Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Ed the Sock: Toronto Mike'd #94

Episode Date: October 29, 2014

Mike chats with Ed the Sock about Jian Ghomeshi and Ford Nation, and Steven Kerzner about the storied career of Ed the Sock on Canadian television.

Welcome to the 94th episode of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomic.com and joining me this week is Stephen Kersner, creator of Ed the Sock and Ed the Sock himself. Welcome both of you to the Toronto Night Podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get on with it. Just don't be doing that the whole interview, okay? Shut up!

Now, Ed, you know, I'd prefer you didn't smoke down here. My son actually sleeps around the corner. Oh, is that so? Don't worry, this is one of those vapor ones. I don't think it's all just water vapor. Oh, that's okay. Apparently those, though, Ed, are actually, there's something, there's nicotine or something. Shut up already!

What, I can't have, now I can't have water vapor for crying out loud? Oh, it's a pleasure. Is it going to be like this back and forth, fighting for the mic the entire time? This is ridiculous. No, Ed. Easy review, shut up then. It's an honest pleasure to have you, because, pleasure to have both of you here, because I've been a long-time fan of you, Ed, your work.

Well, that's great. I always like to go into the basement of someone who says they've been a long-time fan. Yeah, that's okay. I can agree with him there. Now, Ed, did you ever work with Gian Gomeschi? You know what? I would love to talk about that, but it was a long ride here, and I got to use the toilet.

You got one upstairs, right? I passed by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does it have a window? Because it's going to need a window. It does, yeah. All right, I'm not, you know, just, it have a window because it's gonna need a window it does yeah all right i'm not you know just it was a long ride i had breakfast this is disgusting um i'm gonna go upstairs and use that and then i'll come back down later you got a magazine yeah i don't know if you'd enjoy it but uh i do have some magazines up there you don't know if i

enjoy it what kind of magazines do you have up there what do you got architectural digest what do you got in the bathroom to read? You got some parenting magazines right up your ass. Oh, that'd be awesome. I see you take parenting seriously. You only read them occasionally when you're in the crapper. All right, I'm going to go up there. Thank God he's going to go. There goes Ed. So Stephen, it's just you and I here. Just you and I for now. For now? Cool. I wanted to talk to you about the origin of the Ed the Sock character. Not really a character. He's sort of a force of life more than anything.

It's funny because I went back about a week ago to the studio where Ed first appeared on television. And it was sold after, like, it was a private cable company. Rogers bought it. And Ed was created before Rogers bought it. And then Rogers eventually closed it. And it was sold. And a guy who owned first a travel agency and then a bail bonds type

organization took the studio over. But he kept the studio portion in the back. The front offices and stuff are there. He kept the studio portion. And we actually went and shot a couple episodes of the I Hate Hollywood show. Okay. That I had on Channel 11. We actually shot a couple of episodes in the original studio where Ed came from.

Cool. Up in northwest North York. And at the time, I was a program director of the station, and I was all of 18 and had all these toys to work with. And there was a show. I had done a show, an entertainment show, as me earlier on in my career. I started when I was like 14. And then I moved into sort of

a political sphere. And there was a political portion of my life. And I was doing a lot of political broadcasting, sort of debates, and then just open line stuff. And I had a friend who was really, really funny, who revived one of my earlier entertainment shows, like a talk show. But he never really knew the rhythm to tv okay he didn't know when to go to breaks he didn't know when an interview was really over because there was nothing else to talk about so we needed a co-host and the co-host had to be somebody who was at the station all the time because my friend would come in when he had time so um i wasn't going to do it as me um because i'm not really co-hosthost type guy, but also I was doing political stuff.

I couldn't really go back and forth. So we'd been joking about these two adults we knew. They were characters in their own right. And we'd been doing sort of, me and my friends were doing sort of impressions, especially me, impressions of these guys. So I sort of combined those two people. One was a older guy who claimed to be this womanizer, but nobody believed him. And the other was this odd guy who would like sit there at dinner looking at, remember when they

made those smoky plastic ketchup bottles? So it wasn't clear plastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he'd sit there and I remember him saying, it's smoky. Because we were all looking at him like, what are you doing? It was a friend's stepdad. And he's just holding

the ketchup bottle in front of him and we're all eating and he's just looking at this ketchup bottle. And we're like, everyone gets quiet and he realizes

everyone's looking at him and he goes, it's smoky. You think there's smoke in there? I don't taste any smoke in the ketchup. And so it was this bizarre mix of these two personalities. So these two guys, you kind of merge them together in exactly this persona. I went to the kids' show sort of section, if you can call it that.

It was the smallest cable station in the world. But is this Newton Cable? Newton Cable, yeah. Okay. And there was basically a big filing cabinet or cupboard that had all kinds of props from everything, all kinds of crap. So there was arts and crafts stuff there from the kids' show. So I grabbed a sock. It was a brown sock at the time.

That was what was there. The park set was basically green fun fur to be grass. Cut some of that off. Took glue sticks and took the eyes off and took the little O's from letter set letters. Used to be those little vinyl letters you'd apply. I took the centers of the O's. we had, I had a cigar around. I don't remember why. And then combined the two personalities and became this character.

Wow. You know, speaking just real quickly on the nude and cable, I was chatting with Mike Wilner because he's coming on after the world series, which ends tonight and maybe next episode or the one after, depends on a few factors, but he's coming in soon. And he was telling me, I mentioned, Ed DeSoc was coming in this week, and he said that you were the producer for Let's Talk Sports.

Am I right about this, or am I getting the right... Was it Mike and Aaron hosting Let's Talk Sports, or am I got the wrong show? What, Let's Talk Sports, the radio show? No, it was on Cable 10. Oh, I was the executive producer. Okay. The producer probably was my brother, Mitch, who was doing all the sports stuff.

And Mitch is now the senior executive producer of Hockey Night in Canada. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he's come a long way. Kind of a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

He's done a great job. I just thought it was kind of bizarre that you guys kind of intersected early in your Well, there's so many people in broadcasting in Toronto who all intersected or came from the same place. Like the station I started at, Newton Cable, when I had started, Mike Landsberg and Steve Paken were doing a sports show, phone-in show together. Oh, Steve was doing sports. Yeah.

He was doing sports with Mike, and they started there. There's other people who started there, and I don't remember who, but a lot of people who became somebody came through there. Cool. Because we didn't have that rigid structure that Rogers did. In fact, we had no structure. Well, you know, it's like that Tom Green-esque vibe where you just kind of can be creative and do something different. Well, you know, it's like that Tom Green-esque vibe where you just kind of can be

creative and do something different. It was totally creative. And I mean, to describe the original station before we moved into a better place, the lights, the lighting grid was made of plumbing tubes. The lights themselves were cast offs from the city. They were the lights that road crews used to work at night. So they gave off horrible flat light okay okay and we never moved the lights we just moved the chairs to suit the lights we never and the chairs were these uh swivel chairs like these upholstered uh swivel chairs and so people were constantly swiveling in them nervously and we would stick pens in the thing to stop it from being able to swivel and then invariably you'd hear a crunch and they'd start swiveling again because they'd broken the pen um man it was all made of cast ops but you know the greatest experience anybody could ever have um all these toys to play with all this

creativity no no uh you know organizational structure no uh difficulty in like let's just do stuff right and i maintained that when I took over the station. We moved to a better place up the street. It was a better studio. But it was still, the stranger somebody was, the faster I put them on television. Because we had no money. Literally, the owners would buy furniture and give us the cardboard boxes from the furniture. Like we were kids, like little rascals making a clubhouse.

And we used it. Our sports debate desk was a very large cardboard box from a couch yeah that cloth thrown over top of it and every time someone tried to make a strong point they'd pound the table yeah and we used little poster tubes try to reinforce it and the whole thing would just collapse hilarious every day we laughed almost to the point of crying over something it was great experience the good old days. They really are and they don't exist anymore. Tell me though, so my memory of Ed the Sock starts with me and my brothers tuning in to watch Harland Williams and Ed the Sock. Yeah, Harland was the second host.

Okay, so who was the first host? Because I don't remember anything pre-Harland. His name was Stan Glass. He was a bald, high-voiced, whiny guy, still is likely, who had been doing singles programming

on TV and he was just such a whiner that he was a perfect foil for Ed because in those days, Ed would just beat the crap out of him verbally and so would the guests eventually um i'm thinking of putting some of those online just to see how far it's come but yeah um stan was he talked with his hands like ed you can't say that and just constantly ed would just beat the crap out of him i'd love to see that he was one of these people that nobody

felt sorry for yeah like even though he ed was taking shots at everything about this guy's life you never felt sorry for the guy. You're like, yeah, do it again. So he was the first host. And then he got busy. He got a job, finally. So he couldn't come in regularly. And Harland had been a fan of Ed's, I guess, on cable.

And we connected through John Oakley, who at that time, he's 6'40 now, but the time he was at 1010, doing the overnight show. So Harland and I connected and Harland came in and he was the host. He did 20 episodes? You know, I mean, I remember Harland. I remember he was hilarious. I never heard of Harland Williams until the show with Ed. And then I just thought it was very funny. Thank you. Harland was a great,land was a great fit because he was bizarre in a different way from Ed, but he knew how to facilitate, and we worked well together. Harland was a great – I still have to this day the plant that he – when he moved to L.A., I went by his apartment to say goodbye, and he'd already been gone, but his door was open. So I was like, oh, the door's open.

So I went inside, and the only thing that was left was on the balcony. There was two plants. Harland's plants. And I felt bad that they like, oh, the door's open. So I went inside and the only thing that was left was on the balcony there was two plants. Harlan's plants. And I felt bad that they were being abandoned so I took them and to this day and this is 25 years ago so I still have his plants.

They're still alive. That's hilarious. Did you know at the time that Harlan Williams would become a big effing deal? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, the only reason that he stopped hosting the show

is because he moved to LA and we had, you know, we clearly had no budget to fly him in. But we had a great time together, you know, working together. And it's only 20 episodes, eh? Yeah. Because you know how the memory works. Like, to me, it felt obviously much longer.

Yeah, no, 20 episodes. And he, I mean, he's an inventive genius. And we had to shoot a lot in a row because he was only in town, you know. So we, in order to make the set, we were trying to upscale it at the time. So in order to make the set a little bit better, we went to Ikea and we bought a couch. We bought all kinds of furnishings and stuff. We shot a bunch of shows in a row and we boxed the stuff up and gave it back to Ikea and got our money back. That's funny.

Yeah, because, hey, listen, if you're going to have a no questionsed return policy, this is the kind of thing you have to be prepared for. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Because there was no way we had the budget for furnishings. Man, I know a guy who used to do trade shows. So he traveled to the USA or whatever, and he'd do like a trade booth thing, and he would go buy at like Best Buy or something. He'd buy like a $6,000 screen to show his PowerPoint on, and then right after the show, return it. He'd take it back.

Did it over and over and over again. Listen, if you're going to have a no-quest a no questions asked policy, you can't ask questions. You can't expect the world to be honest. And after, so you're still, this is still Cable 10 with Harlan Williams. And then Harlan went to LA and I found a guy named Eric Tunney, who was a standup comic. And to this day, I believe he's the best stand-up comic I've ever seen perform. Slick. Oh, he's wore that suit, right? Was it

tux or a suit? It was a suit. His hair was slicked back. He sort of called back to sort of an earlier era of stand-up comics in his appearance, but his material was really funny, and he never swore. He never had to go prurient or anything like that.

I'm sorry that people won't be able to see him perform anymore, and he never swore. He never had to go prurient or anything like that. It was very, I mean, just, I'm sorry that people won't be able to see him perform anymore because he was brilliant. Yeah, I want to talk about that because did you keep in touch with Eric after his Ed the Sock? No. No? No. There was, well, see, Eric was with the show

as it became very popular. Now, I agree that he was a reason that it became popular because the dichotomy of Ed, who's very rough around the edges, and this very smooth, slick guy who's trying to just get a decent interview in, because Eric was a trained interviewer as well, that balance, I think, is really what happened to Catch. And when we were about to go to City TV, we're about to make the jump, it's already been signed. Eric announced that he wasn't going to come with us, that he wanted his own television show. And the kids in the hall were friends with him,

and they were saying that Lorne Michaels was going to hook him up with something. You know, good for him. Fine with me. Sure, sure. But that never came to pass. He went to the U.S., got a couple of jobs and stuff, but he didn't find the satisfaction he was looking for. And unfortunately was found dead a couple of years ago at a very young age.

And I don't think I'm speaking out of school, but this was confirmed suicide, right? He took his own life or is that a little gray? I've not heard that it's confirmed suicide. Okay, it's suspected maybe. But it was related to alcohol use. He'd had some problems. He'd lost his dream, and it was unfortunate because the guy was still talented. I still expected, before I got that phone call,

I still expected that I was going to see him come back strong somewhere, that somewhere his talent would come through, and I was going to see him be big. And when I got that call, it was like I hadn't talked to him in years, but it was like being hit with a ton of bricks. To this day, I'm very upset about the fact that he's not with us anymore because we were there together at the beginning of something or near beginning of something. And we were never friends, but we were friendly.

I respected him. I thought he was very talented. but we were friendly. I respected him and I thought he was very talented. So you lose a bit of your past when someone passes away like that. I can imagine. So he took you basically to the City TV era. So did City TV buy the show

or how did that work that you moved from 10 to... At the time, Ralph Ben-Murgy was on CBC doing a show and it was just being pilloried everywhere. No matter how many times I tried to rejig it, it was being pilloried. At the same time, our show was on across the city and then eventually across the country on cable stations, Fridays at 11.30. So it was up, actually, I think it was up against his show.

And the press was saying that our show, made for a quarter, is more entertaining than their show, A Million Dollars an Episode. So I benefited from that comparison, which is unfortunate for Ralph, who's a very talented guy and continues to be. But that helped draw attention, but it was already getting attention. People were passing VHS tapes back and forth, which is what they did in those days. Yes.

And we actually were talking to the CBC. And then Moses came to, I had a partner at the time for production, and came to him and said, don't go to CBC, come to City. And I realized that at CBC, I'll get six episodes if I'm lucky, everyone will hate me. And the show will be gone. And that'll be the end of that. But City TV, there's room to grow. And it's the right culture. Yes. room to grow and it's the right culture yes um interestingly enough i had initially proposed it to moses and he sent back my my original letter to me with a little scrawled on it said sorry not our format what changed was that uh chum was going for the comedy channel license okay and they didn't have any comedy programming so it's very hard to go and apply for a license when you haven't got any example of what kind of programming you'd put on so they needed a show quickly that had a following that was already funny.

So it turned around that they wanted Ed on both City and Much Music. Makes sense. And then Humble Howard came aboard because we needed a co-host because Eric was gone. So Humble Howard, so how did you approach, so why did you approach him and why did you choose Humble Howard to be the original host on City TV? Well, Howard had been due, he had done one or two specials with Fred on cable. Yes. Like Humble and Fred dance parties or something.

It was bizarre, and I thought it was great, and the creativity was there, and I thought this could be a, it's actually funny because I actually called Howard looking for Dan Duran's phone number. Yeah. Because I thought Dan was more in the Eric Tunney mold. Yes, yes. But when Hummel and I talked,

it was clear that this could be something that could work between us. And so we'd auditioned a lot of people. And let me tell you something, people think it's easy to do that job. It is not easy to be a straight man to a puppet who can interrupt you at any time and stuff like that. It's tough. And so we couldn't find anybody who was really comfortable any known people like anybody you can drop some names of people that didn't make the cut but we might know um you might know some of the comedians but i'm

not going to say their names um and uh we had one guy who replaced eric for a few cable episodes he was a very good um comedian and i thought he was good, but my production partner didn't like him. They didn't have a strong enough on-camera presence. You've got Ed the Sock, who's strong enough for 10 on-camera presences, and this guy was no shrinking violet. He was good. I thought he was good, but they insisted on a change, so I went looking again, auditioned people, and found Howard. And then away we went.

Humble Howard and I are buddies, and I once interviewed him for TorontoMic.com. And I think you know where I'm going here, but I'm going to quote Humble Howard and just let you respond so we can get this on the record here. Sure. But this is back in 2006, by the way. So we were chatting about him being on Ed's night party on City TV. And he said, I quote, I don't want to say anything about Ed or the midget that

has his hand up his ass that hasn't already been said by just about everyone that's met him. So, I mean, I only just met you. You seem like a pleasant, charming guy. So far, so good. I don't know where that's coming from but i probably uh miscommunication something went down howard hosted for two seasons yeah and um

he and then city tv was going for a bunch of chum was going for a bunch of licenses for channels so they had no time to assign a producer there as a contact so the show continued in reruns for 18 months so imagine it was like 22 episodes 18 months it just ran it was repeat after repeat after repeat and the numbers just dropped and because who wants to see this yeah of course of course um when we got the go ahead for season three the thinking was we need to go in a slightly different direction and also visually the show had to look like when someone flipped by the channel, they had to realize, oh, this is different. If they saw Howard there, they might think it's another rerun. And Howard was never quite comfortable in the role of a straight man, which makes sense because Howard is the funny guy.

