Despite what the millions who’ve been traumatized by Stephen King’s It will argue, everyone loves a clown. Why the hell do you think Kanye West is so popular?

As far as clowns go, however, not even Ye comes close to matching the level of dedication to one’s craft displayed by the man born William Jonathan Drayton Jr. You, of course, know him better as the clock-wearing, gold-teeth-sporting, occasionally incarcerated jokester Flavor Flav.

Believe it or not, the famed Public Enemy hype man is actually making headlines these days, and not for reasons that involve running the other way when one of his exes shows up looking for child-support payments.

Last week, Flavor Flav popped up on finer news outlets—hello, TMZ.com—for commandeering inbound airplanes to Las Vegas. Or, more accurately, taking over their intercoms. Amazingly, he wasn’t instructing those on a Southwestern flight to fasten their seat belts, stow their luggage in the compartments overhead, or make sure they never make the fucking mistake of fucking flying economy ever a-fucking-gain. Instead, he got on the mike to pimp—er, promote—his latest business venture, a Sin City fried-chicken outlet called Flavor Flav’s House of Flavor Restaurant.

The appropriateness of this is, of course, questionable. And we’re not talking about letting a reality-television star who’s a tad past his pull date hawk his wares to an audience that, short of bum-rushing the emergency exit, was incapable of escaping.

No, what’s really not right is that Flavor Flav has been allowed to open a restaurant at all. Has no one looked into what happens when pop icons get their hands on a food-and-liquor licence? Remember Chuck Berry installing a video camera in the women’s crapper of his Southern Air restaurant, the rock legend presumably getting his jollies out of watching patrons drop the kids off at the pool?

Or Toby Keith making Hooters seem classy with his chain of eateries known as I Love This Bar & Grill. (Giving one an idea of the kind of clientele said chain attracts, reviews on TripAdvisor include this classic: “there were waayyyy too many fat girls there to take advantage of ladies night drink specials.”) And let’s not even touch Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo restaurants, where the waitresses appear to be 29-percent silicone.

Sadly, the early reviews of Flavor Flav’s House of Flavor Restaurant suggest that Chuck D’s favourite sidekick isn’t the second coming of Col. Sanders as a restaurateur. If Yelp is to be believed, the eatery isn’t exactly in a prime location, is hardly worth the drive, and serves up a bird that isn’t going to make anyone forget Kenny Rogers Roasters. The service is reportedly the shits, the air conditioning is nonexistent, and the staff could evidently take a few lessons from Public Enemy’s S1Ws on the attention-to-detail front.

On the positive side, it’s apparently not unheard of to stroll into the joint and find Flavor Flav himself handing out sodas, posing for pictures, and yelling “Yeaahhh, boyyyyyyyyy” at silver-haired gentlemen old enough to be your grandfather. And that makes perfect sense. If McDonald’s has taught us anything, it’s that nothing helps sell your fast food like an on-site clown.