So god bless Howard Stern’s tubby and slightly psychotic-seeming sidekick Artie Lange for having an honestly disturbing argument with his assistant, before apparently trying to attack him and then resigning, all live on air. It’s what we’ve wanted to happen to Chris Moyles for years. Hats off to you, Artie Lange, you crazy, crazy bastard.

And, yes, we’ve got the whole of Artie Lange’s berserkoid meltdown after the jump.

This is the difference between Britain and America – in America, radio shows are in part hosted by aggressive chainsmoking overweight ex-convicts with debilitating cocaine and heroin addictions, while in Britain they’re hosted by Jo Whiley. America sounds better, to be honest.

And as far as aggressive chainsmoking overweight ex-convicts with debilitating cocaine and heroin addictions go, none were better than Howard Stern’s sidekick Artie Lange, for he was fatter and more aggressive than everyone else put together. We say was – technically he is still fat and aggressive, but he just isn’t Howard Stern’s sidekick any more.

That’s because, at some point during yesterday’s show, Artie Lange got into a fight with his assistant that spilled out into the studio, ended up with Artie Lange apparently trying to attack the assistant and then caused Lange’s immediate on-air resignation. Which, it’s fair to say, sounds slightly more exciting than The Archers. The Chicago Sun Times reports:

Comedian Artie Lange quit his 7-year-run as Howard Stern’s sidekick during a violent outburst on Thursday’s Sirius Satellite Radio broadcast… The incident appears to have left the “shock jock” Stern stunned. Replays of the show scheduled throughout Thursday were replaced with programming from earlier in the week. “I’m flabbergasted … Artie is clearly out of control with this,” Stern said on the air after Lange charged after his assistant in what the comic claimed was a dispute over money. “That was crazy what I just saw. I don’t understand it. I don’t approve of it and I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

But that’s enough reading for you. You want to hear Artie Lange going going apeshit and resigning on air, don’t you. Well, OK, here it is – Artie Lange’s meltdown in all its glory.

Personally, we can’t see what the problem is – if a grown man can’t call his employee a motherfucker and try to attack him in front of millions of listeners then can he really call himself a man?

However, this weird on-air incident has left Howard Stern with the problem of finding a suitable replacement for Artie Lange. He’ll need to find someone who’ll effortlessly slip into Artie Lange’s old role and have the same kind of persona and attitudes. And that’ll be hard, because foul-mouthed crack-addicted grizzly attack-bears have been quite hard to come by since the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Howard Stern’s sidekick quits show - CST