The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks with Roy Green before he says farewell to his audience

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Ben speaks with Roy Green before he says farewell to his audience Guest: Roy Green, Host of the Roy Green Show on the Corus Radio Network If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canada. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca. So I've been doing radio now for just over a year. I started in October of last year.

And one of my great pleasures every week was to do a segment on The Morning Show called Think Tank where I would be paired with other guests and we would talk about the issues of the day. And every now and then I would be lucky enough to be paired with Roy Green, the host of the Roy Green show on the Chorus Radio Network. And I was gobsmacked at how well-spoken, well-prepared, measured, everything about Roy made me realize, all right, that's the top of the mountain.

That's the mountain I as a broadcaster have to climb because that's where Roy is. And it was all, I learned so much in my short time with Roy and I owe him such a debt for being such a model for me to want to emulate. And we were all saddened to hear the news of his health situation. And he's decided that in order to take care of that,

he is stepping away from his duties as the host of the Roy Green show. His final show is on January 26th, and he joins us now. Roy, it is an honor to have you on the Ben Mulroney show. Ben, you're very kind. Thank you very much. I love doing those think tanks with you. Yeah.

Yeah. With that Greg fellow. That Greg guy. Exactly. So may I ask, how are you feeling today? I feel, honestly, I feel fine. It's just that the lab results and the scans tell me something else.

And what it is is stage four metastatic prostate cancer. You never want to hear the words stage four back-to-back, but I have I'm getting great care and I'm living my life and I'm doing the things I want to do and for me this is now all about I'm gonna have to focus on myself. Yeah. I'm gonna have to focus on what I need for my health. I have great doctors. And sometimes they make me take products that I wish they hadn't. But ultimately, you realize that these things, no matter how unpleasant they are, they do help you. And Ben, it's a fight. Yeah, it's a fight and I'm up for it. And you're right.

You know, you've spent so much of your career telling other people's stories, sharing stories of the day, interviewing people to get their story out there. And now you have to make it about you. You have to be selfish. Yes. And I am going to be selfish. But I still have plans. I was saying on the air the other day, it was last weekend or the weekend before.

But on my bucket list, it's a very short bucket list. There's only one item and that is to ride my Harley up the Alaska highway. Oh my goodness. Ah. People are telling me I'm crazy because some guy pointed it out to me about a week and a half ago. You know, you can be between, you can be a hundred miles between motorcycles, shops and the only roadside assistance is provided by Grizzlies. It can be a hundred miles between motorcycles, shops,

and the only roadside assistance is provided by Grizzlies. Yeah, you better not get a flat tire up there, that's for sure, Roy. You know, but I still want to do these things. And if my doctors tell me that I can, and if they say, you know, you can take four weeks, five weeks, then you can do this. Then I plan to do it. The worst thing you can do is to give in, to lose hope,

to lose your intent to win. It's all about winning. And this is the biggest game, if you will, and that's a pretty loose application of the word, with the biggest, most important scoreboard. And my objective, and it has to remain my objective Ben is to win this thing. Yeah. And I know it's going to be extremely difficult but I'm not in any frame of mind to give up. Well I have no doubt that you're going to give it your all as you did for so

many years as a broadcaster and you've, your first, you're on since 1990, correct? Oh, that's when I started the talk show at CHML in Hamilton, but I've been on radio since I was 16. Oh my goodness. I was a 16 year old kid. Wow. My mother got to know the wife of the general manager of the rock station in Montreal.

Then we were at their house for dinner and he said, what are you planning to do this summer, Roy? And I said, probably what I did last summer, ride one of those 600 pounds steel bicycles delivering groceries. Then he said, how would you like to work at the radio station? How would I like to do what? And it's rock. And I'm 16. The Beatles, hard days, nights. Oh my goodness. That's great. So I've worked, do you have time or are you in a rush? Me?

Yeah. Oh, we got a few more minutes here, Roy. Okay, good, good, good. So I'm, so I was working nine to midnight, Saturdays and Sundays. I got the prime shift. And then I had, I just learned to queue up records. Now you're too young to know what queuing up a record means.

I know. Do you know what it is? Yeah. Wouldn't you have to listen to where the beginning of the song was? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And you put the round thing on the, on the green felt and then you'd have to spin it. At the beginning of the song. Yeah. I say, I know what that is, but my, my sons just joined me in the studio, we're gonna have lunch when the show is done. They would have no idea what you're talking about. Oh, probably not. Although, the vinyl is coming back in a big way. Yeah, yeah. So I just barely learned the fundamentals of spinning discs and they had a live show from 8 to midnight. Now

I've been going on the air doing station breaks for an hour, which I thought was the ultimate in broadcasting. This was the big time. And the jockey was supposed to go on the air. He'd stopped at a few establishments on the way to the radio station. And by the time he got to the station, even I knew with just three weeks experience, this guy can't go on the way to the radio station. And by the time he got to the station, even I knew with just three weeks experience,

this guy can't go on the air. It's just not, it's not possible. He can barely stand. So I called the general manager and I said, Mr. Wall, it's Roy at the radio station. George isn't feeling too well. And you picked up the baton and you never let go. He said to me, who else is there Roy?

And I said nobody. And here's what he said to me Ben, exact quote, well Tag, you're it. That's one of those things they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Exactly. And that's case in point. And I had about 30 seconds to prepare that's one and listen Roy you've been around for so long and it does I wanted your take on a couple of things before we say goodbye it feels to me as as

somebody fairly new to radio that we see more willing and able to have tougher tough conversations today that were verboten just a few years ago. Do you subscribe to that? I've never really believed that anything was off the table, as long as I wasn't harming someone. If questions had to be asked, tough questions had to be asked, I asked them. It's a different climate though because it certainly is a different world. But you know, we can go back 10 years, 20 years. I had the opportunity to interview your father one-on-one for an hour. And

that was a real highlight for me. And I didn't shy away from the tough questions, neither did your father shy away from answering. A lot of people say that politics is meaner today, it's more toxic today, but as a child growing up in Ottawa, you cause I, I remember being plenty toxic back in the day. I think it's more so than ever. Um, and somebody said to me, somebody who's in politics said to me, it's a couple of years ago now, we used to bark at each other while we were in parliament. We certainly barked at each other in question period, but at the end of the day, we'd go for a drinker. We'd go for dinner. Yeah. Never happens. Never happens anymore. There's actual very

strong, not only a dissonance, but a dislike. Yeah. And I don't know how you manage pragmatically manage the affairs of a country. If you actively and personally dislike the person on the other side of the aisle. That's what's happening now. Yeah, Roy, we're gonna we're gonna leave it there. I want to tell you what it means to have had you on the show today. I want to say it's been a pleasure sharing the airwaves with you and it's been a pleasure

learning from you. And I know this is a really tough battle, but you're the type of person who is equal to the task and I wish you the very, very best. Thank you, man. I'm going to fight this every day in the best way I can. And the best way I can do this is to remain as positive as I possibly can. And Roy Green's final show is this Sunday, the 26th. Thank you so much, Roy. Thank you, Ben.

She has partial retrograde amnesia. She can't remember the last eight years. Tuesdays. What are you? I'll take it. My memory is back. It's the brain. Nobody knows. I don't know who I am now. But I will be a doctor again. I will do everything I can to get my life back.