Sitcom star Candice Bergen reveals that she accidentally lit a Swiss restaurant on fire
Candice Bergen revealed on Ted Danson's podcast how she nearly burned down a fancy Swiss restaurant at 14 after pouring wine into hot fondue fat.
If someone said to me, "Hey, man! Looking good, by the way. You been losing weight? Anyway, take a guess which sitcom star once almost burned down a restaurant in Switzerland," I don't think I'd get it right.
I'd run through everyone from William Frawley and Larry Storch to Red Foxx and the dog who played Tiger on "The Brady Bunch" before I ever got to the real answer...
"Murphy Brown" star Candice Bergen.
The sitcom legend was a guest on fellow sitcom legend Ted Danson's podcast, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name," when he asked her to tell a story about lighting a restaurant on fire.
You've got to hand it to Ted, he knows podcast gold when he sees it.
"It wasn't just any restaurant either, it was the nicest restaurant," Bergen said. "It was the Olden in Gstaad in a ski resort where the school I was going to was set."
Whoa, so not even just an abandoned Golden Corral or something? Candice, come on!
"I had snuck out. Because I was only 14, I wasn’t allowed to go out at night, so I’d snuck out."
She said that she was having meat fondue — meat cooked in fat — with some older girls while drinking wine, which you could do in Switzerland at 14-years-old.
"I said, ‘Oh, let’s flavor the fat. Let’s put some wine in the fat,’" she explained. "So, I jauntily dumped my glass in the fat, and this flame went up onto the ceiling of the restaurant. And we were all evacuated; it was snowing outside."
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This sounds like one of those stories a friend breaks out when you're hanging out and discussing teenage debauchery.
You tell one about how you egged your buddy's house one time, and then they completely one-up you: "Yeah, well, I almost burned down a classy Swiss restaurant once."
Of course, you don't forget the person who nearly burnt down a restaurant. Bergen said she returned to the area years later and got recognized.
"And he said, ‘Aren’t you the woman who burned down the Olden?’" she recalled. "And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ So, my name had lived on."
What a story. Honestly, what an entire interview.
This was the same podcast episode in which Bergen revealed she had gone on dates with Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger.