Red Skelton had a reputation among comedy writers as being extremely difficult to work with, since he didn't like writers in general, and resented CBS for insisting that he use them on his show. He wanted to write all the sketches himself, his reasoning being that no one knew his characters as well as he did. Prior to taking the position as head writer on the show,
Sherwood Schwartz, had it written into his contract with CBS that Skelton was under no circumstances allowed to discuss anything about a show's script with him before he was given it prior to taping, which often resulted in Skelton not knowing what a sketch was about, nor even what character he would be playing until shortly before airtime. That's why Skelton would often break character in the middle of a skit and turn to the audience and say something like "Don't blame me, folks, I don't write this stuff."
