By Delayna Earley
The Island News
A dream more than 30 years in the making was finally fulfilled for Beaufort City Councilman Neil Lipsitz in December, but the evidence finally aired on TV this week.
After 17 failed attempts to get onto the show The Price is Right, Lipsitz was finally selected to be on the show as a contestant, a dream that has been on his “personal bucket list” for a quite some time.
Lipsitz said he has been going to tapings of the show for about 35 years hoping to get picked, and in 2024, he was selected to participate on the December 4 taping of the show.
That episode aired on Monday, March 24.
Lipsitz was there with his sister, Judy Thornberry. Though she has not traveled with him to every taping, she has been there to support him along the way.
His wife has never gone with him to a casting session, though.
“She has no desire to go,” Lipsitz said about why his wife has not gone with him. “She is just glad I got it out of my system.”
After Lipsitz was selected in December, they attended one more casting call for the show to see if his sister would get selected, which she was not.
“I’ve always loved game shows,” Lipsitz said. “The first time I went, I camped out overnight just to get in there. Now they tell you where to sit, but back then it was a free-for-all. Wherever you got was where you sat. I sat towards the front and Bob Barker talked to me quite a bit during the show.”
Lipsitz said that they look for someone who has an abundance of energy, so before he went to his casting, he drank several cups of black coffee, which he said is a lot for him. He is not typically a coffee drinker.
2024, taping of The Price is Right. Lipsitz was selected to participate in the episode which aired on March 24, 2025. Photo courtesy of Neil Lipsitz
While in his audition, he said the casting directors kept trying to get him to stop talking, which is one of the reasons why he feels he was selected for the show.
“I was told the day before that if they can’t shut you up, you’re almost a shoo-in,” Lipsitz said. “So, I guess it worked.”
Both Lipsitz and his sister were sat in the front row right in front of the announcer, and as his coffee really started to kick in Lipsitz was running up and down the stairs, high-fiving people and yelling, “I’m number one, I’m number one.”
“I made my way through the whole studio and everyone was chanting, ‘Neil! Neil! Neil!’”
He said that when they held up the cue card with his name on it calling him to participate in the show, he just leapt up and yelled, “That’s me! That’s me!” before starting down to Contestant Row.
As Lipsitz made his way down Contestant Row, he fell flat on his face, but Lipsitz said they edited that part out of the show that aired.
People from the audience helped to pick him up and in the aired taping of the show, host Drew Carey can be heard asking Lipsitz, “Neil, where were you? Weren’t you just right there?” and then someone from the audience yells, that he fell on the floor.
Lipsitz said they likely could not air him falling for liability reasons and tried to call him an ambulance, but he declined.
He won the first prize on the show, two drones, but lost out on a shot at a showcase when spinning the wheel. Lipsitz said he had to get help from Carey to spin the wheel because his arm was hurt from the fall.
As for the drones, he is not going to keep them but instead plans to give one to his son and another to a friend.
“I win a lot of stuff, but usually I give it away,” Lipsitz said. “It’s rare that I keep anything that I win.”
Lipsitz said that this experience was one of the last on his personal bucket list, so now he plans to get back to accomplishing his bucket list for the City of Beaufort.
The only item that is still left for him to check off of his bucket list is to attend a Billy Joel concert and have decent seats, something that he asked for when giving his shout outs while spinning the wheel on The Price is Right.
You must wait 10 years before you can make another appearance on The Price is Right, but Lipsitz has already decided that he will be making a trip back to try and get on the show for a second time once that time is up.
When asked if he was going to pick a new game show to try and get onto, he responded with, “You got one?” and then laughed.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
