Les Nessman - Background and Appearance

Background and Appearance

Les was raised by his mother and stepfather (who he thought was his biological father) in Dayton. He has been employed by WKRP since 1954, beginning as an office boy and cub reporter. In the episode "Secrets of Dayton Heights", he fails a security check for a press conference because his real father had belonged to the Communist party. He is shocked, inasmuch as he himself is virulently anti-Communist, an attitude instilled in him by his embittered mother (also played by Sanders). He goes to visit Harvey Moorehouse, his biological father, working as a barber, and finds that he isn't such a bad guy, and that Moorehouse likely gave up his son to spare him the shame of his Communist activities.

The slight, balding, bespectacled man always wears a bow tie (though he wore a standard necktie in the pilot episode) and always has a bandage somewhere on his person, a running gag that began with the actor's first appearance (when he actually needed it due to a backstage injury). Lines explaining the injury were written and then cut, and thereafter Les simply appeared each week with a new bandage and new unexplained injury. The producers explained that the gag was overlooked by audience members, who didn't remember that Les has a large dog named Phil at his home, and Les often lives in fear of being attacked, or bitten, thus requiring the use of the band-aids.