Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Christmas Crackers, Vol. 5: Toronto Mike'd #1174

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

In this 1174th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by Retrontario's own Ed Conroy for Christmas Crackers, Vol. 5. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Yes, We Are Open, The Advantaged Investor, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

This is a First Choice Super Channel feature presentation. Rated R by Primetime Magazine. The following program contains scenes of violence in coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised welcome Welcome to episode 1174 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA.

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Joining me today For Christmas Crackers Volume 5 Is Retro Ontario's own FOTM Hall of Famer Ed Conroy. Merry Christmas, Mike. Merry Christmas, Ed, to you and your family. Great to see you, man.

These Christmas Cracker episodes are like my favourites of the year. Thanks for doing this again in 2022. Well, it's my absolute pleasure. I think what's shocking is it feels like we did the last one five minutes ago. That's because you've been playing it over and over again uh revisiting those great memories hey on that note i actually like i had to take a a week or so off of having like in studio guests as i recovered from the dreaded covid19 so this happened like fairly recently. I know I, I think I've recovered,

although I was choked up when I was uttering my first word of that intro. But anyways, we'll fix that in post. Ha ha ha. But okay. So I'm like, oh, I want to drop some episodes that I'm not recording with people. And then I happen to have this great thing from Gare Joyce and David Schultz and these, these cats where we recorded this every spring a parade down Bay Street thing. And I kind of packaged that up. And then I realized in 2018, you came on my program and we did our Christmas Crackers volume, whatever it was, two or whatever. And then you paid tribute to the voice, Mark Daly. And it was the most beautiful tribute you got very emotional during this and it was almost like it was too amazing

to be like embedded in an episode that maybe some goofball's gonna skip cause it's Christmas Crackers like it needed a light shone upon it and I made it it's own stand alone episode and that thing's been going nuts like the people are loving your tribute to Mark Daly

oh that's amazing to hear. And I remember that session well in your studio. It was emotional and it is emotional. I mean, he passed away in December. So I feel like every Christmas comes around and I think about, I mean, I think about him a lot anyways, but I always think about him in December. I think about him a lot anyways, but I always think about him in December. I want to address our cold open. I want to talk about what that was and how this might be a blue Christmas Crackers Volume 5.

I have a couple of Mark Daly clips. Maybe we can get right into the Crackers, and then we'll catch up, and then we'll get to the rest of the Crackers. Can I play this clip from 1979, Mark Daly? Wow, just in it to win it, eh? Let's do it. Let me open my beer.

None of the neighbors I spoke with here on Palmerston Avenue seem to know how to drink a ton of beer. You know what? I'm a terrible host here. I'm so excited to get to the clip. I faded it down elegantly there because I'm going to spark it up again. But first, you and I are going to crack open our Great Lakes beers on the mic. So do you want to go first or did I miss it down elegantly there because I'm going to spark it up again. But first, you and I are going to crack open our Great Lakes beers on the mic. So do you want to go first or did I miss it?

No, let me go first. Okay. Get it on mic. Go. Tell us what you're... That was not a Gratis GLB. That was a store-bought. Octopus wants to fight.

My favorite. You just spoiled it. You're not in my TMDS studio right now. Whereabouts are you? I wish I was, Mike, but I now live in the countryside. I live in Port Perry, a lovely little town. And as much as I wanted to come in to Toronto and be in the studio environment with you,

this storm threatening to upend everything. No, I know. I had a Festivus episode planned with my buddy Elvis. And that, of course, is always December 23rd. And he wrote me and he's like, there's some weather bomb going off. And he lives in North Oshawa. And he's like, I don't think I can get there. And I'm like, well, I'm not doing it on Zoom. I'll do that with the FOTM Hall of Famer, Ed Conroy, but I'm not doing Elvis. So he's actually going to come by tonight at 7 p.m. and we're going to record the best of his episode.

But here, let me catch. Well, cheers. So let me cheers. I have a octopus wants to fight from Great Lakes. So cheers. Cheers to you, buddy. Cheers, buddy. Great to see you.

And again, like a shot out of a cannon, we're going to get to a couple of Mark Daly clips and then I want to do a little update and then I want to reference that cold open and then I got a whole whack of stuff coming up here I want to talk about Uncle Bobby I want to talk about Coy and Vance on Dukes of Hazzard I mean I want to talk about

watch it buddy Peter Silverman we're going to pay tribute to some people we lost and then there's a on Dukes of Hazzard. I mean, I want to talk about, watch it, buddy, Peter Silverman. We're going to pay tribute to some people we lost, and then there's a couple of other goodies, and then I have a couple of surprises myself. So, back to the voice. This is from 1979, and then on the other side,

you can give it some context. None of the neighbors I spoke with here on palmerston avenue seemed to know acolino tarcato very well they did know of him he was a friendly man always clean shaven always had a smile for the neighbors he did see but something went wrong recently a lot of arguments in this house at 590 palmerston and this morning acolino tarcato is dead at the foot of the basement stairs the trouble started between midnight and one. Police responded to a noise complaint near 590 Palmerston, found nothing and left. But Constable Rick Dunford responded to another complaint a few minutes later and it was when he

started checking behind houses that he was met with a shotgun blast from the rear of 590. The standoff was on and countless shots in a tear gas canister or two later, the man was confronted near the side door by ETF officer Douglas Clark. Clark exchanged words with the man and then fired a shot through the shroud of tear gas and it was over. Neighbour Marilyn Tate was an eye and ear witness to the four-hour siege. At about one o'clock we heard two loud noises which sounded like windows breaking and that's exactly what we thought it was we decided we would ignore it and about 20 minutes later just after I turned off my light we heard another I heard another shot and my roommate came into my room terrified

and we saw a police car drive up we went outside to say what's going on accolino el torcado ran this small body shop at Gladstone Avenue in Queen. It's closed today. It and his family were all he seemed to have, and according to one neighbor, when he lost his family, he apparently lost all hope. Mark Daly on Gladstone Avenue for City Pulse News. That's how you do it, man.

Wow. Wow. Was there a jackhammer going off? There was a bunch of people cutting their grass it happened in the summertime wow that's the voice man and and so that's uh city pulse right 1979 that's from a city pulse and and let me just cue this all up because this is sort of my big exciting news of the year. I might have told you a bit about this before, but actually I guess it was over a year ago. I did publish a piece on BlogTO that was sort of very similar to what you and I did years ago. It was sort of a roundup of Mark's career and remembering the voice and sharing some

clips. And it did, it did quite well on blog to you. It got shared a lot. And Mark's widow reached out to me, Kim, Kim Daly about a year ago. And she said, look, you know, I've got all these boxes of Mark's stuff of his tapes that he was going to digitize when he retired. And they've been sitting here, you know, for 12 years. And I don't know what I'm going to do with them. I'm going to probably throw them away unless you want them. Wow.

So, of course, are you kidding me? Yes, please. My goodness. I want them. I want to help digitize them and get all this footage to you. We had no idea really what they were, but we met up and I mean, it was insane. It was literally hundreds and hundreds of three quarter inch

U-matic, which was the industry tape sort of in the 70s and 80s they kind of looked like giant vhs tapes uh which of course i have a player so i was able to watch them and transfer them but also and probably even more incredible than that was boxes upon boxes of audio recordings recordings of Mark's time at CKLW, at Q107, at Chum. And so it was like his entire broadcast career and what he had curated over his lifetime, what he thought was the most important bits. And over the last year, I've been going through them and digitizing them and having my mind blown on a regular basis, the quality of stuff that he did, even when I thought I was familiar with it, you know, it's, it's just tremendous work. And so I'm hoping next year to, to do something with this footage. I've been speaking a lot with, with Kim, wife, and with some of his friends. And

I think I want to put together a sort of a self-financed little documentary, basically, about his life. And I want to use all this footage to do that. And when I hear that story, I despise the fact that Mark Daly is no longer with us. But beyond that, that is a fantastic, like wonderful story and how Kim gets in contact with basically the person for the job. Like you are the ideal person to entrust that library,

that archive to, you know, I can't think of a better person on the planet to get the Mark Daly tapes to than Ed Conroy, FOTM Hall of Famer. Okay. And now that you have this content, the possibility, this content, I'm sure there's a grant or two we could get or something.

This can be beyond a labor of love. Well, it's funny. I've dabbled with productions, big productions, broadcast productions, theatrical productions. And I did consider that you know taking it to someone else and saying is this something you might be interested in but frankly my experiences have been so unpleasant working with broadcasters that i realized i want to do this thing properly i don't really want interference i don't really want somebody else saying it needs this or it doesn't it's too much of that and i think you know to be honest

with with mark obviously the stuff that we love there's the the crime reporter stuff there's the voiceover you know the the great movies uh salacious stuff that's hilarious but there's a lot of other stuff in there that i've come across wow and I probably the most important was when he was diagnosed with cancer. And he documented everything from literally the very first meeting he had with the doctor to just a couple of days before he died. It's all on footage. Oh, there's a yeah, there's a documentary there. But it's it's a crucial piece. And then, of course, his his relationship with the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department. And, you know, you've seen over the last how it's been happening for a long time, but the complete deterioration of trust that the public has in the police department. And it's so heartbreaking for a number of reasons.

And Mark was a huge proponent of that being an important relationship and whether it was police going into the schools and, you know, working with kids. And I mean, there's footage of him bringing raptors in the mid 90s into high schools in bad neighborhoods and talking about how policemen need to be somebody that you trust, not somebody that you're afraid of. And he worked tirelessly to promote that idea, which is totally, totally vanished. So I think that's an important thread. But yeah, there's a lot of good stuff there. And I hope I can call on you to help with a little bit of this movie that we're going to make. Okay, that's a slam dunk here. So we're going to get to some more Mark Daly,

but since you're talking about, you know, getting a box of tapes and going through and digitizing it, two things here. One is that I'm well aware that Chorus Entertainment is producing a CFNY documentary. Like this is, I am aware of like, for example, I produced the Humble and Fred show. I know that they have a, they're getting a date in the calendar

when they talk to these producers or whatever, and all these stories are being collected. I've been talking to Scott Turner and Alan Cross, etc. So it's interesting you mentioned doing that independently, that Mark Daly thing, because my first thought was like, well, maybe Rogers, because they own City, but then I'm thinking, okay, no, this is a retro Ontario labor of love. Like, let's stay out of that sticky wicked, but okay. So aside from the chorus thing,

I mentioned Humble and Fred just this morning, Humble Howard Glassman dropped off a, uh, a box of cassette tapes from Fred Patterson's basement or attic. I don't know, stored away somewhere in his Brampton estate. And I now, I guess you can see, no one else can see, but there's a, I got out my old tape deck and I'm, you know, yeah, I'm piping it through the board here, through TRRS,

and I'm going to be spending some time over the next couple of weeks digitizing these very old Humble and Fred tapes to see what I have there. So not quite what you've got from the Mark Daly, from Kim Daly there, but similar spirit, if you will. Yeah. Well, you know, these radio guys are fascinating to me because this is not the first time I've been given audio material from jocks.

