Larry King had the interview music fans worldwide would kill to conduct. With him were the two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. With them were the two Beatles widows, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.

There was time for more questions, but instead, he looked at the camera and bleated, "Tomorrow night's guest is Paris Hilton! You may have heard of her!"

A short time later he used that "joke" again, twice in three minutes.

Perhaps it's all for the best. Rumor has it that King doesn't do much prep work for his interviews because he wants to be just a normal guy asking the questions. His Beatles questions certainly bore out that theory.

"He's still the most melodic bass player on the planet," Starr said of McCartney during the interview.

"What does that mean?" King snapped back.

"It means he's melodic," Starr shot right back. McCartney tried but couldn't stifle a laugh on that one. Other gaffes weren't so funny.

"Was George's passing expected?" King asked. News of Harrison's illness and recurring cancer made headlines around the world but somehow eluded King. Try as he might, McCartney let his eyes roll just a bit before giving King a terse "Mmmm hmmm."

McCartney graciously told the story of being at Harrison's bedside in the final days, stroking his hand, when King interrupted with a brusque "We'll be right back."

Calling Ringo "George" after that was just icing on the cake.

Other questions, and no, you couldn't make this stuff up:

? "Let's get to something current: How you doin', Ringo? Is life treating you well?"

? "Is it hard, Olivia, to look at George?"

? "Ringo, do you have to play drums a lot? When you're drumming, do you know how good they're singing?"

? "What made the Beatles musically special? What were they doing that people weren't doing?"

Larry King has done some fine work in his career, but we're years past that now. His position is arguably that of one of the most important interviewers in news and entertainment today. Viewers deserve much more. King's show has become a joke, the place people go when they need softball questions and nonexistent follow-ups. It's like boxing with a blindfolded opponent - he'll never lay a glove on you.

Yet he still gets the big names even when they don't need him. Jon Stewart can laugh off anything but couldn't hide his irritation at King's suggestion that he hopes for bad things to happen to the nation to have more material to work with. "Are you insane?" Stewart sputtered.

A serial groom (Wikipedia lists his seven wives in reverse chronological order), King somehow still holds one of the top jobs at CNN, interviewing everyone from Hilton (you may have heard of her!) to Dick Cheney.

It's time to hang it up. Give King's job to Howard Stern. Stern's McCartney interview pre-Heather Mills is a classic, with him asking every question we'd all like to ask if only we had the nerve (you can find it on youtube). Forget King, forget Barbara Walters, forget Diane Sawyer. Turn Stern loose on Britney, Madonna, McCartney, Lindsay, Cheney, Gonzales and anyone else.

Time to make Larry a viewer rather than the star of the show.