them. I 'm one of these undecided, because I have to find out which one of them eats the most chicken. Then I'll decide.