You know, I've got boxes of cassettes from various other people and they're amazing. I mean, they really are. Sometimes it's just an air check. Sometimes it's like a jingles compilation. But there's always something fascinating. And of course, it doesn't get quite the same love that video gets because it's just audio. But if you're a radio guy, obviously, like you are, like a lot of your listeners, that is gold, man. Gold. No, super psyched and very, very interested in what happens with your Mark Daly material. And of course, keep me in the loop.

And if I can help in any way, I'm there, buddy. That's a great project. I think the stylistic approach I would like to take is I'm kind of bored of documentaries where you see a lot of talking heads. Yeah. I like the idea of just archive footage with voiceover so it's almost like a radio component and I would like to interview you

and interview Gordon Martineau and people like that to talk about their memories of Mark and put that over top of all this wonderful stock footage and hopefully create something that people want to see. It's funny you say that because that's my favorite documentary format is where

you might get like, you can put text, sort of like the Beatles documentary actually, the Peter Jackson thing. Totally. Just, yeah, show me the footage. And then if you want to put words on the screen or whatever to give things context and add a bit of detail, that's cool. But I don't need the talking heads and all that jazz. Let's go back and watch this footage.

Okay. Uh, may I play, you mentioned, uh, when you talked about Mark Daly there that he would do these great promos for late great movies, et cetera.

I re-listened to what you did for, uh, Christmas crackers in 2018. Then I recently, you know, plucked out and made it a standalone episode. And there were some great ones there, but, uh, I have two here

for Rosemary's Baby. Do you want me to just play them? Yeah, the WAV file should be probably just the audio. It's a very classic Mark delivery. I no longer know what the format was because I put it in. But I'm just going to play this.

I have another one too. Here we go. Saturday from the mind of Roman Polanski. You get friendly with an old couple like that and we'll never get rid of them. They're right across the wall. They turn out to be like real grandparents. It's nice to know there are people like that. Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse and the neighbors have something of hers. Do you hear baby crying?

What? No, I don't hear it. Oh, God! Be here with City, 10.30 Saturday, and pray for Rosemary's baby. Nobody did that better, man. Nobody did it better. That guy,

that famous American voiceover movie guy, in know, in a world. Right. In a world. In a world gone mad. Poor bastard. But I remember he died and people sort of said he was the best. But I'm sorry, even that clip of Rosemary's Baby, Mark Daly gave that guy a run for his money.

Look, if you're Gen X and you're in the GTA, there's no contest here. It's the voice here. But I actually have another one that's a little different. I'm just going to, heck, it's my show, Ed. I'm just going to play this. Saturday from the mind of Roman Polanski. You get friendly with an old couple like that and we'll never get rid of them. They're right across the wall.

They tend not to be like real grandparents. It's nice to know there are people like that. Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse and the neighbors have something of hers. Do you hear baby crying? What? No, I don't hear it.

Oh, God! Be here with City, 1030 Saturday, and pray for Rosemary's baby. Now, I know I'm drinking my gray legs here, but those are different, right? Because when I'm listening to that now... No, I think we're in a time loop already. Is that the exact same one?

That was the exact same one, mate. Oh, you must have sent me two files. So nice, you got to play it twice. And here again, I love these Christmas crackers because you do send me stuff and I load it up, but we don't really talk about any of it. So it's all happening live on the floor, which is exciting. And that's what we liked about the environment,

like at City TV, right? It was all like kinetic energy flying live. But I have a file here just called 1979. I don't think it's the Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah, that was the Pulse one. That was the one we did off the top there. Okay, so what I have is like I have dupes. So that's why I'm all confused here.

I guess that's happened, yeah. So let's do this. Let's address the cold open. What did we hear off the top of the top? Well, you know, again, if you're gen x and you grew up actually this one was nationwide so if you grew up in canada in the 80s and you heard that noise coming out of your tv you knew you were in for good times because that meant there was a restricted movie playing on super channel which was of course the the pay tv station that is our hbo basically well before it merged with

first choice right that's right but i think they actually used that exact opening which was a generic audio piece i think we've talked about this before it was on sports blooper reels and stuff but that that sort of you know voice saying that you know extreme violence and coarse language that one jumped out at me because I know quite a bit of the material that I sent to you for this Christmas Crackers is a little bit on the blue side of things. So I thought, well, we've got to throw a bit of a warning up there. There's going to be some cussing.

And that was kind of, you know, after the Mark Daly ones that the First Choice Super Channel warning was always my favorite. Well, look, there should be an additional warning that I might play every clip twice. So just consider yourself warned. Now, I don't know if you can hear it in the background because we're connecting remotely, but I have an instrumental going, Blue Christmas.

That's right, by The Ventures. That's, you know, classicures. That's a classic. Most people associate the track with Elvis, but I think the instrumental rockabilly version is pretty cool too. And so, yeah, I mean, we're getting up to episode five of Christmas Crackers. We need some good subtitles

because in the future, people are going to be able to distinguish them. So we'll call this one the Blue Christmas Crackers, I think. All right. So if you're in the car with your little ones and you don't want them to hear any bad words, you've been warned. It's going to get blue in here. Blue Christmas Crackers, Volume 5. I'll keep the ventures in the background.

Just want to check in on the Conroy family and everything. So, of course, you left the Big Smoke for Green Acres or wherever the heck you are now. How is that working out? Do you miss Toronto at all? How's it working out over there? Well, of course, I do miss Toronto, but I get to come into Toronto quite a bit, right? So for work and, you know,

I still do a lot of work with Moses, so I'm in Liberty Village a lot. My brother and my parents still live in Scarborough, so I get to go there a lot. But, man, I think I said this a year ago. I love it out here. I feel like this was my destiny to end up in small-town Ontario. Probably a lot of the reason is because it's kind of like a time machine out here. It kind of feels like the 80s is still going on.

Like a Christmas story, right? It's a Christmas story, Norman Rockwell, It kind of feels like the 80s is still going on. Like a Christmas story, right? It's a Christmas story, Norman Rockwell, that kind of vibe. You know, I spend a lot of time going through old stuff and I love all these antique barns up here and thrift stores and church yard sales. I just found like remarkable stuff. So yeah, man, my kids are great. My wife is great. We love Port Perry. I invite all your listeners to come up and check it out. A lot of Hollywood people live up here.

I think, you know, we don't want it to get too busy up here. Who's other than yourself, who's the most famous person who lives in Port Perry? Oh my goodness. Okay, well, I'll tell you who I see quite regularly is Darth Vader. What's his name? The guy who played the young Darth Vader.

Oh, Hayden Christensen. Hayden Christensen, yes. He's from Thorne Lee because Cam and Stu always reference him as a graduate of Thorne Lee. Of course. I mean, yeah, he was an Ontario guy. But he lives up here. That's big. Yeah, it's crazy, man. You know, you call him Darth Vader,

but I mean, Anakin Skywalker might be an easier way to build a guy, because I don't know how much of Darth he was in the series, but at first I thought you were talking about the voice of Darth Vader. Oh, James Earl Jones. James Earl Jones. I wish I saw James Earl Jones in my local coffee shop, but no, I'll take Anakin.

That's cool. This is retro Ontario. Oh, you know, I would ask him to do that. And then you'd have to say, can you please say you're listening to Toronto Mike? You know who used to tell a wonderful story about James Earl Jones? Tell me. Was my friend Jerry Agar. to tell a wonderful story about James Earl Jones was my friend Jerry Agar. He was all over the radio scene in America. He talked about one time James Earl Jones was in one of the stations he was working at. I guess he was a heavy cigarette smoker, James Earl Jones. It was right around the time they told people you can't smoke cigarettes anymore inside.

There was all these people running around saying, well, who's going to go and tell Darth Vader he can't smoke his cigarettes? And nobody had the balls to tell him. So they just let him do it. I thought that was really funny. That's amazing. Yeah, when you're James Earl Jones,

you can smoke your cigs, I think. Smoke that dart. All right, there's one other person. I just saw a Facebook update from her today. Ziggy Lawrence. Is she in Port Perry or is she in a different small town out your way? Do you know?

She's definitely not in Port Perry. I'll tell you, people get all these ports mixed up. I sure do. I live in Port Perry. They think, oh, Port Hope. Oh, you know what? She's probably in Port Hope. Port Hope, that's the one that Wheels' dad lives in.

That's right. Port Hope. Okay. Baked into the grassy lore. But no, nothing to do with Port Hope. Bless old Ziggy, though. She's, you know, I don't see her that often, but when I do, she's still game and hilarious, you know? Well, it was a very nice update. She was basically, you know, she had to live there for COVID,

so things aren't quite, you know, normal, but things have opened up quite a bit. And she was talking about how she had made a bunch of friends in town, and she was feeling, like, great about her new home, which I now think was Port Hope, not Port Perry, but one of the ports. But we've lost some good Torontonians to these ports.

What can you do? Okay. I'll say I'm enjoying my Great Lakes beer. Ed, if I ever get you back in the studio, I promise you a large lasagna from Palma Pasta, buddy. I owe you a lasagna, and that'll feed the whole family in Port Perry. Well, I do miss the Palma Pasta.

I will say I have not found Any kind of lasagna that is on Level with the palma pasta Lasagna Thankfully I can get Great Lakes Brewery Beers Around here So that was something I was worried about at first But it's been allayed

You find them in the LCBOs near you? Actually even in the Loblaws Franchise that's literally down the street from me, I get my octopus there, which is wonderful. Well, it's brewed for you, Ontario, and enjoy responsibly there. Okay, so we've talked about Mark Daly. I would say we're doing some greatest hits here today.

Another gentleman we love to talk about when we're together is Uncle Bobby. Yes, sir. I have some wonderful Uncle Bobby updates for you. Well, should I start with just the clickety clack express song and then we can... Yeah, why not? Why the heck not, right?

So let's do this. I hope you have a nice day because right now it's over to the clickety clack express. Here they are. nice day because right now it's over to the Clickety Clack Express. Here they are. If you wanna go click, go clickety clack, come along with me down the trickety track. Just don't ask me where we're

going, cause the fun is never knowing where we're going till we get there on the Clickety clack express the clickety clack express love it you remember that part of it or not not too much this i'm trying when i was listening i was thinking well i remember this uh no i'm more of a bimbo the birthday bimbo yeah i mean look look, it's a funny thing because, you know,

we've talked about this many times. Uncle Bobby, this white whale, so hard to source any material from it. It's all gone. Bimbo the birthday clown was the main song, I think the main skit that everybody remembered. But when that ended up on on youtube you know probably quite early in the youtube era probably in i want to say 2006 2007 the number one thing you would see underneath the the video of bimbo is people saying well who's got clickety clack express like where the

fuck is clickety clack and you found it well after all these years finally it turned up and it was a regular it wasn't every show like bimbo but it was on at least two or three times a week okay and it was this really really low budget puppet show i mean kind of like depressingly low budget and clearly one person wasn't Bobby Ash was operating all of these different characters on the train and they're all really terrifying

including the face of the train which kind of turns around and looks at the other I used to be afraid of the Mr. Rogers puppets like back in the day they're totally that. They're not like, they're not soft on the eyes,

so to speak. They're kind of jagged and scary. Like I always felt like there was a King Friday and Daniel Tiger or whatever. Children's puppets and puppeteers. And you know, another friend of your show,

a friend of mine, the great Nina Keough. i love talking with her about that because puppeteers are very protective of course of these things and right when you start saying well these puppets were scaring kids you know it's it's a weird dichotomy but anyways clickety-clack was on let's say the list of things i always hoped to come upon you know with really frankly any any uncle bobby content um but i got this wonderful email out of the blue at the beginning of the summertime from this guy who said i i was just on your website and i saw that you were looking for Uncle Bobby stuff. And I have a videotape, or it was actually, it wasn't even a VHS, it was a Betamax tape that is just full of Uncle Bobby episodes.

Wow. Do you want it? Do you want it? And it was like, oh my God. Hook it to my veins, he says. Yeah. I know. I mean, I get a lot of these things, Mike, but that one, of course, jumped out of the screen

and just whacked me in the head. But it got better because, of course, I rode him back right away and I was like, yeah, what are you doing right now? Can we meet like halfway? And then it turned out he actually lived in Oshawa, which is super close to where I am. It's literally south of where I am.

Then the coup de grace was that he was the son of Meredith Cutting, who is the last surviving cast member of Uncle Bobby. He was the son of the singing policeman. Wow.

Wow. Okay, so let me, can I play the singing policeman here? Yeah. Okay, let's listen. Here I play the singing policeman here? Yeah. Okay, let's listen. Here's Murd, and Murd's got his guitar. We call him Murd. His proper name is Meredith.

Meredith Cutting, and Meredith is going to sing his songs just for you. What's the first one, Meredith? Well, Jeffrey talked about bridges, and I think I'll talk about bridges. Okay, you're going to sing about bridges? Yeah, why not? Here we go. Murd is his first song. Thanks.

Oh, a bridge is a thing that takes you from here to there. Yes, a bridge is a thing that takes you from here to there. It might be made of sticks. It might be made of stones. It might be made of sticks, it might be made of stones, it might be made of blocks or steel. Yes, a bridge is a thing that takes you from here to there. It may cross a river, it may cross a lake, it may just cross thin air. It may just cross thin air.

Oh, a bridge is a thing that takes you from here to there. And you know, back in history, one of the most popular bridges and famous bridges of all time was in old London town in England. And it started to fall down and crumble. And the people wrote a song about it. And it was called... London Bridge is Falling Down falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady. London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady.

Build it up with sticks and stones, sticks and stones, sticks and stones. Build it up with sticks and stones, my fair lady. Build it up with sticks and stones, sticks and stones, sticks and stones, build it up with sticks and stones, my fair lady. Oh, London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady. Build it up with

bricks and steel, bricks and steel, bricks and steel, build it up with bricks and steel bricks and steel bricks and steel build it up with bricks and steel my fair lady london bridge is falling down falling down falling down london bridge is falling down my fair lady oh a bridge is a thing that takes you from here to there. Yes, a bridge is a thing that takes you from here to there. Yes. Funny thing, you know, talking about London Bridge,

in the end, it did fall down, but it didn't fall down on its own. It was knocked down and brought to America and rebuilt here in America. See if you can find out where it is. Now we've got Bruce. Uncle Bobby dropping the fun facts. I have so much to say about that.

First of all, you know, Jerry Agar would have truncated that. He would have faded that down after 10 seconds and had you come in. But I'm like, no, I want to hear. You know, it took us this long to get a Meredith Cutting song on Toronto Mic. I'm like, we're playing this three-minute song in its entirety. I liked how he interloped to London Bridges into his bridge song. Like, you know, a bridge is what gets you from here to there. Like, wow.

Mixed master Cutting. He was a fascinating guy. Again, I don't know if you remember, but I definitely remembered the singing policeman because he was in his police uniform with an acoustic guitar, and he was doing these kind of weird folk songs on Uncle Bobby, which, again, the Uncle Bobby stew of weird shit. That was just part of it, right? There was a policeman, you know, Big, Big, Big John,

who would be talking about safety, but then there was this other policeman who was singing songs. And so, you know, I didn't know that he was still alive. So it was amazing that his son got in touch with me and said, oh, my dad would love to speak with you. Wow. And he really wants you to to have this this tape and the the origin of the tape is even funnier and and part of the uncle bobby mythos if you will um that when they were

showing it back in the day it was so so ghetto at cfdo they wouldn't notify people when things were repeated and they were due basically a little paycheck for their appearance. It was up to you to basically see if you were on that episode that was being repeated, and then you would send in an invoice to CFDO and get your $5 or whatever. So poor Meredith Cuttingss I guess it was his wife would record Uncle Bobby every day and they would go through it and see what was there a Meredith Cutting like stinging policeman scene and then they would send this invoice at the end of the

week and they would tape over it it was like people that recorded soap operas or whatever at the end of the week okay okay, we've checked all those, and they go back and do it again. So this was the final tape that had survived all these years. Wow. And we thought they were cheap sons of guns at City TV, but this is next level. Come on.

No, no, I know. It was like sad but happy because that was how this tape survived, right? I mean, if they had just automatically done it, there wouldn't have been this tape. No, good point. It was a really strange, funny and sad story. Like a rose is growing from the

cracks in the concrete here. I love it. No, absolutely. So you had this conversation with Meredith Cutting. I have a bit of it here. Should I play it now? Then we can find out about how that went? Well, yeah.

So I ended up, of course, you know, I took a little bit of back and forth with his son. But eventually I said, look, I really would love to interview your dad. Not, you know, from a podcast kind of perspective just for historical you know research reasons like right i mean not you don't have to tell him he's the last guy standing um and so i interviewed him extensively like for like you know i want to say probably about an hour and a half and it was just me probably being obnoxious, asking a lot of questions.

But he would go off on tangents, and it was all really incredible stuff. So I sent you this one little excerpt, which was just so good because, again, it was like a bomb of like, oh, my God. So, yeah, let's play that. When Bobby Ash came to Canada he was a Shakespearean actor and he couldn't get work anywhere and he was hired by CBC

as Bimbo the Clown and when he got his own show with CFTO he made Bimbo in his alter ego Bobby was only about 5 foot tall he was very short but Bimbo was almost seven feet tall. And that's where that came from. So that was the joke, that it was a taller version? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's really funny. I did not know about that.

Not many people knew about that as far as how Bimbo came to be. And what about, did you know much about Uncle Bobby also being a bus driver at the same time? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he owned a double-decker bus. And he also drove a school bus. All right, I got to ask you right now. Did you ask Meredith Cutting about Uncle Bobby's way with the moms? Oh, no, I didn't.

It wasn't, I mean, it was on my mind a couple times, but he was very old school. He was proper. And you're not proper. I know how you feel. He was a police officer on a board and he was a policeman. And I kind of, you know know i mean his his whole origin story was insane like you know he was he played in yorkville in the in that famous sort of hippie

place where um you know dylan had played and neil young joni mitchell yes you know what's it called the upper upper boat or something uh the riverboat. Riverboat. Yeah, so Singing Policeman has a crazy origin story of his own. And we talked a lot about that and how he ended up being on television. And it was basically because he was a member of the Metropolitan Toronto Police, but he was also performing in this bar in Scarborough, which I remembered as a kid, it was known as a cop bar. Like it was a bar where the police would go and get hammered at night.

And he apparently got in trouble because it's like you're not allowed. You can be a policeman or you can be a folk singer. You can't be both. And he thought that was the end of his career as a policeman. So he went to cfdo and said can i get on i forget what it was called one of their sort of folksy live music shows they had a whole bunch of them at the time and they sort of said uh we like your demo but you're not quite ready for what you know abbey road singers or whatever it was called. So you can go on Uncle Bobby.

So it was like, okay, I'll do it on Uncle Bobby. So yeah, he was just an amazing guy. I really want to connect you to him because I think he would be a great guest if you ever want to do an episode like that. My conversation with him, like I said, I was trying to be very, um,

you know, above board, not, not asking him. And I totally get it because this happens to me. Sometimes somebody, if they're a, especially an older person and they're very proper,

you can't go ask him about, uh, uncle Bobby banging the kid's moms. Right. You know, and it did, if, if,

if the van's a knock and rock and don't come and knock or whatever like the school buzz is rocking and i'm again just to be clear here we're always glad that this story is about the moms okay this is right exactly these are the moms everybody okay you know i i think that's the you know the the the thing with uncle bobby and this always comes up is that people misconstrue all of this stuff because they hear about a guy in England and they think that it was somehow untoward

and they hear about Fergie Oliver and all that shit. And it all mixes up in their mind that Uncle Bobby was bad. I have defended Uncle Bobby on several occasions in reminding everyone we are talking about consenting adults here 100% and there might have been a couple of

scotch scotches involved as was the style at the time right absolutely final note on Uncle Bobby though I haven't had a clip for the moment oh yeah right we got Bimbo the seven foot Bimbo. Well, that can see us out. But another hilarious thing was the son of the singing policeman, Mike Cutting. You know, he's an amazing guy, too. And he's a policeman.

He's an actual legit policeman serving, I think, in the 52 division. Legit policeman serving, I think, in the 52 Division. And when he was a kid, he would obviously go on the set at CFTO. His old man was on there. And he sent me this wonderful photograph of him with 2E. And I don't know if you remember, 2E was the Star Wars, I don't know if you remember 2E was the Star Wars, like the R2-D2 ripoff that they put in the final season of the Uncle Bobby show when it was renamed Kids Corner. And it's funny because we've talked a little bit about this over the years about how Uncle Bobby was this powerhouse thing and it was on for so long but when you got to 1980 the brass at cfdo are looking at it they're like you know this shit is a little bit too old-fashioned for us

we need to bring it up you know bring it into the 80s so they retooled it they changed the name it was no longer the uncle bobby show it was now called kids corner and they introduce a robot who basically looked like a CFTO R2-D2 called 2E. Wow. And when he was telling me this story, you know, we always, I always say to people that don't know what Uncle Bobby is, I compare it to Krusty the Clown from Simpsons. Right. Because it's, it's like the best analogy, right? It's this hard drinking guy who's already like,

when Simpson started in 89, even shows like Crust of the Clown, it was like old hat even then. But the 2E at the kid's corner thing is basically Poochie, right? It's the Poochie episode. It's like, what are we going to do to like, be down with the kids in the 80s?

