Mr. Skin stands at the window of his River North condo, gazing out over the ass end of the Rainforest Cafe frog. With one hand he holds a cordless phone to his ear; his other hand is tucked into the elastic waistband of his basketball shorts. It’s 9:52 AM, three days before Thanksgiving, and he’s waiting to go on the air in Joliet. He’s already done three radio shows this morning, and he’s anxious to leave for a session with his personal trainer. But when WYKT’s Tomano & Touhy finally put him on, he delivers his latest top-ten list, “Turkeys: A Thanksgiving Special,” with the sniggering authority that’s endeared him to shock jocks across the nation.
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“Let’s say there was a girl who lived next door to you your whole life and you always thought she was really hot, and you got to see her naked. That would be a big thrill. Well, it’s like a celebrity–you’ve grown up watching Wonder Woman, and you lusted after Wonder Woman, and you thought she was super hot. And then to find out she did a nude scene? Yeah, that would be a lot more exciting than some average babe you’ve never seen before. It’s almost like seeing someone that’s a part of your life naked.”
Holed up in his parents’ basement rec room, McBride would scan the cable guide for content warnings and program the family’s twin Betamaxes to record the overnight movies on HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. The next day he’d fast-forward through them until he caught some female flesh on the screen, then dub the scene onto another tape. Within a year or so he’d gathered hundreds of naked actresses on compilation tapes, which he organized by decade or class of star (“TV Stars,” “Movie Stars”) and stashed in his bedroom closet.
By now McBride’s developed stock answers for questions he’s been asked hundreds of times. Why no male nudity? (“I don’t want to stay up till three in the morning to get nude scenes from Ed Asner.”) What are the best lesbo movies? (Bound, Wild Side, and The Hunger.) “Now I can kind of control the interview,” he says. “After you’ve done so many of these you can pretty much handle any situation. You get a couple times where you get some people that think it’s disgusting or disturbing or that I have a bunch of problems. But even that I can spin into a fun thing. You know, I just play it off like, yeah, you know, of course I have problems. I’m Mr. Skin.” His proudest moment came last summer when the Stern crew gave him a standing ovation.
McBride himself doesn’t spend much time fast-forwarding to the nude scenes anymore. He has a staff of 25 employees (“skinterns”) who mostly work out of a 1,000-square-foot space in Oak Park, under framed photos of their leader posing with Dahl, Stern, Bill Clinton, and the cast of Jackass. Shelves in the back are loaded with rare videos and DVDs.
“I have the coolest job in the world,” he says after he hangs up. “Think about it. Dude, it’s talking about nudity in movies. I’m doing it on the radio. It’s a riot. Why would I ever get tired of it?”