You know, Fred is the straight man. He's dry and very funny, but different. Howard is more of the character, and he's excellent at that. He had to sort of submerge that to be with, and that's not a natural fit for him, and it didn't feel comfortable. And so we, you know, he fulfilled his two contracts, and then we let him know that we wouldn't be renewing him,

and we said that you can say that you left on your own. You know, you chose to go in other directions. He no i'm gonna say i was fired and that's completely i mean that that's his nature he's an honest guy he's not gonna bullshit he doesn't bullshit who you hear on the radio is who he is so i respect that um and uh then we didn't talk for years and there was some bad blood, I guess. Then years later, when Ed hit number one against Leno and Letterman, there was a little tour organized for the press, and they booked me on Howard's show. Howard was still stinging at the time

because no one had really explained to him what was going on. No one had explained to him what the reasoning was. For him, it was just a rejection. There was some bureaucracy involved in those days. And I regret that that's what he carried for that many years, because it was not a rejection of him. And nor saying that he doesn't have talent, because that clearly is not true. Howard and I have completely mended fences. Cool. When I was working producing and head writing on Strombo last year, I had lead writing, sorry. He, I booked him on the panel and stuff like that. We get along and I've been on his show, his, and I think what he's done with him and Fred have done with that podcast is absolutely inspiring. Because here's a couple of guys who typical Canadian entertainment.

These guys have ongoing cachet, ongoing audience, continued talent, maybe even better than they were before because they're older and sharper and stuff. And yet Canadian media, Canadian radio is all, no, we need new people, new people, new, new, new, new, new. Which is ridiculous because it's always hard to draw people to new personalities. And here's people who, they're a legend. And the fact that they went out and made a go of it and are actually doing what they're good at and making a living at it is really inspiring and a really good sense of what the Internet is possible to do. And I'm glad for them.

I mean, they're doing their upcoming, their 25th anniversary. 25th, yeah. Yeah, and I was invited to be there by Howard, and it's great. Are you going? Oh, yeah. Oh, I'll see you there. Yeah, absolutely. At the horseshoe.

Yeah. I'll see you there. I think that what they did is amazing and a lesson to lots of us in Canadian media. So no bad blood whatsoever. No bad blood whatsoever. I'm not certain what he was referencing about how nothing that hasn't been said by other people. Now, early in my career, I was a little rough because I was in my 20s. I needed to make a go of this thing.

And there was all kinds of people telling me what I needed to change with Ed. And I was like, no, I'm not. I mean, the changes were ridiculous. Some of the things they wanted, just sanded the edges off, made them bland. Yeah, you don't want to sanitize Ed. And I was like, no, I'm not. I mean, the changes were ridiculous. Some of the things they wanted to sanded the edges off, made them bland. Yeah. You don't want to sanitize Ed. It defeats the whole purpose of Ed. Right. And they wanted this horrible material. And I just was very intransigent about saying no. I'll tell you that at the time, this is how far back it goes, there was a lot of stories about Roseanne being really difficult and hard to work with because she kept going in and yelling at her writers that the material wasn't good. And, you know, I discovered the other side of that story, which is that, you know, Roseanne,

her face and name are on that show. The writers aren't. So if the stuff isn't good enough, she wears it. And if she doesn't feel it's good enough for her name or face to be on it, she has a right to say so because I had to do the same thing. This show with Ed was my thing. It was my breakout thing. I'd been in cable for years.

It was my breakout thing. I wasn't – and if it didn't succeed, it would be me that wore it, not the people who were advising me to change it because they'd just go on to the next thing. It would be me. people who are advising me to change it because they just go on to the next thing it would be me so it's like if it's going to fail it's going to fail based on something that i believed in as opposed to it fails because i agreed to do these things i knew were wrong and then i'll kick my own ass the rest of my life right and that makes sense to me you're just protecting your the integrity of your baby yeah and uh you know there was people who there's people in the entertainment business who consider you difficult if you don't drop and grab your ankles the minute they tell you to.

And I'm not an ankle grabber. And so in order to maintain anything with any kind of vision, though I'm not considering this to be like – I'm not saying that this is the Sistine Chapel. But in order to maintain some consistent voice, you have to fight. I mean, look at Moses Neimer, brilliant guy. He created cultural footprints that were well outside of the size of the actual broadcast audience. It was huge, never done before and not done since. Moses isn't the most pleasant guy to talk to.

Moses is hard-headed, but you need to be, because if he hadn't been that, people would have said his vision was ridiculous. Anybody with new ideas, there's no shortage of people saying why it won't work, and why you're an idiot for even trying it. You have to have that thick skin. You have to be convinced of your own,

the correctness of your thinking in order to go forward and make this stuff happen. It makes sense to me. You know, on that note of all the cool stuff Moses did, such as bringing on Ed the Sock, you notice once Rogers took over, slowly, slowly, piece by piece, they kind of sanitized and kind of... What, City TV, you mean?

City TV, yes. Well, don't just look at City, look at Much Music as well. Yeah, absolutely. CTV took over. Like, interesting things that... I grew up with, like, Speaker's Corner and Ed the Sock, and even, like, little things, like, Silverman Helps and different, like,

different little kind of cool, funky things. But those are the things you think about when you think of City TV, right? And that's exactly what the problem was for Rogers. Rogers bought a channel. They didn't know what to do with it. They had not been in that kind of broadcasting before. It had been, you know, multicultural.

And the culture of City TV, Much Music, was inseparable from the product. They didn't know how... It was not their culture. They're a different culture. Definitely. And they wanted to make City TV theirs. They didn't want to be compared, I think,

against the yardstick of what Chum did. They wanted to say, we're doing something completely different. So those things you mentioned, like Speaker's Corner, like Silverman, like Ed, all of which were doing quite well, it was determined that the overall change to the station is worth losing things that are making money.

And that's why they did it. And they paid billions of dollars. They have every right to change the furniture. Right. So, and CTV, a different story. It seems that the attitude there was, well, we've got money, so we know how to change the furniture. CTV, a different story. It seems that the attitude there was, well, we've got money, so we know how to do this better. No, that's exactly the wrong attitude.