They're into Star Wars. So let's get a robot on there. And unfortunately, nobody has any clips of that. That's the new white whale. Right. The new one. No longer click. But you always we know this from the you always need your white whale.

Like who who is Ed Conroy without a white whale? Right. Right. You need it. Oh, you're right. A couple of things here because of course I have to take us on a couple of quick tangents, but there's an episode I recorded in 2022 that is

custom made for you, Ed Conroy. It features Mimico resident Mimico resident Roger Christian. He came over and talked about how He won the Academy Award For the first Star Wars

Because he designed the lightsaber The Millennium Falcon And R2D2 Wow How do I not know about this? Why didn't you send this to me? I don't know how come you're not subscribed to Toronto Mike It should be coming to you.

And here's a, here's a, here's a kicker. Here's the kicker. Cause you mentioned Fergie Oliver, Roger Christian in my backyard, telling these amazing stories. And again,

he lives in Mimico now. So he literally, I guess he could have walked, but he drove. That's another story, but he is in his eighties, but he was joined by founder of just like mom, Paul Burford.

So Paul Burford from Just Like Mom, whose son, by the way, is a children's entertainer, Broccoli from Sunshine and Broccoli. So Paul, and shout out to Tim Herron, who is Paul's driver and he always drives Paul here. And that's great. So Paul Burford, Roger Christian, the greatest episode recorded in my backyard studio on a lovely

summer day here in New Toronto. Was this one of the instances where you felt bad about asking these old boys about the sexual exploitation? I didn't have a lot of sex stuff lined up. It was, you know, for Star Wars. No, not

Star Wars. Just, not Star Wars. Just like Mom. Oh, no, I definitely talked about the supercut with Paul Burford. Yeah, what was his take on it? He's disgusted by it. He says, you know, although he's just... Out of context? He says, completely out of context, he says, nothing untoward ever happened with Fergie Oliver.

I got the same story from Kate Wheeler, by the way, who worked closely on Just Like Mom. They're all disgusted by the supercut. All out of context, slowed down with that music. I could take a supercut of Ed Conroy on Toronto Mike and make you sound pretty fucking nice.

I don't know about that. Look, I agree that it's unfortunate and it's really to the point, I'm sure I've told you this before, where if I ever post anything to do with Just Like Mom, it ends up being totally overtaken by comments about that. And his daughter, or one of his daughters,

is a follower of Retro Ontario, and she will often say, Ed, can you please take that down? So, I mean, I don't even go there anymore because it's always... Is this the daughter who works on the shopping channel? It is, I believe, yes. Okay.

Again, remember, her mom was like Miss Canada. Yes, yeah. Anyway, I will... I think that it's quite the leap to watch that supercut and decide that Fergie Oliver is a pedophile. Like, I mean, I'll just say it. I don't play that game.

I think it is unfair to the man, and there's some benefit of the doubt he deserves here. Is that a hot take? You know, it's a hot take, man. And I don't want to, you know, we always end up going off on these huge, long Fergie Oliver tangents. But I think ultimately, I haven't looked at that thing in a while,

but probably the biggest issue is that he's saying to kids, if you want this prize or if you want this thing, then you have to do this for me. The kiss. And it doesn't even, at that point, whether it's a kiss

or whether it's a compliment or whatever, it's just the idea that you're kind of creepy as fuck right it's creepy it's a bit weird and we what even you were doing it to grown-ups it's just kind of shitty that would be a family feud right that's adults oh my god yeah and he was richard donner what's his name right donner wrote he did the Spider- Hogan's Heroes. Superman movies. Yeah, right. Richard Donner. But yeah, he was totally of the same ilk.

And I get it, man. Those guys are having drinks. Yeah, but these are little six-year-old girls or whatever. You're right. Exactly. But you're right. Creepy as fuck, I'm on board. The P word, like, let's, you know, that's a-

Let's keep that reserved for Jimmy Savile, you know? Oh, big time, right? Let's remember. And let's just, again, just be grateful. Take a moment here. I love the Uncle Bobby stuff because he was having relations with consenting adult women. These were the moms he was interested in,

and they were interested in him. I didn't know he was five feet tall till right now. Well, it's funny. Meredith Cutting was kind of obsessed with people's heights, he was interested in and they were interested in him. I didn't know he was five feet tall till right now. So, well, it's funny. Meredith cutting was kind of obsessed with people's heights. And I think that's a tall guy thing, you know,

when you're like, you kind of talk about people in terms of how, how tall they are. Right. Like you're taller is better somehow. And as a five foot nine guy, I think that's bullshit. It's kind of harsh.

Yeah. I thought you were going gonna say the thing about uncle bobby for me that maybe keeps the interest going is this idea that he was this shakespearean actor right from the uk yeah who ends up doing this dead-end kids program in scarborough and i think nowadays there's all of these kids programs on tv and on youtube and you know people are kids want to grow up and be kids entertainers right it's a it's a it's an absolute art now but i i kind of miss those days when it was seen as kind of a you know a graveyard slot for these guys who once were were treading the boards you know it's uh in london all right now i just need to you know i promoted that i have the roger christian episode that All right. Now I just need to, you know,

I promoted that I have the Roger Christian episode that I recorded in 2022. And I need to tell you right now, Ed Conroy, you need to listen to John Biner on Toronto Mic'd. John Biner came on my program and we talked at length about everything. Another man who spent a lot of time in aging court. Oh yeah, man.

I mean, bizarre. I would hope in future episodes episodes we could talk more about that program that's an absolutely insane thing that happened at age right and ziggy was one of those young women well and and and they exploited women man i mean they had these young girls in there and they did the pg cut you know for the network network. And then they did the X-rated version for the pay TV in America. Right. So they would do the same skit two times. Right.

And, you know, get the boobs out for the second version. Right. By the way, there's a, again, this is going to be half an hour of me promoting Toronto Mic'd episodes, but there is an episode of Leona Boyd in which she discusses, she discusses the late, great Bob Einstein wearing a robe in her hotel room and trying to convince her if she wants her own series. There's a path for her, and she was quite revolted by this scene.

She tells this story on Toronto Mic'd. Yeah, I mean, all of these things coming to light now, I think we all agree that we suspected that's how it was, but it's just confirming all of these things. And, of course, we're very glad that this kind of thing shouldn't be happening anymore. It's at least being talked about. Right.

Well, sunlight's a good antiseptic, right? Totally. Totally. And on that note, I think we're going to play a little bimbo. And the final, the final, final note, I'll leave till after we're done. Okay. So, yes, I am going to play the bimbo, the birthday clown here. And then you're going to have your final, final note. But when the singing policeman was singing about the bridges, and you mentioned that the singing policeman is like the final survivor from this great series, this show we remember.

I was thinking as I'm listening about the bridges, I'm like, is he going to reference the great survivor from different strokes? Because Todd Bridges is the survivor from that different strokes. And there's a bridge still with us and last person standing from a show i loved as well you gotta get you gotta get him on your show man i hope you're working on that i am get me todd bridges all right here is bimbo the birthday clown well done and out comes bimbo and here's bimbo introducing bimbo the birthday clown and the son of happy here he goes Do you want to have a happy birthday? Happy birthday, Uncle Bobby. There he is, Bimbo the birthday guy.

Now that I remember. Yeah, that's the one, right? But what was so crazy as well that came out of my conversation with Meredith was that Uncle Bobby, in addition to all these other things being a bus driver and whatnot he actually owned a bunch of um preschools like preschool classes i didn't and it was called bimbo and what what really blew my mind is on another tangent that i i've been working on on some stuff about the history of mr dress up wow he had a whole bunch of preschool really yeah and it's like obviously that whole world is very regulated now and there's all kinds of rules and there's all kinds of money involved but it seems like in the in 70s, that was a wild west

because kids started school in JK. But if you wanted to send your kid somewhere because you were working, it was kind of a new frontier. And so the idea that these guys were on TV, they were kind of trusted like, oh, you send your kid to the Uncle Bobby preschool or the Mr. Dress-Up preschool. It's crazy.

And again, it's something I would like to see further research on. Look, dude, when you're finished with the Mark Daly project, you need to get onto that. You got some more projects here. I mean, you could, I mean, I think you're amazing.

That's why you were the first inductee into the FOTM Hall of Fame. That's for a reason, brother. Well, thank you, brother. And I will say- It's it's an honor it's an honor are you wearing your no just kidding you don't have a medallion i gotta send you one but uh what is that shirt read it to me it's my um my boy scarborough spots does some apparel this is my scarborough hoodie okay because we'll do it later at the end because right now we're actually uh not live anywhere but we're gonna do a screen cap so make sure we can see that in a hoodie in the screen cap.

Absolutely love it. And what was it? Oh, okay. Yeah. So the puppets I liked from Mr. Dress up, I'm going to read a couple of notes here before we,

you know, we just talked about bimbo, the birthday clown, and it's going to segue nicely into bimbo jet. Okay. But Johnny O writes in, searching out Mr. Conroy is what got me into toronto miked in the first place crackers time is my favorite time of the year ho ho hold the payment so johnny o gets

us because that's a great johnny o merry christmas man and i'll say johnny o has appeared at a couple a few uhMLX events. So I've actually had the pleasure of meeting Johnny O in the flesh. And he rides a motorcycle. So he's a cool guy. And he's got great taste in podcasts. And he loves you too. So shout out to Johnny O.

And it's not John Allarude. I know you think it's John Allarude, but it's not. What a sweet swing he had. And then here's another. Chris, quickly, i recorded uh and you know what actually i should save this till after we talk about this bimbo jet because this segues perfectly into some dukes of hazard chat but what can you tell me about this vinyl you found well you know as i was saying earlier i'm a i'm a huge collector of old ephemera and i love

records i spend a lot of time looking at old records at thrift stores and whatnot. And I'm always up for these weird things that aren't on any website or there's no information about them. This one, I guess it was a Quebec compilation

of weird disco songs from the 70s. And it was called Bimbo Jet. And it had a cool cover. And it was 50 cents or something. So I'll take a shot on this. And I put it on.

