In the early 1960s, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-born Sharpe[1] collaborated with Jim Coyle to create a series of comic on-the-street interviews for San Francisco radio station KGO.
A 2006 four disc box set of 1960s material titled These 2 Men Are Impostors contains The Imposters pilot in addition to KGO radio recordings and previously unreleased pranks.
In the 1980s he hosted a series of public television specials titled Mal Sharpe's San Francisco which included a mixture of new material and older clips.
He began playing the trombone at 15, and although he "had not kept it up", a chance request to sit in with a jazz group led to a regular gig at a North Beach, San Francisco nightclub in the late 1950s.
He hosted a jazz show, Back on Basin Street,[9] from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. Sunday Pacific Time on KCSM at the College of San Mateo in California.