The truth is, before even CTV took over, Much Music was dying. I quit for a reason. Tell me how Ed ends up on Much Music. Basically, he was a VJ, right? Initially, a host of a show called Smasher Trash with Steve Anthony. We'd bring on panelists and play videos and decide if it was a hit or a miss. Yeah, I remember. It was a host of a show called Smasher Trash with Steve Anthony and we'd bring on panelists and play videos

and decide if it was a hit or a miss. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. It was a piece of shit. It was just an awful show.

At first, they said they thought it was Steve Anthony. I mean, Steve was great to work with and still a brilliant guy. So they kept rotating new hosts in

and it was actually that it was a stiff format. The way it was staged was bad. So I was glad to let that go. And then I actually spent a couple of years not on much music and then went back. But I was with City the entire time through and started doing VJ stuff. And there was a lot of people there who didn't appreciate what Ed brought to the channel because it was very new. It was his honesty.

It was saying that the videos were crap. the channel because it was very new it was just honesty it was saying that the videos were crap it was saying that some of their promotions and stuff like that were were unethical or you know bad messaging like laying the soul of the station bare and some people didn't believe in that but there's a guy named dave kines who was at the time i think general manager um but he was basically the guy hands-on and he believed in what ed was and he championed him. And he was eventually borne out that it worked. But it also was that Ed also matured and evolved so that he wasn't what he was when he started. Denise Donlan always said that every time Ed was on TV, she chewed pencils. You know what was going to be said. But eventually... But he matured. Yeah. And became more of a

commentator using that honesty rather than insulting people and doing borscht belt shit. But he matured. We grew in that direction. And then certainly everything blew up with Fromage and Woodstock, which were both in the same year, 99. So Fromage, I looked forward to these Fromage specials every New Year's or whenever they aired. Yeah. And they were great. So how many years of Fromage, how many Fromages did we get from Ed? We got, well, I did two of them previously,

but they were produced and written by somebody else, and they weren't great. It was the previous version of fromage, which really took just videos nobody had ever seen before and made fun of them, which to me is like shooting fish in a barrel. Sure, sure. So Ed hosted from 99 through 2006. Okay, great. I keep thinking we need an Ed DeSoc doing these fromages now. Well, I'm going to be doing it again this year online. Online, okay.

I did it last year online limited because of the ice storm. So all the publicity we planned to do online, the whole show that we planned to do online was cut down to like 12 minutes because that's all with the power outage for six days of the edit suite. That's all we could put together. But it was like the star mentioned it and shit like that. So this year we're planning to go bigger. We're planning to do what we did before, which is audience star mentioned it and shit like that. So this year we're planning to go bigger. We're planning to do what we did before,

which is audience gets to vote and stuff like that. It's on a site called metal eater.com. And I've been talking to a broadcaster about their digital platform being a home for this as well, but I'm still early on that. but there's not a day goes by. People don't tell me how much they love from us. I mean,

I'm 40. I don't know if that much they love fromage yeah i mean i'm 40 i don't know if that's the wheel the guys the guys in their 30s and you know late 30s and i think early 40s this was just yeah it was it was a regular holiday tradition and it was a family tradition too i keep we used to sit with my sister and my dad and people it reached across generations um which is great and uh you know the only reason that... The funny thing is that Formage was going to die before I took it over because the guy who'd produced it for years went to another channel

and nobody had picked it up. Nobody was going to do anything with it. So my wife and I, my wife, Liana, who's always produced and co-written everything with me, the white tend to always... People tend to think it's all me. Absolutely not. It's her.

We decided let's pick up fromage and do it ourselves. So we made, it's 99. We're going to make it the millennium edition. So we went and grabbed videotapes from the library on our own. No one knew why. We wrote and put and edited and put this whole thing together ourselves and then just handed it in. They said, what's this? I said, it's fromage.

I said, we weren't doing fromage this year. I said, well, now we are. Cool. And that's where it blew up from. That's cool. And Leanna Kay, we're going to get to this in a minute because at some point she uh becomes a co-host for ed that's right and this is i think so you and i don't you're going to help me out with these specifics here but uh it gets

racier ed's night party gets racier as it goes on it does yeah yeah so is this a does it is it still on city tv and then we it gets uh sort of more adult themed it's still on City TV and then it gets sort of more adult themed? It's still on City. I mean, it was on City TV 14 years. And sort of the turning point was I stopped making it a talk show because I thought the couch and chair thing is just – the minute somebody sits down, it's dull. There's no kinetic. It's dull. And also difficult to get decent names to come and be on your couch.

So instead, we would go to la book celebrities or sort of quasi celebrities and shoot pieces with them doing things you know like activities and stuff one of them happened to be we did a porn star and it ended with ed in bed her naked riding him and ed screaming like he's being hurt and um shot from the side so you don't see the front, you don't see the nibbles and stuff, you don't see a lot of the ass because we put the blanket up there. But it's clearly she's riding and having sex with the puppet. And that was sort of a turning point because we got banned in the West.

Alberta stopped carrying us because of that. But the show, we realized that there was – one of my ruling ethics in my early career was that, listen, I was I'm a Jewish kid who was raised at a time when it was OK to be politely anti-Semitic. And I went to a school that had some Jewish kids, mostly not. And I you know, it's not a sob story. I never I didn't get, you know, traumatized, but there was a lot of anti-Semitism directed towards me. And that made me rather than making me want to blend in, it made me proud not to. And wanting to tweak the nose of the establishment that said, this is the way things are. And so that was,

in my early career, that was certainly an engine, which is, I want to do things which say, no, fuck you. We don't have to do things the way you approve of and that's sort of where things grew and i don't remember where the idea for the hot tub came to for me um the dancers were season two i added them because i thought they were a good way to bridge in and out of the breaks because otherwise it was dull panning to the audience every time okay um and uh then the hot tub came into it, and it just became nuts. And it was more like burlesque. It was like vaudeville burlesque is what it became, and we talked about a broader range of topics.