You're going to hear it in a second. And we'll see if you can recognize what it is because I have since corroborated that it is what I think it is. But it was a bit of a mind-blower. Okay, is this the one, because I have two here, is this the one called Salado, or is it? No, it's called Bimbo Jack. Okay, let me play it, and we'll talk about this.

Ha-ha! Ay, ay, ay! Bimbo! Lombardo? What is this? Bigmore Toronto. So I'll bring it down so we can talk over it here.

It sounds like the Forbidden Dance. Am I crazy? No, you're crazy, man. Can you go back to the first riff? That's the clue right there. Okay, bear with me. All right, we're Can you go back to the first riff? Okay. That's the clue right there. Okay, bear with me. All right, we're going to go back to this. I'm going to turn it up, and I'm going to play this again.

Okay, well, it sounds like porno music. Well, you're close. Okay, well, it sounds like porno music. Well, you're close. Did you watch a lot of 80s sex comedies when you were a young lad? Oh, sure. Yeah, it's like Spring Break and, well, Porky's, of course, and, you know, yeah, Revenge of the Beards. Okay, so do you remember the most famous one that was filmed? Snow School, or I can't remember.

But yeah, go on. Sorry. The most famous one that was filmed in Toronto in the 80s had Kim Cattrall in it. Oh, that's Porky's. No? Another one? No, I guess that was a terrible name to say because you're right. She is in Porky's.

Yeah, she's Lassie. Yes. And Porky's is the... I bow down to the god of Porky's. It's not Porky's. Yeah, she's Lassie. Yes. And Porky's is, I bow down to the god of Porky's and it's not Porky's. It's Police Academy. Right, of course. Film down the street. Okay. Alright.

So, do you remember there was a rouscious gay bar called the Blue Oyster? 100% of course. That's what this is from. I knew that. Yes, of course. Of course. Of course.

When we were talking about blue Christmas, blue oyster, got to play a little bit of that. But yes, so that's what that was. Dude, you know, I just saw a movie. I was going to save this for later, but sometimes I save things

and I never get back to it. But I just watched in its entirety on Canopy, which is free with my library card, by the way, The Silent Partner. Oh, classic. And it's so very, very good. And I'm watching this thing and I love, I actually, I just loved it.

And I loved how much unabashedly Toronto it was. This is like, we're going to go eat at Captain John's. Sorry, Captain John's. We're eating there. Driving on the DVP. The Silver Dollar is there. You're driving on the DVP.

The Silver Dollar room is Blue Oyster. Okay. That's where that was filmed. We haven't even mentioned the fact that so much of this movie takes place in the eden center okay like yes there it is john candy working at a bank in the okay in fact i'm gonna reference this later because i want to talk about john candy in this role and how somebody wasn't there but that's a teaser for later when we talk about some people we lost in 2022 but okay so i'm watching the silent partner and it's like so toronto and i'm like thinking of all the great toronto movies from the late 70s, early 80s or whatever.

And you got like Strange Brew I'm thinking about. But Police Academy, I literally bike by. The physical Police Academy is here. Now it's Humber's South Campus here in New Toronto. But it's just right there. I could throw a rock, and that's where Commandant Lessard and the gang would, you know. It's right there, but it's just right there. I could throw a rock and that's where common Don't Lassard and the gang would, you know, it's right there and it's right here. And there's a scene with high tower.

I guess he's learning to drive and he's in this small car and I freeze framed it for my oldest who's turning 21 soon, believe it or not, but I freeze frame it for him and I'm gonna go and I won't dox myself, but I said, and this might be doing it. People are going to go back, but like, look at that intersection. Like I are going to go back but look at that intersection like I can throw a stone from here and hit that intersection like this is all lots of it. Oh no it's crazy and

even as a kid when I saw it on Super Channel for the first time I remember recognizing those neighborhoods as being all Etobicoke it was like wow and they're passing it off of course as some unnamed American summer, but

you're not fooling anyone. And it's kind of fun to think about that Police Academy is a stone's throw from Degrassi Jr. High. Right. Of course. Which is the iconic Vincent Massey daycare, I think is what occupies the building now.

But yes, love the reference to Police Academy at least one FOTM who comes out to events James Edgar was an extra in that movie so shout out to James in part one yes part one because I mean there's all kinds of additions right and there's a one where there's got where Tony Hawk

and all those guys are skateboarding at the Eaton Center I want to say this part four okay I'm not up on my Police Academy mythology but there's Tony Hawk and all those guys are skateboarding at the Eaton Center. I want to say this part four. I'm not up on my Police Academy mythology, but there's some really fascinating stuff. Well, you know, Police Academy is one of those movies where when Steve Guttenberg left, it sort of became a different thing. Like it was, you know, and at some point. Hightower and Huckleberry is not going to carry.

Mahoney, remember Mahoney? Right. And who I liked when they added him was of course Bob Caggoldthwaite was added oh yes and I think we all mimicked his speaking style for a while I would do my bop I can't even do it now but okay

there's another song here too before we get to well you know we don't have to play that one that one was the real to me it was cool to hear the Blue Oyster song. But it was this beautiful piece of music on this weird record. Sort of sounds like an Ennio Morricone thing. Yeah.

It was really emotional. And I thought it might be a good way to send off the year. You know, we played at the end of the episode if we have time. Okay, I'll park it. I'll park it. Yeah, park it for a second. Are we going to go uh your man silverman i know you you're itching to drop that one yeah but i was gonna i was gonna actually do a little tiny bit of dukes first because it lets me give you some more praise here so i recorded an episode of toast tuesday night

and every episode of toast until tuesday night featured Cam Gordon and Stu Stone. Okay. Stu's going to come up later, by the way. I pulled a clip. It's a big surprise for you if Stu Stone is a kid. And you'll know why when we get there. But for a variety of reasons, Stu and Cam couldn't do Toast. And I wanted Toast to continue.

So I went and got, I wanted like a replacement Stu and Cam. And my first thought was Coy and Vance Duke. Okay. Because I, like yourself, I was a big Dukes of Hazzard guy. I'm one of those guys. I was an accidental racist because I kept bringing the Confederate flag in the house.

Don't tell my kids, but I used to play with the Confederate flag on the daily. Okay. So I'm thinking of Coy and Vance and I, I, my mind couldn't remember how long they were around.

Maybe, uh, maybe I play this promo that you've sent me and then I can play a couple of things. I actually collected on this topic and we can talk a little bit about Coy and Vance. Is that cool? That sounds amazing.

And then I'll tell you, well, I'll say that before I'll tell you now, I'm like, so why would I tease this? I don't have to tease everything. Who am I? tell you, well, I'll tell you now. Why would I tease this? I don't have to tease everything. Who am I? Humble Howard Glassman?

Okay. So I will just tell you that Rob Pruce, who was in my basement. No, he wasn't in my basement, but he was on this Toast episode as Vance, I'd say. Rob Pruce was the keyboardist for the Spoons during their glory days. Okay. This guy's amazing. This amazing keyboardist. spoons during their glory days okay this guy's amazing this amazing keyboardist and he absolutely loves the christmas crackers episodes of toronto mic he cannot wait to listen to you ed conroy on

toronto mic he loves your stuff wow prus absolute legend man i mean i i love spoons but also um it's funny one of the records i found recently was a cfny talent search and i forget the guy's name whoever won this talent search but they put out an ep and it's all uh it's pruse uh on the on the keyboards on this thing oh and you can't remember the name i can't remember his bloody name i was gonna send or i was gonna tweet rob and say this is amazing uh it's you know it's from like 87 or something but no man i think that would be like his uh honeymoon suite years like i feel like definitely around that time yeah for sure i love all this and by the way uh one of the things we discussed on tuesday night i know i'm all over the place but it's my show ed

okay uh on tuesday, we discussed the fact that Rob Proust's first ever gig with The Spoons, because he's not a founding member. He was only like 15 when he joined the band, was at The Edge, which was a Gary's presentation. And it happened to be the night John Lennon was killed. Oh, wow. I know.

So he's got this strange, bittersweet, that night is such a strange memory for him. But in the audience that night, he points out is another FOTM, Paul Myers from the Gravel Berries, who's Mike Myers' brother. So Paul Myers was at the edge for that Spoons gig the night John Lennon was shot and killed.

You know, I know you hang out there, Mike. The big yellow board has interesting characters and interesting threads once in a while there was a long one about the night Lennon died and people remember I think it comes up every year right people where what were you doing right you heard

John Lennon especially that crowd because that's more of a like a boomer it's a zoomer hardcore shout out to moses shout outs shout outs to all those guys too there's interesting nuggets to be found and i see you know you promote the applicable episodes on there it's a good idea yeah once in a while those guys will be going off like uh oh something about somebody and i'll be like okay you know that person you're curious about they literally just answered all my questions for 120 minutes in my basement.

Like, here it is. Yeah, no, it's always nice to see you on there. But I don't post there very often, but I did on the Lennon one because we've talked about this show before, absolutely essential Toronto lore, the all-night show. We trucked the security guard right only aired one season right from from 1980 to 1981 right and they were live to air the night that lennon died and of course i've never seen this but i've heard people talk about they were phoning like i don't even know how they got these numbers, but they were literally

phoning from Toronto in the studio to pay phones, like random pay phones in New York City and talking to random people saying, can you give us an update of what's going on? And that's how far we've come, right? You think about breaking news the way that it's covered now i think that i would love to see that if it exists anywhere but wow i love it when i have a guest on who was on the air that night like periodically i mentioned humble howard a few times but ingrid schumacher for example like she was on the air on chum fm the night john lennon died like just like you know when you could actually like turn on a dime and just play Beatles records. Right. Like today, I feel like everything would be so automated. It would be like, who can stop this automation so I can play a magazine?

Well, this is the great challenge going into this weekend. Right. It's a crazy storm coming and everybody's on holiday and everything's automated Christmas music for, you know, 64 hours or whatever. What are you going to do when the power goes out? Right. People are going to hear the radio. They're going to hear Bing Crosby. They want to know when the power is coming back.

No, good point, my friend. Good point here. So let's do because I do want I do absolutely want to get blue because we haven't been that blue. OK, but we have blue coming, especially with the great Peter Silverman. Here is the promo for the Scab Dukes.

Friday, it's the all-new season premiere of the Dukes of Hazzard with the return of Enos. Along with two new Dukes. And they could be too hot for Hazzard to handle. I'm a advanced Duke. Along with two new Dukes. Somebody up there hates me. And they could be too hot for Hazard to handle.

