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Saturday Night Live's Five Timer's Club is a status given to any performer who has either hosted or appeared as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live at least five times.

Origins

The first public reference of the club came on December 8, 1990, when Tom Hanks made his fifth appearance as host on SNL. Hanks described the eligibility process in detail (and with humor) in his monologue:

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After Hanks gave his monologue, he participated in the now famous "Five Timer's Club" sketch. In addition to Hanks, the sketch starred five (or more) time hosts Steve Martin, Elliot Gould and five time musical guest Paul Simon with guest appearances by Ralph Nader trying to crash, Jon Lovitz as a waiter and a then-unknown Conan O'Brien as Sean the door man. Since the December 8, 1990 show, the Five Timer's Club has been a "running gag" on SNL. Danny DeVito referenced the club on his fifth show in 1993, as did Alec Baldwin (1994), John Goodman (1994), Christopher Walken (2001) and Drew Barrymore (2007).

A similar sketch was part of Alec Baldwin's November 11, 2006 show. The sketch, featuring Baldwin and Steve Martin, took place in the "Platinum Lounge", which allowed only 12-time hosts, and forbid working cast members. However, Martin tried to distract Baldwin several times (in order to poison him) by claiming to see hosts who had not hosted 12 times.

Cultural references in other media

The Five Timer's Club has been referenced in other media since its creation in 1990. The Entertainment Channel, E!, placed it #22 on its list of SNL top moments.^[2] The club was also reference by Fox Sports as the basis behind the creation of the "Favre Backup Club" which seeks to be the "NFL's equivalent" to the Five Timer's Club.^[3]

Current members

As of November 2009, there have been a total of 22 members of the Five-Timer's Club. From this number, nine have been celebrity hosts, two have been SNL alumni hosts, six have been musical guests, and three have served as musical guest and host. Some of these "Five-Timer" hosts (such as Steve Martin, Christopher Walken, Tom Hanks, and Alec Baldwin) have hosted so many times that special episodes of SNL have been compiled and aired as "Best of ..." episodes. Hosts who have been the subject of a Best of SNL videotape, DVD, or compilation special are marked with a (•) by their name on the list below.

The following people are members of the Five-Timer's Club. (This list comes from raw data compiled and listed from the following independent sources: http://snlmusic.parshaparts.com/snlmusic.php and http://snlarc.jt.org/)

Note 1: Foo Fighters included Dave Grohl and Nate Mendel in all of these appearances.

Notes/Trivia

• Club members do not shake hands normally. Instead, they do the 5 Timers Club shake, which consists of 2 members hitting elbows 5 times, counting out each time, and then, in sequence, pointing to each other and saying, "You're great!"

Five time hosts

• As of November 2009, Steve Martin currently holds the record for hosting SNL, with 15 episodes. He also hosted three times in one year in 1978 and he co-hosted with Chevy Chase and Martin Short on December 6, 1986. He also holds SNL record for most total guest appearances (22).
• John Goodman hosted once a season for 11 straight seasons. In addition, he is tied with Alec Baldwin for second most appearances (21) partially due to his cameo appearances during the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal playing Linda Tripp.
• Drew Barrymore beat out Jodie Foster as the youngest host on SNL when she hosted for the first time in 1982 (Barrymore was 7 years, 8 months and 29 days old when she first hosted; Foster was 14 years and 8 days old) and, as of 2009, has hosted more times than any female celebrity in SNL history. Tatum O'Neal was originally scheduled to host the episode that Jodie Foster ended up hosting (November 27, 1976), but declined. As of 2009, Jodie Foster has yet to return to host the show.
• Christopher Walken has a standing offer to host the show whenever his and SNL schedules permit.

Five time SNL alumni

• Chevy Chase was the first former SNL cast member to host five or more times, the first SNL castmember to come back and host the show, and the only SNL alumnus and Five-Timers Club member to be banned from hosting (after several embarrassing backstage incidents that happened when Chevy Chase came back to host in 1997).

• Bill Murray is the second former SNL cast member to host five or more times, and is the only person to host episodes produced by all three executive producers: Jean Doumanian, Dick Ebersol, and Lorne Michaels.

Five time musical guest

The following performers have been musical guests on SNL at least five times:

• In addition to being a musical guest seven times, Paul Simon also hosted or co-hosted four shows. He hosted the second episode October 18, 1975 where he reunited with his old partner Art Garfunkel, and co-hosted with Catherine Oxenberg on May 10, 1986, during the 11th season. He also served as musical guest when he hosted the 11/20/76 meaning he has technically been the musical guest 8 times making him the most frequent musical guest to date in the shows history

• On the October 13, 2007 SNL episode hosted by Jon Bon Jovi, the Foo Fighters (who were the musical guest for that episode) became the first band to be members of the Five Timers' Club.

• Beck is the only member of the Five Timers Club to have been a musical guest and have appeared on some of the show's sketches without actually hosting the show. Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins (of the Foo Fighters) also accomplished this when they appeared in the SNL Digital Short "Punched" during an episode that aired October 13th 2007.

Potential members

The following is a list of potential members of the Five-Timer's Club. To be considered a potential member, the performer must have hosted or appeared as a musical guest on SNL four times.

Four timers

References

External links

• Official Saturday Night Live Website
• saturday-night-live.com - Weekend Update
• [1]
• [2]