Outrageous Book Claims Family Feud Contestants Had to Take Herpes Tests During Richard Dawson’s Time Hosting

Competitors on Family feud during Richard Dawson’s tenure as host, he had to undergo herpes tests on set, a new book claims. Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Warswriter Kliph Nesteroff reveals that the show had to order herpes tests for contestants because of the late host’s penchant for kissing contestants on the mouth. According to the report from Pacific Daily News, the game instituted a new policy, stating that both male and female contestants had to “pass the magnified mouth test from a medical horsetail.” Nesteroff writes about one contestant’s experience, during which a production assistant announced, “OK, everyone line up for your herpes tests,” after they entered the dressing room with testing kits.

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Richard Dawson and a contestant on “Family Feud” in 1980.

Bob D’Amico /American Broadcasting Companies via Gett

Testing began after viewers raised concerns Family feudwhich Dawson originally ran from 1976 to 1985. The letter published in the Philadelphia Daily News he accused the series of “promiscuous kissing” and called the risk of diseases that might arise “too disgusting to recount.” “When you watch clips from that era Family feud on YouTube and you see Richard Dawson kissing the ladies, many comments in the comment section will say things like, ‘Well, those were different times. That’s how men were back then. It was a different time. People weren’t that sensitive,’ Nesteroff tells PEOPLE. “And here again is proof to the contrary that all sorts of people complained.”

PEOPLE has contacted the ABC, Fremantle Productions and Debmar-Mercury for comment.

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Excessive deals with censorship in entertainment from the vaudeville era to the present day. Whether it’s racism in the theater in the 1800s or audience outcry over a pregnancy storyline in I love LucyNesteroff shows that censorship – and the reasons behind it – has long been part of the industry.

“Outrageous” by Kliph Nesteroff.

Abrams books

One incident that surprised him was when Carol Burnett called for peace after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holding the bracelet during an appearance at The Merv Griffin Show — only for CBS to cut her speech.

“She was worried that people would think she said something much worse than that,” says Nesteroff. “If they played her, [if] they deleted what she said, well, it must have been some horrible statement. It must have been some terrible profanity. But she only called for world peace.”

Carol Burnett’s life in photos

Nesteroff says there’s a complaint for almost every TV show, from Bionic woman to Alf to Laverne & Shirley. One story that he did not include in the book was at the center The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the presenter’s character Aunt Blabby.

“A group for the rights of senior citizens launched a campaign demanding that he stop playing that character. They felt it was derogatory to senior citizens and perpetuated stereotypes of seniors as frail, stupid and incompetent,” says Nesteroff.

Johnny Carson.

NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Nesteroff, who is a former standup comedian, says comedians don’t think about whether something is “out of bounds” in their material. “Standup comedy and funny people operate in a much more organic way than I think people outside of comedy realize or understand,” he says. “Because for people who aren’t funny, to be funny, it seems like a huge amount of work and thought. Whereas when you’re born with the gift of being funny, it’s all pure instinct.” Nesteroff believes that time has influenced how we perceive entertainment and censorship. “Today’s hysteria about anything that could be will seem as ridiculous 40 years from now as the hysteria about Elvis [Presley] it seems to us today, or hysteria about the Beatles seems to us today, or hysteria about The Simpsons it looks like to us today,” says Nesteroff. “Because at that time these people were very serious. So when people go crazy about anything — drag queens or textbooks or whatever they’re complaining about — I think it’s going to look absolutely absurd in the future, which means it’s absurd now.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars now it’s out everywhere books are sold.

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