Then, a special preview of Bring Him Back Alive takes you to Singapore where the prize is gold and the price is danger for the intrepid Frank Buck. I bring him back alive. Following the season premiere of the Dukes of Hazard Friday. Do you have any memory of Bring Him Back Alive? Only that it was like a complete ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was meant to be like Raiders of the Lost Ark on a weekly basis. There was another show called Tales of the Golden Monkey that was the exact same thing that came on at the same season that was from the people that made Magnum P.I.

But what is so funny to me, Mike, and I'm so glad I found that promo, is that, you know, they're in a real pickle. The main actors have walked out. Tom Wopat and John Schneider. And John now manages the Blue Jays. How about that? And, you know, the executives are shitting their pants.

What are we going to do? And what is their biggest selling point of the new season of Dukes? The return of Enos. Like, a third-tier character who nobody gives a shit about.

And then it's like, oh oh and by the way there's a couple of new new dukes that's great and i remember you know i was a huge uh dukes of hazard kid like you loved it but what's funny is i think by that point even before we got to the scabs um i remember a very distinctly which would have been like 82 or 83 but i was a kid my parents were out and i had a babysitter at my house with me and my brother and it was like one of the first times i was like i guess i thought she was cute and it was like i was a kid but i was like oh you know this this is a cool girl. And I was being very conscious of, you know, being trying to be cool, like not to not to be an idiot. And it was a night that Dukes of Hazzard was on and she wanted to watch something else.

I can't remember. The Love Boat. Love Boat or Dynasty or some shit like that. Oh, yeah. And I was like, oh, no, no no we're gonna watch dukes of hazard i remember her looking at me going oh that's like a baby show and it just fucking slayed me i was like all right i'm done i'm done with this like i'm not i'm not i'm not going out like that let's watch love boat um and i was done with dukes but i definitely remember the playground being a buzz about what are these because it was another brunette and another blonde guy like so you had the same hair color and they were good looking guys or whatever but they were like

such like they weren't even like kirkland brand. They were just the yellow label. This was just the no-name dudes. They were byway. They were ciphers, man. They were byway. And watching that stuff now, it's kind of insane that even in the 80s, that the television executives thought people were so stupid, they would have just accepted that, oh, you know what? The General Lee is still doing

tricks and the police cars are getting bashed up so who cares this is a different couple of guys but certainly woe pat i mean woe pat was in django unchained like he's a awesome actor and he's got a new album because i got the pr email about the new tom woolpotpot album like he's still recording music and John Schneider you know to his credit very charming guy doesn't age at all so he's like the John Stamos the John Stamos of the Dukes or whatever it's a very hilarious

era and it seems to come up a lot in like you said with the people reference the new Dukes like they reference new coke or you know, weird things that happened in kind of the early to mid 80s where people were taken to be fools. And ultimately the consumer said, no, I'm not going to accept this.

Like I want my OG. I love it. I actually pulled to the very first, I guess the opening of that first episode of Koi and Vance. Let's just listen to a bit of this. Uncle Jesse, you know, after six years, I don't think I'm going to recognize my own cousins. Oh, I think you'll recognize them.

Now do you recognize me? Daisy. Uncle Jesse. Hey, Prince. How are you? This sure beats any port I've ever seen in the Merchant Marine. Sam, what if you're getting to wonder if you'd ever get here? I don't know who's going to get a welcome like this, we would have come back years ago.

Isn't that right, Coy? Shoot, we never would have left. Hey, Coy! Hey, Uncle Jesse, how you doing? Oh, you're here. Hey, you ain't changed one bit in six years. What do you mean, I ain't? Well, maybe your clothes shrunk a little.

Coy, I still don't know how to take you. Uncle Jesse, you still look like you could take us over your knee and pound some cents into us. Well, that would depend on how much cents you needed pounding into you. It's good to have you both home. It's good to be here. Matter of fact, when we were over here, we ran into that same old cooter wearing his same old hat. He's been wearing that hat for years. How about old Boss and Roscoe?

Are they still up to their same old dirty tricks? Oh, worse than ever. Now that Bo and Luke are gone, they're going to blame everything on y'all. Well, it wouldn't be Hazard without it. I reckon we can still give them two a run for the money. I know you're itching to give them two a run for the money, but we got a farm to take care of. Now, do you remember where Reed's Implement House is over in Capital City? Yes, sir.

Well, why don't you just run by there and pick up some tractor parts I got over there. Want to go along for the ride, Cousin Daisy? Sure. I'll see you later, Uncle Jesse. Sure. Okay. Want to ride in front with me? Sure.

Let's go riding up front, Cousin. Are they hitting on their cousin? Okay, so I could just listen to that. I got more, but it's just even that little clip is problematic. Like, forget the fact the Confederate flag is there on top of the general lead, but just. Well, it's funny, too, Mike, because, again, I don't know if you remember, but Dukes of Hazzard was ubiquitous for a long time. Like, it was on all the time.

It was on repeats all the time in the 80s. Of course, yeah. But then I got to say, like, around 89, it just, it went into the black hole. And for a long time, it was never, it was not released on videotape. It was not repeated. And a lot of people, I remember in the early, early days of the internet, like when it was called CompuServe, there was people talking about what, oh, Duke's a hazard. Like, do you remember that?

Was that real? Then it came back on a channel. I don't even know what it's called now. The Nashville Network. I remember it. Do you remember that was a huge, huge... It went from the Nashville Network to

the National... But first it was the National Network. Then it became Spike. Then it became Spike. And it was like wrestling and Star Trek. Right. But, yeah, the Nashville Network brought back Dukes. And the reason I remember it, I was in my first year of university.

I was smoking a lot of weed. And Dukes of Hazzard was suddenly on again every night. And so it was like, wow, this is wild. And I remember tuning in as a, I guess, 20-year-old or 19-year-old and seeing that through the lens of marijuana and age. And like you said, it's totally problematic for so many reasons, never mind the Confederate flag, just inn totally problematic for so many reasons. Never mind the Confederate flag. Right.

Just innuendo and just awkward stuff. But it was so crazy because it contrasts that with it was like a family show. Right. Like it was like the Waltons. Dude, I had the sheets. OK, I still I've kept on to the I've kept on to the pillowcase because it was I slept on Daisy Duke's face for years. Like I had the Dukes of Hazzard.. Like I had the Dukes of Hazzard. Yeah.

I had the Dukes of Hazzard sheets. I love that show so much. Okay. You mentioned weed. So let me do this. Uh, I mentioned Rob Proust loves you. He was on toast,

but so was Bob Willett. Bob Willett was in my basement and Bob Willett, at least one person tweeted at me that Bob Willett sounded a lot like Andy Polalis from Canna Cabana. So if you are looking for cannabis or cannabis accessories, person tweeted at me that Bob Ouellette sounded a lot like Andy Palalas from Canna Cabana. So if you are looking for cannabis or cannabis accessories, Canna Cabana will not be undersold. And there's over 140 locations across this country. In fact, Andy and I are scheduling the edibles episode for late January. And quite literally at the beginning of the edibles episode,

yours truly will take an edible and then we'll talk and we'll do our thing play some music and i will report back periodically on how i'm feeling how does that sound that sounds amazing i i would pay to see a toronto mic episode where you take whoever you want give them edibles and and watch some dukes oh my god a live commentary that'll be TMLX12 I think. I would love it. I love the Dukes and shout out to Coy and Vance. Where are they now? I have no idea. Okay, so moving on

because there's a lot of ground to cover here. Oh, you know what? I say moving on, but I can never really move on from the Dukes of Hazzard because I need to revisit a greatest hit. One of my very favorite finds by not Ray Fines or Joseph Fines, one of my great finds from Retro Ontario is this PSA that haunted me as a child.

Absolutely haunted me, and I think it haunted me because the kid in this ad playing with his broken General Lee, that was me, Ed. That was me! Dad, can you fix this? Sure, buddy. Go to bed. Now. Now! Are you sure your drinking isn't hurting anyone something to think about from the ontario ministry of health good fine ed wow hard hardcore you know that one

always comes up um because like you said everybody of a certain age at that time felt like they were that kid because we all had generally toys right and whether your father was mean or or drunk or not we could all empathize with that kid and i think that was a whoever came up i have yet to determine who actually wrote the script for that but whoever it, I hope they got a big raise because that one hit hard. It hit hard, man. It still does. Right between the eyes. It still does.

Absolutely. All right. This is Blue Christmas Crackers Volume 5. We promised some swearing. Do you have anything to say before I play the late, great Peter Silverman? Let's get a little blue, Mike. Here we go. I'm Peter Silverman, and we're out here looking for a demented killer

that's been terrorizing the streets of Toronto. Not only that, but his relationship with goats and sheep is somewhat questionable. We're going to get some answers. Hey, Silverman, what are you doing here? Who are you hiding in there, Cook? I'm not hiding anybody. You are a lying, senile motherfucker. You're hiding the cable killer. I know that. I want him. Yeah, fuck you. I'm gonna kill you, you camel fucker. I'm gonna kill you. You piece of shit. I'm gonna kill you, you camel fucker! I'm gonna kill you! You piece of shit! I'm gonna kick your fucking ass! If you're alive after this, Bob, it'll be a fucking miracle.

Good evening. If you're seeing us at home right now, you're one of the lucky few. The majority of cable subscribers in the GTA have been experiencing interruptions in their service. Stay tuned to city tv as we cover the unfolding story of the cable killer wow yeah so you know we've talked a lot of before about the speaker's corner christmas tapes right you know city tv bless them chum city not only running this unbelievable organization that provided hours of quality entertainment, they knew how to do AV at a Christmas party. And that comes from a Christmas tape

where they basically did this whole fake episode of City Pulse using all of the regular reporters um just full of cussing and in jokes that we'll never understand but i love that it you know somehow found its way to you and now me and here we are airing it in 2022 like it's gonna live forever man well i felt like silverman passed last year and i i know we course, we spoke about him a little bit on the Christmas Crackers, but what a legend. But part of the fun of what I do, Mike, as you know, is find these old bits of news and bits of people. And so even after they're gone, it's like fresh Silverman. It just adds to the legend, right? just it buttresses the legend of silverman

and what a what a hardcore guy like just nothing more needs to be did i tell you i had a brunch with a gentleman who claims he's the nephew of the guy that peter silverman you know grabs by the scruff of the neck or whatever watch it it, buddy. Yeah. Like, yeah. So it's like, and it's like, I was so fascinated. And that's another great retro Ontario find is when I could finally hear the audio that was just bouncing around my cranium for so many years. Peter Silverman saying, watch it, buddy. Oh man. I mean that again, what was funny was when it was missing, I had it in my mind in a certain way. And then when I found it, I realized it probably only aired, you know, for a couple of months on the promo. But then it was gone and it was something else.