It was, you know, I had never seen or heard Howard Stern. I'd heard of him, but never, but it was like Stern was doing at that time in a way, which is breaking the conventions of what you can't talk about. We were doing it for a Canadian audience, which is a different arena than the U.S. And it was all about tweaking. It was, and finding a lot of people out there who agreed that, no, we do not need to conform to what, you know,

mayonnaise culture says we can do. And this is pre, I don't want to get the name right here but ed and red's night party so this evolves into ed and red's and red being leanna k yeah who is your wife yeah um she had been a producer on the show since season three and a and co-writer um craig campbell comedian had been the host uh but craig lived in england he moved to england and um could only we could only book when he was available to fly into town he'd fly in the night before we'd tape the entire weekend then he'd go out it was becoming a pretty difficult situation um and at the time also he'd hosted uh a number of seasons and i thought i always tried to evolve the show i always

tried to get bored before the audience so it it always evolved. You'd see changes year to year, but it's slow. Yeah, I know the feeling. Once you're bored, you know it's time to change. Yeah, they're going to be bored shortly after you. So I thought it's time for a change. And we did one episode where it was like staff workday. So we moved staff around to different roles. So we moved the producer up to co-hosting is one of the things

and the director said to me that's the show right there um and so brought her on and uh she you know was the great co-host she uh because she knows you know she wrote ed for years and wrote not that the stuff was scripted the only thing that was hard scripted was fromage the rest of the stuff was just general uh this is what we're going to do. This is the topic. Here's some points. But she knew how to do the rhythms and stuff like that, which I mentioned earlier was not easy. And we gained a whole different audience as a result of it.

She adopted because she was sort of persuaded. She was a shy kid, camera shy, shy kid, an intellectual. But she happened to have large breasts and red hair and she's a pretty girl. And so the audience responded to that. So we went with that. Did a lot of stuff based around her cleavage and her outfits were all cleavage and stuff like that,

which she regrets right now. And I can understand why. And I sort of do too, because people then tended to see her as just a pair of tits. And when in fact you talk to her for five, five minutes, or even five seconds, you realize she is so on another level with the stuff she's aware of and her knowledge and, and, and, and depth of things.

It's a crime that people viewed her that way. And also people always thought that she was just the wife the only reason she's there is she's the wife oh sure right you never are going to get somebody who some people you're always going to get people who say who say that um despite the fact that she's showing her chops and knows what she's doing you're going to get people like that and i got all the credit for the success of fromage i got all the credit for all the success of ed which is not which is because credit for all the success of Ed, which is not, which is because I guess, because I'm there with Ed.

But she deserved, you know, so much credit that she never got. And it's a tough thing because she's brilliant. But people, they're realizing this online now because she's writing about video games and Gamergate and all this other stuff. And she writes about the philosophy, the thoughts, the social issues and stuff behind video games.

And people are reading it and saying, saying wow this is a very smart woman so she's moved into that area sort of video game journalism see the advantage you had of course is that when you speak through ed it's it's not you no one sees you it's an ed talking but when she's liana k she's it's her it's her exactly she's she's not playing a character with a different name right it was, and that sticks with you. And she believed people were a lot more open-minded than they are, and they're not. No, they aren't. But she and you move on to do some radio, right?

Like some 1010 news talk. Yeah, it was just me. It was me, me, not Ed and her. It was me and... Right. Actually, yeah. So Stephen and Leanna Kay. It was just Stephen and Leanna. And we did Sunday nights on CFRB, as it was called, for two years. We also did daytimes in the summer when people were away. So we covered a lot. It was weird because we covered the discovery of Tory Stafford's body. We had to seg from a light topic to that. Yeah, you got some heavy lifting there.

We covered the Tamils who took over the Gardner. We covered that by accident. We happened to be on the air, and we were the people there. And I said that was some great – And people go to – I know a bunch of people when news hits, they go to 1010. This is what they do. And so we were the people covering that. And everyone agreed that we'd done a damn good job of it

without any preparation or anything. We just pivoted. Because I think broadcasters can broadcast about anything. That's why people were making trouble about George going from Strombo Tonight to Hockey Night in Canada. George is a broadcaster. He's a professional. You put him in any environment and he will conquer it.

He will be at home and he will make the best of it. Not everybody's a broadcaster. Some people are niche casters. George Strombolampoulos has told me, Mike, I want to come on your show. He said, because my, Jeff Merrick is a good close friend of his and Jeff Merrick came on the show. He had a good time on the show and he told me, Mike, I want to come on your show. He said, because Jeff Merrick is a good close friend of his, and Jeff Merrick came on the show. He had a good time on the show,

and he told George, you've got to do Toronto Mike. And then I got a text from George about, yeah, I want to come on in the fall. I can't get George to commit to a date and time to get in here. You've got to help me with that. I will do my best. George is exceptionally busy, pulled in a lot of directions. He's got a lot of, I mean, he's a creative guy who does business stuff on the side.

He's a very, very smart guy. He's more than what you see in front of the camera. And so George can be difficult to nail down. And it's not because he doesn't want to or he's trying to be evasive. It's because he's got so many balls in the air. He's waiting on other people to tell him when they're going to have a meeting. No, sure. Yeah.

And I know at times it can feel totally get that but it's not because uh he originally he was in la at the time and he's like he's gonna bike back to toronto and we're gonna do it when anyways i just if you could just maybe just help i absolutely let him know you had a great time on toronto mike send him a text right now yeah that's what jeff did yeah yeah real time i love it don't expect that i'm gonna going to get an instant answer because today is Wednesday and it's a busy day for him. Okay, so keep talking. Yeah, absolutely. Because I do want to talk to you about Conan O'Brien. Sure.

Because I actually was, me and my brother Steve went to the Elgin Theatre, I think Elgin Winter Gardens or wherever the heck they were shooting the Conan show in 04 when he came to Toronto. Yeah. And I was there when they aired the Triumph the, I want to get the name.

Insult comic dog. This guy. I get the name wrong all the time. Yeah, Triumph the insult comic dog who talked to Quebecers or something.

