The instant Harvey Korman whispered, “Tim… please stop… I can’t breathe,” the sketch was already doomed — and everyone knew it.
No one, and I mean no one, was prepared for Tim Conway to stroll onstage as “Dr. Nose” and quietly detonate live television. The moment he appeared holding that absurd, obviously improvised prop, the room tilted into pure, beautiful chaos. You could see it on Harvey’s face immediately — lips trembling, hand clamped over his mouth, every ounce of discipline fighting a losing battle.
Then Tim leaned in and delivered it, perfectly calm:
“This might sting a little.”
That was it.
Harvey didn’t just laugh — he broke. A sound escaped him that was half-laughter, half-suffocation, the unmistakable noise of someone losing all control in real time. The audience erupted. Cameras shook. Crew members folded over. People in the front row wiped tears from their faces with their sleeves.
And Tim?
Tim saw the wreckage — and pressed harder.
He began adding lines no one had ever heard before, stretching the sketch past its limits, letting it unravel into something far better than planned. What was supposed to be a routine bit collapsed into a full-blown comedy meltdown — the kind that can only happen when genius meets absolute fearlessness.
But here’s the detail fans still obsess over decades later.
There’s one tiny slip — a small, almost accidental movement Tim makes — that finally sends Harvey over the edge for good. To this day, people argue about it endlessly: Was it scripted?
Was it intentional genius?
Or was it the funniest mistake ever caught on camera?
One viewer summed it up perfectly:
“I don’t think we’ll ever see anything that perfectly unhinged again.”
And that’s why the moment still lives on — not because it was planned, but because it escaped control. When comedy stopped being performed… and started happening.