But it clearly resonated, you know, with you and with me and with other people. And that's what I love is putting that stuff back out in circulation, you know? Absolutely. Now, I want to let the FOTMs listening know that we're going to borrow a page from the Mark Weisblatt handbook here. And very, very soon, we will talk about a few people we lost in 2022. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. And on that note, I would be remiss if I didn't tell

you that just yesterday, Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home came over and we recorded a wonderful episode of his podcast, Life's Undertaking, in which he played his three favorite Christmas songs of all time. And then we shared stories and reminisced about it. And it was a wonderful, wonderful episode. So if you want to hear more of me and a lot of Brad Jones and some great music that Brad loves, that is the latest episode of Life's Undertaking from Ridley Funeral Home.

Ed Conroy, this recording's long and I'm happy to play it all. This might be a perfect time for you to get a pee break in there, but you need to give it a little context before I press play. The cable guy. Yeah, I mean, the segue from the cable killer and the cussing seems perfect. People are either going to remember what this is

or they're going to think that we've lost the plot either one is fine but no let's play it and we'll we'll re-adjourn in what 15 minutes so the whole series is I actually I will probably I have listened to this I'm going to

play it in its entirety but I'm going to actually leave my post for a moment but I'll be back before this ends so if you're wondering where I went, but let's get this going and then let's take care of some business and we'll meet back here in four minutes. Sounds good. There's some fucking service. You cocksuckers.

I pay for the fucking shit. Why don't you fucking bring it on? Thicky, you bunch of fucking bastards. Where's the fucking cable? I've been paying you slut fucking assholes all along and I got no fucking TV. Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck do you want for fuck all? I've been phoning all these goddamn cocksucking fucking numbers you got in this fucking phone book and they're all busy.

Well, my cable's fucked and you're going to hear from me anyway. You bunch of goddamn cocksucking fucking bastards. I don't want to sell fuck-all. I want to watch fucking TV. You cocksucking fucking hoovers, you got all these fucking numbers in the goddamn cocksucking fucking phone book, and they're all fucking busy. I'm a worker, man. I pay your cocksucking fucking bill.

Why in the name of Jesus goddamn cocksucking fucking mill. Why in the name of Jesus goddamn cock-sucking fucking craze can you not supply me the goddamn motherfucking orange fucking goddamn cock-sucking fucking service? Hello, you dogan-faced, motherfucking, cocksucking, whore and slut. Goddamn, by the Jesus, fucking, goddamn, slut, fucking, bastard. Where's the fucking cable? Pay him for the fucking shit,

and I ain't fucking getting it. Get out of there, you bunch of fucking TV. Where's the service, you bunch of goddamn fucking bastards? I hate paying for stuff I don't have. I cannot watch your auto magazine if I do not have the service. I've been phoning all the other numbers that's been ringing busy. This is the only number I've been able to get a ring from.

So where's the cop-sucking-god whore and slut by the Jesus fucking church? It's me again, motherfuckers. I have no fucking cable. You bunch of goddamn whore and slut fucking overpaid cop-suckers are doing fuck all for what I'm paying you. Jesus Christ, you ought to try to do what I do for a fucking living. Hello, motherfuckers. My cable's back on. Thank you very much.

Ed Conroy, please tell those of us in the dark exactly what we just listened to. Had you never heard that before? I don't remember it. Okay, so that to me was like an early early viral

hit, if you will, because I heard that off of somebody had that on a cassette cassette tape in the late 80s at a party. And it was like, oh, you got to check this out. And it got passed around and other people throughout the years would would have that on on a cassette tape. And then finally, you know, it ended up on YouTube, of course. But, you know, what's hilarious about it, I sort of investigated it a bit this last year. It came back in my mind because I don't know who's your internet service provider. Bell 5. Oh,

there you go. I'm Mr. Rogers. And I don't know if you remember July the eighth of this year, but the dog was royally farced on July. And, um, I thought about that guy back in the eighties,

you know, just, just losing it because he couldn't watch Auto Mag. But basically, it was this poor old guy. It was from Kingston, Kingston, Ontario. Wow. And it was CableNet was the sort of Rogers of Kingston at the time. And the guy was the producer of Auto Mag magazine,

which was one of those programs you might remember on Channel 10, where it would just be pictures of old shitty cars. And it would say, this is 500 bucks. Call Frank at this number if you want to buy this car. So clearly there was an outage. This guy was absolutely furious that he couldn't watch his AutoMag show and he left 42 42 distinct uh vile messages on this poor uh poor channel's answering phone and answering machine and so this guy took the tape and it was then edited. There's multiple versions with different songs.

I think that Beethoven is the funniest one, but yeah, it's just, it's like I said, it came to mind when, when July the 8th happened. And it also is just way before YouTube, way before social media, before the internet, it was something that people you would hear at parties and cool people had that cassette of that guy. And it was just the most vulgar thing. Love it.

And it is Blue Christmas Crackers Volume 5. It's blue. And I was kind of like, you know, I didn't coordinate this with you. I was like, oh, for sure Mike will know about this. Yeah, you know what? I should know about it oh it's so canadian and like so that the language like dogan faced that's like such a like an ontario like anti-catholic slur um you wouldn't hear that anywhere else but i think this thing is like got a life of its own so love it anyways hopefully somebody out there listen that's what this is man

christmas crackers you don't know what you're gonna get like it's a dumping ground for some found audio some classic stuff and just bringing some of this stuff to light that maybe if you miss that then you now you know like now now when you hear it you have some kind of frame of reference or whatnot so we are going to pay tribute to some fallen soldiers, if you will. I just want to shout out a couple more sponsors very quickly. One is Raymond James Canada. They got a great podcast

called the Advantaged Investor Podcast. It features insights from leading professionals, providing valuable perspective for Canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed, and focused on long-term success. Hosted by Chris Cooksey.

Subscribe now. And while you're subscribing to great podcasts, the Yes, We Are Open podcast, award-winning podcast from Moneris, telling the stories of Canadian small businesses and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity. Everyone can go right now to yesweareopenpodcast.com. Subscribe. Hosted by FOTM Al Grego. Al Grego, I believe, has been to 11 of 11 TMLX events. And well, that's pretty damn awesome. So who's in that group? Michael Lang's in that group.

We lost Rush Mike from that group. But Rush Mike will be 11 for 12, I'm sure, in the spring. So I digress here. How do you want to preface this, Mr. Conroy? Maybe you can just let me know when you're ready for me to play some audio. Well, you know, I already felt like I was stepping on Mark Weisblatt's turf here because, you know, there's nobody better at doing the reminiscences of fallen soldiers, as you say. Nobody does it better. was born in the UK and the UK was a second home to me and and two like major uh forces in in in that scene died this week so I thought you know we can talk obviously it's sad and it sucks but

their songs uh are being played right now and they're songs of hope. So it's a great way to celebrate their lives. So, yeah. Let's listen and I'll bring it down and we'll talk a little more about who we lost. Enjoy yourself It's later than you think Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the thing. The years go by, as quickly as you wait. Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think Hello, hi, I'm Terry and I'm going to enjoy myself first It's good to be wise when you're young

Cos you can only be young but for once Enjoy yourself and have lots of fun So good I left my friend and it never dawned Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think Enjoy yourself while you're still in the ring. The years go by as quickly as you win. Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself the stater than you think. Enjoy yourself, the specials.

Mr. Terry Hall of the specials died on Tuesday. And, you know, the specials, I don't know if you were into Ska or into that whole scene. This is the second wave, right? This is the, with the, yeah, like I was into it casually. Like there were some big jams that, like madness and all this stuff that you couldn't miss. Yeah, they were, they were, I mean, I guess first wave would have been Jamaica, but yeah,

that was the madness, the selector specials. And I remember because I grew up in, uh, in Scarborough, there was a lot of dudes like older, older dudes, older black dudes that were in the Scott that would play at our dances.

Like when we were kids would play Ghost Town and the specials. And I think, you know, again, being a little bit older now and looking at the UK at that time and how much there was this racial strife and just a lot of heavy stuff going on. And the specials were this band that were,

you know, they were like half white, half black. And they were singing about unity and about good times, bad times. And I just I remember distinctly thinking there's nothing like that here. Like there wasn't any Canadian or American band that I knew of that was as, you know as into that sound and that scene. And then I remember too seeing them on the new music because they would play the police picnic I think in one of the police

picnics the specials played. And so yeah, Mr. Terry Hall very young guy. I think he was in his 50s. No, 63 maybe. But still very young to leave us. I think he's in his 60s? No, 63 maybe. He's still very young to leave us. I think he's in his 60s, early 60s.

Far too young regardless. And that song, it always got me because they were kids when they were singing that song. But the theme of that, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

Right. What a great vibe wow okay i'm going right into the next jam and then again i'll pull out and we'll talk about someone else we lost Thank you. Thank you. Sounds amazing, man. Yeah, man. Summer 96. That was a big track so we lost martin duffy martin duffy of primal scream scott scotland's finest acid house outfit um again maybe you know to some people that

that is an obscure name but train spottingting, that's the title track from the Trainspotting soundtrack. It was huge, Summer 96. And Primal Scream is a band, is a Scottish band. Absolutely incredible. You know, started out as kind of alternative rock and then got into Acid House. you know, started out as kind of alternative rock and then got into Acid House. The most famous album is probably Screamadelica, which was this sort of fusion of Acid House music and alternative rock.

Played a lot of that, you know, heard a lot of that on CFNY back in the day. But for my money, their greatest album was from 1997. It was called Vanishing Point. And Train Spunning is also on that album. And it's sort of a concept album based on an American film called Vanishing Point. Which incidentally, our buddy Bob Segarini did some songs on the soundtrack of the original Vanishing Point when he was in a band called The Wackers. Of course. But it's this idea, you know, Mike, I'm fascinated by this idea of people in other countries

that absorb the culture and sort of do their version of it. that absol absorb the culture and and sort of do their version of it and it's like these scottish guys that are into like uh rock and and reggae music and dub and watching these old american films and then doing like sort of a faux soundtrack to that and martin duffy was the keyboardist uh for primal scream and he was absolutely the most talented guy and respected and he died you know i think 12 hours after terry hall and it was like that one two punch if you're if you're like into uk music i'm sure our boy rob pruse he knows man um that was heavy heavy heavy shit so here I'll put a title together here so your Port Perry

buddy is Hayden Christensen right so he plays Anakin Skywalker who is being mentored by Obi-Wan Kenobi who is being played by Ewan McGregor who stars in a film called Train

Spotting. Good work there, radio host. Thanks, Jerry. Man, oh man. Okay. I actually have a clip I pulled here to remember somebody else, but I'm going to, before I play it, I'm just going to bring down this fantastic Primal Screen Jam.