That's interesting, by the way. Thanks, awesome. There was some controversy about it being anti-French, I believe. But that aside, come on, who are we kidding? This Triumph the Message sent, by the way. Thanks, awesome. There was some controversy about it being anti-French, I believe. But that aside, come on, who are we kidding?

This Triumph the Insult comic dog is a total ripoff of Ed the Sock. Yeah, well, he's a ripoff of where Ed was at the time that Triumph ripped Ed off. Ed has advanced beyond there. But yeah, I was at the time dealing with the talent booker at Conan O'Brien and sent tapes and they were interested in having Ed become a character. And we had conversations over the phone and stuff. And then later, all of a sudden, one day, no, we're not interested. That must have pissed you off. Just like that.

And then a couple weeks later, their head writer has this character that he created come on. And yeah, it pissed me off um because it's it was so clearly um inspired by like there's no way you can argue that when someone when there's tapes around the office and people are talking about it that you had no contact with it i'm in tv i know there's i know how things go you knew you saw it i don't understand how he could possibly have not been exposed to it he said it was individual you, he created it on his own. Whatever. The thing is that Ed now, Ed's hosted documentaries that were finalists for like broadcasting awards on public affairs issues.

You're not going to see the dog puppet do that. Ed's breadth is so much further than just doing Borscht Belt stuff, which is what that dog does. He's got a, he had a sort of one line, I think it was, to poop on. I think that was the crux of the triumph. I kid, I kid. I kid, I kid.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, American comedy is very heavily fixated on taglines. Did you consider suing or anything legal? Yeah, I thought about it. But to be honest with you, I thought about suing, not so much to, to win. Um, though I thought I would, but suing to get the publicity. So people who liked the dog would be curious about Ed, but the truth is that Americans always root for the hometown guy. And what I didn't want was, uh, his friends in the entertainment media, which he had many saying, uh, he ripped off. Yeah,

it might've been a rip off or it might have been inspired by or it's similar, but it's way better. This head-to-sock thing is shit. So I didn't want them circling their wagons and then making me look like an idiot. So it was too much of a roll of the dice, too expensive to roll the dice on something like that, even to just do a press release,

enough to actually sue somebody to do a press release. I just said, you know what? Fuck it. He's doing what he's doing. I'm evolving in another direction. What are you going to do? How are you going to fight the Americans? I get it. But when you see something about triumph on TV, does it make your blood boil?

And just I think it would piss me off. Like I would just be very angry. I'm annoyed, but my blood is far from boiling. My blood boils easily. Yeah. You know what? It's what we almost had a deal for a TV show in the States a couple of times. But one time they're like, well, we had agreed to do a show with Triumph, so we can't do two. Oh, that sucks. And that show only went a year on Comedy Central. But, you know, whatever. Water under the bridge. And what is next for Ed? So you mentioned you're going to do a fromage thing online.

But where is Ed today these days? Not specifically right now. I'm hoping he comes back here. No, he's upstairs in your bathroom. Because I want to talk to him about Gian Gomeschi. That's what the nation wants to speak about. But what's next for Ed, and where is he these days? These days, Ed has got a syndicated radio thing

on Canada's Top 20 Countdown. It's not in the Toronto market, which goes on every week. Liana has a geek download segment on the same radio show. Cool. And other than that, Ed sort of went away after August 2013 because that was when I ended the Channel 11 show, I Hate Hollywood. Right. I pulled the plug on that. It was a primetime show, and I was when I ended the Channel 11 show, I Hate Hollywood. Right. I pulled the plug on that.

It was a primetime show, and I was very happy with the show, but not happy with who I was dealing with. So Ed went away, and right now there's places that are interested, and we're having discussions. The odd thing is that you'll talk to some places, and they'll say, you know, Ed's so popular on Much Music and City TV, and people love him, so we don't think we can put him on our channel, which is like, what world, what bizarro world is this in? Like, it doesn't make any sense.

It's like, well, Ed was so associated and so popular on Much Music and City TV. Yeah, that makes no sense at all. So what? So was Rick and George, and they moved on to things. It doesn't make sense. It's lazy thinking, and it's counterintuitive to broadcasting which is a popularity contest and you've got if you've got a recognizable name it's money in the bank it's brand equity but i got a buddy in the industry who says in canada there's this thing

where we sort of like eat our young sort of like we almost hold back people for being popular is there yeah something this is a very canadian thing right yeah it's extremely so this was america and ed had that success highly in demand i'd be on an island somewhere you know sunning myself um yeah in the states if somebody has if you're like a third banana on a sitcom you can get a show on the travel channel you know anything where if your name is recognized you are it is money in the bank because it's so hard to get names recognized let alone loved you know and you know liked um so it's a dumb thing the problem isn't in the u.s making television shows is a business in canada making television shows is the cost of doing business interesting they only make them so that they can buy the american shows that make them the

advertising revenue so if the show is a success or a failure, it doesn't matter. They still have to put the same chunk of money in next year so they can buy the American shows. It's like if your kid's lemonade stand turns a profit, great, that isn't that cute. But it wasn't what you set it up for in the first place. So that's why the strictures that apply in the U.S. where they're not going to let any asset get away

and a name is an asset. Here, they don't give a shit. And nobody makes decisions here. It's a shame, right? Damn shame. Yeah, and nobody makes decisions here. It's all committees. And committee decisions are always safe because everyone makes a decision in committees

because nobody wants to make a decision. Speaking of Canadian media decisions, actually, I'm going to hold these questions for Ed. One quick thing about Leanna doing the gaming stuff is that on my Twitter feed and everywhere, I'm hearing about Gamergate, and I kind of dive in a bit to try to figure out what it is, and I just got to plead ignorance.

I don't expect you to... I know you're not Leanna. I don't expect you to touch on it, but just if she listens. She's been cited in Forbes and everywhere else about this issue. Yeah, it's a big deal, this Gamergate. I don't know what it is. She's on the forefront of it. Basically, you know what?

