Wow you just can’t make this stuff up. Voice actor, Author, Storyteller, Humorist, and Radio personality, Garrison Keillor, best known as the creator of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016, has been fired by Minnesota Public Radio for inappropriate behavior.

Here’s what he told the Minnesota Star Tribune in an email:

” I put my hand on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was opened and my hand went up about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called”.

He even managed to find the joke in all of this:

“Getting fired is a real distinction in Broadcasting and I’ve waited fifty years for the honor. All of my heroes got fired. I only wish it could have been for something more heroic”.

But taking a more serious tone he continued:

“Anyone who ever was around my show can tell you I was the lest physically affectionate person in the building.  Actors hug, musicians hug, people were embracing every Saturday night left and right, and I stood off in the corner like a stone statue”. “If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I’d have at least a hundred dollars”.

“So this is the poetic irony of high order. But I’m just fine. I had a good long run and am grateful for it and everything else”

He retired from the show last year, but still produced programming for syndication for MPR’s parent company, American  Public Media.