I watched, I mentioned earlier, I watched The Silent Partner and I loved it very much. And there's John Candy's in there. Hey, John Candy! This was an early, you know, this was like 78 or something. So there's John Candy, but he's not with somebody, like, previously

I feel like we would have seen him with a guy named Lawrence Dane, right? Wouldn't it be John Candy and Lawrence Dane together? Find the lady. Yeah, right. So just there, there he is. No, no Lawrence Dane, but we're going to talk about Lawrence. But before I do that in, uh, I've been mentioning some, uh, new FOTMs from 2022. One is Cynthia Dale.

And when Cynthia Dale came on Toronto Mic'd, we played a clip from one of her movies. It also happened to feature my good friend, FOTM Hall of Famer, like yourself, Ed, Stu Stone. So I'm just going to play this clip and then we're going to talk about lawrence here we go i'm tired darling don't you think you've had enough it's late just a bit more okay mom okay now let's fetch the guns and things, said Huck.

No, Huck, leave them there. They're just the tricks that we have to go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time and we'll hold our order. Mom, how do you say O-R-G-I-E-S? What? What are you reading? Tom Sawyer. Oh.

Now, how do you say that word? Org. Orgies. Just orgies. Now hurry up and finish that page, okay? And we'll hold Just orgies. Now hurry up and finish that page, okay? And we'll hold our orgies. Mom, what's an orgies? Do you remember what I told you about a man and woman being in love and making babies?

Yes. Well, an orgy is people doing that without the love that makes it so nice. How come Tom Sawyer's going to have an orgy? I think he's talking about something the pirates are going to do. Do you have an orgy, Mom? No. In fact, your mom hasn't had a lot of anything lately. So, there's a clip from a movie called Heavenly Bodies.

Cynthia Dale and her on-screen son, my friend Stu Stone. That was a perennial super channel classic. Heavenly Bodies. That was our attempt at a flash dance. Is that fair to say?

I think so. It was sold abroad as much riskier than it was. I think it might have been Weisbott posted the German teaser on YouTube. It shows how it was sort of sold to Europeans. And it was much racier. I mean, it's clearly not an appropriate movie how did stew stone survive that my goodness i remember him being a kid in like wayne and

schuster specials yes yes but talking about orgies with cynthia dale that's hardcore and that was that movie was directed by lawrence dane. The one and only picture he directed. Wow. So tell us a bit about Lawrence. We have, of course, discussed him with Mark Wiseblood, but for those who maybe didn't want to invest the three hours in that episode of 1236 Toronto Mic'd, who are listening to Christmas Crackers,

who was Lawrence Dane? Well, Lawrence Dane, I mean, he's the epitome of a working Canadian actor. He was in everything, Night Heat, Littleest Hobo, My Secret Identity, you know, that level of television. But also in tons of Hollywood films, he was just a work at actor. And so when there was productions in town, he would get a gig. He only directed, yeah, that one, that one film, it would have been great. I hope somebody out there somewhere interviewed him and asked what, why he didn't pursue directing after heavenly bodies. Like it's kind of a weird One off But you know he did like commercials

I recently found I actually Gonna put it on the retro Ontario YouTube Channel shortly a commercial He did for like shreddies It's so weird Like just random early 80s shreddies Commercial with Lawrence Dane but yeah Like you said he was

John Candy's partner In this series of Films where they played policemen. There was Find the Lady, and then I forget, I always forget what the second one is called. But he, it's this great dynamic of, he's kind of the straight man policeman, and Candy's like the wacky policeman. And there's one, and I don't know if it's the first or second one, where Isaac Hayes is like this crazy drugged out guy and they're interrogating him in this warehouse. And yeah, if you're into SCTV and you're into John Candy and that whole scene, Lawrence Dane was sort of, you know,

a Candyman before his time. And so, again, he passed away this year and i'm sure weisblot's memorial was the best because not a lot of people picked up on it right it just sort of went under the radar well that's where you and and mark weisblot come in uh handed and that's why i'm actually missing my daily 1236 newsletter. Yeah, man. I think October was my last issue, but the good news is that Wise Blot is scheduled to be in this basement next week.

Oh, okay. So live on the mic, I can find out what's going on with my 1236 newsletter. Well, you know what? I know this had nothing to do with him, but I felt as a viewer or as a subscriber to his ethos that the newsletter ended and there was sort of, okay, we're working on the next, you know, the 2.0. And then Twitter got fucked sideways. And it was like, it just felt like a big sea change

of everything that's a one two punch that we were dealing with although Twitter as fucked up as it is it's still fully functional for me I'm actually going down of that ship I can still follow you and the people I want to follow

likewise I appreciate that you just do your thing on twitter what i can't abide by is the nia 1236 avoided this as well as the number of people they just for the last like month and a half is all of their content is whining about twitter like fuck off it's just a channel like just do your content don't fall if you don't like what somebody tweets about what you think about it right like if youtube starts to go down i will go down like the band on the tight right playing right as it goes down i won't start saying well this sucks that it's going down right no i know so i basically like i'm kind of popping my popcorn

and watching the show like it's kind of fascinating to me. What does Elon do next and what's happening here? And what ridiculous poll is it binding? Like it's just, I'm just kind of enjoying the show or whatever. In the meantime, if there's somebody, now he's not back on Twitter, but if somebody like, I don't know, Donald Trump goes back on Twitter. And if I don't want to read what Donald Trump is tweeting, because it triggers me or upsets

me there's this wonderful function in Twitter I'm going to let the world know about it right now there's two actual wonderful functions one you can block this tweeter and you'll never see their tweets even if somebody retweets it you'll just never see a Donald Trump tweet the other one that I've been utilizing lately uh not only for users but but also for certain keywords. If the word Wordle is in a tweet, I don't see it. I use the mute capability like crazy. Every day you're tweeting your Wordle stuff,

good for you, but I've chosen to opt out of that, for example, and I don't see any of that. It's empowering as a user that I can kind of curate the content I see, and I'm feeling fine. It's functional. I get to, I'm enjoying it. You're there. I'm there. But the 1236

vacuum is noticeable. Yes, I agree. I agree. And I know he was very public on my show about how St. Joseph's media and him they parted ways I think at the end of September or something like that. And then it's not a coincidence that the newsletter sort of took went on hiatus now he still got his uh

contact list and i think he's been spending some time mr he's gonna explain next week on toronto mike what the heck is going on but mark's been like planning that next move like where does he go from here and i think he's been pondering that for the last couple of months. I'm hopeful in early 2023 that we get some more wise blot. Well, yeah. The world needs more wise blot. Give him

my best, please, when he's down there. Oh, yeah. He's a big Retro Ontario fan. You know that. We're like the triumvirate here. Now, please, before we say goodbye here, some lowest of the low, Tommy Ambrose. What say you about

Tommy? Well, my good friend, Tommy Ambrose, sort of, I think a legend up here, just did an incredible amount of work in the music industry and the television industry. I'm hoping maybe one of your listeners might be able to help us with this.

A bit of a question here. He did an absolutely wonderful album a few years ago of Frank Sinatra covers. It's called Songs Sinatra Taught Me. And it's actually available if you still have a CD player. You can buy it on Amazon. It exists, right you can play it there right um and he you know he's old school i mean he's very old school and you might know this on xm radio there is a sinatra digital channel, of course, right? And obviously they play mostly Sinatra, but they also play a lot of other bands

or other artists covering Sinatra. And so he has been asking me for a long time, Eddie, can you help me get onto that channel? Because, you know, of course he should be on there that the the versions i've heard the covers i've heard are nowhere close to the quality absolute quality covers that tommy did of frank songs but it's insane in 2022 trying to get in touch with a human being at xm it's serious right there is only like a portal where you have to upload stuff and link to stuff and it's it's totally crazy i've investigated it i've tried to help him but it's i feel like it would be the greatest gift anybody could give

to a fellow canadian superstar Canadian superstar is how do you get something into the hands of programming at XM radio? So on that note, yeah, he put out a Christmas album many, many years ago in the 1970s. And that was his heyday and lovely, lovely album.

But this song i sent you i love it because it was written by gary gray and gary gray also wrote the lyrics of people city which that was their big jam right and you did that great documentary on that and thank you thank you kindly for remembering that but those guys were the lennon and mccartney of the advertising world and they did this Christmas song and I got a lot of airplay and in the 70s but it's kind of fallen off the map and it's very old school but it's a nice way to send out 2022 and good vibes for 2023 and give a little prayer. Pray for honest love With respect for one another We must start as a friend Before ending as a brother Give a prayer for Christmas

A simple, simple prayer Pray to make us better To make us more aware Pray for understanding The truth that can be heard A language so full of love You hear the meaning and not the word Give a breath of freshness A simple, simple prayer Okay, FOTMs, we have our marching orders from Retro Ontario's own Ed Conroy.

We have to get a contact at SiriusXM. We've got to see what we can do to get Tommy Ambrose on the Sinatra channel with his great covers of Frank Sinatra. This is a great Christmas song that I've never heard before, Ed. This is great. Yeah, man. I mean, Tommy was all about the good times

and the Merry Christmases. Yeah, and he's had a few Merry Christmases. And on that note, Christmas Crackers Volume 5, just off the charts great, brother. I can't wait till next December when we do Volume 6. I love these episodes.

And I love you, man. I love you too, brother. I really hope that I see you before that because man, it's been far too long. ... ... ...

... ... ...... away and that brings us to the end of our 1174th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Ed Conroy is at Retro Ontario. What a great follow he is. His YouTube channel is like the greatest YouTube channel in the history of YouTube.

So subscribe to that too. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Thank you, Great Lakes, for the Octopus Wants to Fight. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. I owe Ed a lasagna. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Moneris is at Moneris. Raymond James Canada are at Raymond James CDN. Recycle My Electronics are at E-P-R-A underscore Canada.

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For the festivus episode With my friend Elvis Oh, you know that's true because everything is coming up rosy and gray. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow won't stay today. And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Because everything is rosy and gray. Cause everything is rosy and green Well, I've been told that there's a sucker born every day But I wonder who

Yeah, I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of green Cause I know that's true Yes I do I know it's true Yeah I know it's true

How about you? Oh they're picking up trash and they're putting down rogues And they're brokering stocks the class struggle explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am But who gives a damn because

Everything is coming up rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow warms me today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and gray Well, I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain. And I've kissed you in places I better not name. And I've seen the sun go down on Chaclacour.

But I like it much better going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Warms us today And your smile is fine

And it's just like mine And it won't go away Because everything is rosy now. Everything is rosy and everything is rosy and gray. Thank you.