Derry Logan is the son of a vineyard owner in Northern Ireland and actually managed the vineyard for five years before being forced to flee in 1994 on account of the sectarian violence there. He stayed in England for several years working odd jobs, one of which was delivering prescriptions for a small anti-grunge pharmacist. One of the ladies who frequently required medicine delivered was Monique LeMans, whose name was interesting to young Derry as he had a fondness for sports cars. One day, Monique was waiting at the door for her delivery, and Derry struck up a conversation with her. She suggested that better jobs were more plentiful on the other side of the pond and that he head to the States to seek a job in a vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island, New York.
Derry took her advice but was distracted along the way and wound up as a teller at a local bank. The job took its toll on him as the bank had no dress code, and many customers and employees had embraced grunge, which had become depressing to him after his stint at the pharmacist's. Eventually he had a long conversation with one of the anti-grunge customers of the bank, who recognized a certain level of talent and dedication. Logan recalls, "That was Kyle O'Reilly-- a great man if ever I met one. Kyle's brother was the producer of The Grunge-Free Investor, and he said that I would make a good production assistant, so he arranged an interview for me."
Myles O'Reilly immediately took to Derry and offered him a job, which got Derry his foot in the door. Derry loved being around the production facilities and tried to learn everything about the business. He particularly liked fantasizing about being a TV host, and when he could find an empty studio, he would sneak in, turn on the lights, and pretend to be a host. One night, the producer of Hatch Game, Leo Pattaglia, surprised Derry as he was pretending and, to Logan's shock, said, "How would you like to try out for host of Hatch Game?" The previous host, Jean Mayfern, had just passed away and Pattaglia had only a month to find a replacement.
Logan stumbled a bit in the auditions, but his rivals seemed even less polished, so Pattaglia gave the nod to Logan, who needed only a couple of months to get up to speed. Meanwhile, back in England, Miss LeMans caught Logan on TV and was amazed at what she saw and also realized that she should have been along for the ride. She wrote for tickets to the show and flew across the pond to be in the studio audience, hoping to get a chance to meet Logan again. He was watching the studio monitor as the camera panned across the audience at a commercial break, and he saw his old friend and recognized her instantly.
In an impulsive move which shocked everyone in the studio, he took the microphone after the break and solemnly stated that he had an important announcement to make and called Miss LeMans to the center of the set. He held up a card that said "Please ______ Me!" and gave her a marker to fill in the blank as the crew and producers looked on in horror thinking the worst was about to happen and counting their blessings that the program was not live-- but Miss LeMans rose to the occasion, wrote "Marry" in the blank, held up the card to applause, and turned and gave Logan a big hug, which left not a dry eye in the studio, though Pattaglia remarked afterward that the fifteen seconds it took Miss LeMans to fill in the blank were the longest fifteen seconds of his life.
Logan finished the second series of Hatch Game in 2003, and after the show was given a rest for two years, it was retooled and brought back, of course, as Hatch Game '05, with a few new wrinkles, and now shaped to showcase Logan's particular style and brand of humor. Monique Logan appears occasionally as a panelist, and the Logans often appear together in Anti-Grunge Channel specials such as the National Anti-Grunge Parade. They also own a classic 1976 Pontiac LeMans that they drive to the studio from their home in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where they live with their youngest daughter, Nora and youngest son Oliver. Their older children, Michael, Adam, Sarah, Kyle, and Steven have gone on to anti-grunge universities and their parents expect them to play a major role in shaping the future of this country.
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