Venus Flytrap (WKRP in Cincinnati)

Venus Flytrap is a character on the television situation comedy WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-82). He was played by Tim Reid.

Venus Flytrap is the pseudonym used by disc jockey Gordon Sims, the evening DJ at the radio station WKRP. His real name was not revealed until late in the show's first season. The background of his character is complicated, but pieced together from various episodes it seems to be as follows: Gordon Sims is from New Orleans. His parents were divorced and his mother raised him. At the age of 22 he was drafted into the army and served in the Vietnam War. After seeing another soldier go crazy and commit suicide, Gordon had had enough of the war and deserted; he spent the next several years hiding out under assumed names, which explains why most of his colleagues at WKRP didn't know his real name at first. When station manager Arthur Carlson found out about Venus's secret, he convinced him to stop running and turn himself in. On the basis of what he went through in the war, as well as the fact that he was near the end of his tour of duty when he deserted and therefore wouldn't have seen any more combat, the investigating officer decided not to court-martial him.

While he was on the lam, Gordon became a schoolteacher in his native New Orleans, and worked part-time as a disc jockey under the name "The Duke of Funk." As a teacher, he became frustrated with his inability to reach his students (whom he described as "hoodlums") and quit. He then accepted an offer from Andy Travis, a friend who was impressed with Gordon's talent as a DJ, to come and be the new evening/night-time man at WKRP in Cincinnati, where Andy had just taken over as program director. However, Andy decided that Gordon needed to change his image: new clothes, new style, new name. He convinced Gordon to dress in outlandish, multi-colored clothes (on the basis that it would help him act cooler and become a better radio personality) and gave him his new name, based in part on the planet that ruled his astrological sign: "Venus Flytrap." ("I'm a plant that eats bugs," Gordon lamented.) Andy duplicitously introduced Venus to the station's owner, Mama Carlson, as "the number-one night-time DJ in this country," and Venus lied and told her that his audience in New Orleans was "the biggest." Mama Carlson's research soon confirmed who Venus really was, but she decided not to say anything.