Real 'Cheers' Bartender Laid Off

For 35 years, Eddie Doyle has been the most famous bartender at Boston’s most famous bar, pouring drinks, signing autographs, and raising more than $1 million for charity along the way. Now, he’s unemployed. Cheers, the bar that inspired the TV show of the same name, has laid Doyle off, the Boston Globe reports. "I'm a casualty of the economic situation that we're in," he says.

“He's as important as George Washington to this city,” said one former Boston mayor. “They say it’s a bar where everybody knows your name, but it’s really a bar where everybody knows Eddie Doyle.” Doyle started working the bar in the early 70s. He met his wife there, started a softball team, and organized fishing trips for the regulars. “We had a community,” he says. Then he adds, “I’ll still be around. I’m not dead.” (More Boston stories.)