John Melendez

About John Melendez

John Edward Melendez (born October 4, 1965), commonly known as "Stuttering John", is an American television/radio personality. Before his present job as announcer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Melendez was a regular on-air personality on The Howard Stern Show.

Melendez grew up in Massapequa, Long Island and attended Plainedge High School. Melendez began to stutter when he was in the second grade. According to Melendez, his problem came about because of the psychological mistreatment from his alcoholic father, who also stutters. Both he and his father suffer from a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. During his youth he was often picked on by other children for being Puerto Rican and was called "Stutterface," "Skip" and "M-C Stammer" (even though MC Hammer was not even around at the time of John's youth).

In 1988, Melendez attended New York University's film school, and belonged to a band called "Rock Slide". His college roommate, comedian Mitch Fatel, was on the verge of quitting his internship with The Howard Stern Show, when Melendez asked him for a recommendation for an internship there. The show's producer, Gary Dell'Abate, mentioned Melendez's stuttering to Howard Stern who, without seeing him and even before he was interviewed, told the producer to hire him.