He also was not beneath recruiting less reputable advertisers to buy airtime on WKRP, such as Dave Wickerman, whose "diet pills" turned out to be a legalized form of speed.
Herb also repeats this skill in The New WKRP in Cincinnati, where he bails rookie salesman Arthur Carlson, Jr. out of a ticket trade scam for a freak show operator.
He claims to get his suits in a golf pro shop across the river in Northern Kentucky; no one else makes his kind of clothes anymore due to anti-pollution laws.
In the episode "Baby If You've Ever Wondered", he suggests an across-the-board raise (which he calculates by taking away Carlson's share of the station sales commissions).
Herb sometimes tries to make money by doing other things on the side, like selling life insurance or running a numbers racket.
He also collects kickbacks from his advertising clients and from the disc jockeys (for getting them endorsements and other outside work); in the pilot he boasts that "they don't call me 'Mr.
When he discovered that a diet pill he has sold advertising space for had resulted in a teenager being hospitalized, he immediately went on the air to denounce the product and announce that the station would no longer run their ads.
Herb tries to convey the impression that he is a hard working, clean-living all-American guy, but as the episode goes on, the TV hosts systematically expose his incompetence as a worker and as a family man.
Nonetheless, Bailey is later proven right as Herb becomes so nervous at even the remotest thought of his fantasies finally coming true that he begins to hyperventilate (an act he repeats in later episodes when under stress), as well as admitting to Jennifer that he feels guilty over the possibility of cheating on his wife.
However, there were moments prior to this when Herb showed concern for Jennifer beyond her sexual appeal, such as when he tried to comfort her after a blow-up with her childhood sweetheart (in the episode "I Do, I Do...For Now").
Despondent, Herb is eventually forced to face up to his issues by station manager Arthur Carlson, who convinces him to get the problem under control before it is too late.
He has a fondness for pornographic movies with titles like Kick Me, Kiss Me, and in one episode he sneaks out of the hospital (where he has been admitted for heart tests) to take Les Nessman to a theater where they show adult films in 3-D.
The role of Herb Tarlek was originally offered to the character actor Rod McCary, but he turned it down to appear in another series.
Herb is still identified, more than three decades after WKRP's initial run ended, as the stereotype for "unprofessional, bribe-taking desperate salespeople" with sales professionals being advised not to wear plaid sports coats so as to avoid being associated in customers' minds with the untrustworthy Mr.
[2] The Canadian indie rock band Rheostatics released the song "The Tarleks" on their 2004 album 2067, loosely based on the character.
Bonner appears in the video as a large group of Herb Tarleks which come out of a landed UFO and swarm the city.