Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 25, 1995 TAG: 9509260013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
His living room shelves are covered with wholesome-looking pictures of family and friends.
He goes to church on Sunday.
His girlfriend of eight months refers to him as "cute."
Nowhere in his wardrobe is there a T-shirt emblazoned with the word: "Sexy."
Still, Lester, 32, appeared on "The Jenny Jones Show" this month, one of "America's Sexiest Deliverymen."
The idea was for the folks who deliver - pizzas for Domino's, sodas for Pepsi, and, in Lester's case, packages for UPS - to strut around in front of a slightly hysterical female audience and talk about some of the sexier experiences along their routes.
Abductions by aliens, mothers who steal their daughters' boyfriends, sexy delivery men: This is the stuff American talk shows are made of.
Jenny Jones, says Lester, is relatively tame, considering her competition. "She's a very nice lady," he said recently from his Dublin home. But don't ask him about Ricki Lake.
"I don't really see myself as sexy," Lester said, blushing - honest - more than once. "It was wild."
Picture mild-mannered Lester wading through a throng of screaming women trying to touch him. ("It was a little extreme, really," he said, lowering his voice. "Some of them just went crazy.")
Picture Lester standing next to a Fabio look-alike who works as a stripper on the side.
Picture Lester on stage in jeans and a tank top, after he and the other nine panelists refused to don bathing suits at the Chicago taping.
Picture the ribbing he's been getting from his friends and co-workers.
"They're calling me sexy and whistling," he said with a smile. "And my nickname at work and where I deliver is 'Hollywood.' All I hear is 'Hey, Hollywood!'"
So how did Lester - who is "shy until he gets to know you," according to girlfriend Julie Taylor - end up on national television?
Let us go now to an inconspicuous chiropractor's office in Wytheville, where the office staff answered Jenny Jones' call for sexy deliverymen.
"It was really very simple," said Jennifer Bralley, accounts manager there. "Just a few phone calls."
Do the women at the chiropractic office think Lester's sexy?
"Oh yeah, mmmm, we all do," Bralley said. "Of course, or we wouldn't have nominated him."
That's getting them a little ribbing, too.
"lt's all over town," she said. "Before the show was aired I went to the bank and they said "Which one of you thinks Darrell's a hunk?"
Lester is not the first from Southwest Virginia to make the talk-show circuit. An Elvis impersonator from Pulaski was on TV just a few months ago. The area's dysfunctional families have had their time in the spotlight, too.
And who knows who will turn up for this future Jenny Jones topic: "Has your baby sitter slept with your man?"
Taylor laughed at that one. "I don't think I'd be going on TV if she had," she said, shaking her head.
Lester had to reveal no such sordid tale on the tube. He told a story about the woman who answered the door in a see-through negligee, on purpose, when he made a delivery. And another time, he remembered, a woman offered him $50 to take her sister out on a date.
Delivery men encounter all kinds of things on the job, he confided.
Another guy on the show used to deliver for Brinks and said a woman once propositioned him as follows:
"How'd you like to have sex on a million dollars?"
And Lester has a friend at Appalachian Power who once spied a couple in the bedroom as he was checking their meter. The woman looked up from what she was doing, which we will leave to the reader's imagination, and waved.
"You're going to people's houses at different times during the day," Lester explained
Taylor says Lester will probably be glad when his time in the spotlight is over. "He's loving it, though," she said. "He just don't want to admit it. Just like a man."
Meanwhile, Lester returned home last week to a message on his answering machine from a Richmond photographer who, after seeing Lester on TV, thought he had just the right look to pose for some motorcycle photos.
Lester hasn't called the guy back yet.
He's not sure if he will.
by CNB