I have to understand it. It's a big deal, this Gamergate. I don't know what it is. She's on the forefront of it. Basically, you know what? I have to understand it. It's some gamers. There was a few articles that came out that basically said that the notion of the neckbeard guy gamer is no longer dominant. They no longer dominate the video game industry as consumers, and it's no longer their fiefdom. And they got really upset about it and saw that it was a conspiracy because these articles came out on the same day.

I'm sure I'm not getting all this right. It's fine. And then a right-wing guy got involved, and it's just, ugh, it's aggravating. But it gives Leanna a lot of content. Well, the thing is, she's been beat up by both sides because she's saying, no, both of you guys have points, and both of you guys are being ridiculous.

So she's been on streams and interviews for hours, constantly talking to guys at Slate and stuff like that. Cool. Because she's the only reasonable voice on the thing because she's very strong. Very strong. She's a third wave feminist. But she's not siding with the feminists on this because she says they are overstating the case and missing the point and misrepresenting what feminism you know is in a bad way so that's that that's gamer gate that's in a nutshell yeah all right is this ed looks like he's coming back here good because i got some if he can uh i i don't know can i how long can i stay parked out front there because i

can i i should probably go move it yeah yeah uh i don't really want to be to be honest i don't really want to be on with it. We did a show on 1010 where we both... You did a great job giving me that background, but Canada wants to talk. All right, well, let me... Why don't you do a little thing and I'll go up... I've got to go rattle the door because he might be...

Listen, he may be very involved in your magazine. Let me just go see what's going on. Get this guy. Awesome. All right, I'm coming. All right. It's a very interesting magazine. Ed, I thought we lost you there. That was a long time you were in the washroom, man.

It was a fascinating article on diaper rash. Did you open the window? I didn't know. Oh, the window's wide open. I put a stick in it to make sure it doesn't close. Light a match. Good. And the match, you're going to need the Olympic torch, man. I had some food.

I don't know what the hell I ate last night, but it didn't come out smelling like it went in. That's a TMI there for sure. That's what I'll say about that. Tell me, though, about, if you don't mind, did you, in your Canadian media travels, did you ever cross paths with Gian Gomeschi? Yeah, I did a couple

times. He was on my Much Music show. The first time he was ever on was before anybody had really heard of him. He was still pretty much Moxie Fruvis guy. Yes. Stuck in the 90s. And I didn't know how to pronounce his name. J-I-A-N. No experience with that. And everyone was referring to him around me as John. So I called him John. He said, oh, no, it's Gian. What is it, a little bit of racism there, Ed? And I was like, what the hell? I don't know how to pronounce your name, so I'm racist? Because it's not a name I come across every freaking day.

I'm a racist? Like, it was just, what kind of stupid bullshit is that? And then we finished the interview. I've seen him a couple times since, but, you know, it's like I said on my podcast this week, which you should go to, soundcloud.com. This is our Ed and Red's podcast. We did a whole podcast about Gian. I don't need to like him because he likes himself well enough for both of us.

Do you find him pretentious? Yeah, I do. I find him pretentious. I find that he believes he's gotten high on the smoke. People blow up his ass. I find that he believes he's gotten high on the smoke. People blow up his ass. He is in. He's come across to me as entitled and superior and nose in the air elite. And I don't listen. I'm not Doug Ford, but I've never liked legitimate elites elites not the ones he takes shot at and he's just elevated himself himself to the point of intelligentsia and i got no use for that do you think though that it was fair for the cbc to dismiss him based on accusations yeah well they're not even accusations he's somewhat confirming

the only question is whether it's consensual or non-consensual. Like, did you consent to walk in and have your face punched? You know, that kind of thing. So the argument is whether it's consensual or non-consensual. Apparently, he says the CBC doesn't dispute that it was consensual. However, it's a national broadcaster. It's part of the government. The government has certain rules of conduct. and even though it's his private life you can't really be a government committed to uh equality of women and to you know stopping violence against women you can't be a network which interviews people about violence against women and have a guy there who gets off on violence against women like you know when he did that thing about rape culture a little while ago uh would he ever be able to do that now, knowing that he enjoys beating up women?

He he would never be accepted as credible. And there's so many issues that he would not be accepted as credible on anymore because we know about his private life. So it's not like an office worker who does something at home and he shouldn't be fired at work because of it. It is a broadcaster. There's a whole different set of what you need to do to do your job, and that is pretty much you got to keep your freaking nose clean. I think they call this a morality clause, something to that effect. Yeah. Fancy word for it.

Yeah. If you do something that represents the company in a way that is negative, you can be let go. I don't know if that's in his contract. It's in most. I don't know that. All I know is if I'm working, if I'm a woman working with him, am I going to worry that he's, you know, sizing me up as a punching bag? You know, it's an uncomfortable. And if you're a woman who's, you know, very, very active on the violence against women thing, can you work with this guy?

I can understand how it's a problem in the workplace. I think they had the right to fire him, but what the hell do I know? I didn't read his freaking contract. Yeah. Now, you are a broadcaster. You've hosted some successful talk shows in this country. Thank you for boiling it all down to nothing like that. And more. Now, Q is a show without a host right now. Would you be interested in the job as host of Q?

Yeah, it would be a very different show. I'd be less preening and less pretentious. Listen, I'm no less sympathetic in a liberal sense than he is to a lot of these causes. I'm right there with him. I just don't preach about it for crying out loud. I understand where people're coming from. I would host Q, but this is all, you know, I would also fly if I had wings growing out of my ass.

None of this is going to happen. No interest from the CBC. You've never had a nibble from the CBC for your services. No, they've not. I don't think I'm what they have in mind for continuing the brand. Let's put it that way. Though they'd be smart to rebrand it at this point and just to drop Q and to create a new

show of a similar kind. Because it is. It's associated with him so much that he's the yardstick people are going to compare it to. Anything you do that's different than him, whether it's good or not good, is going to be compared against what he did. And it's not going to be favorable because no one can be him.

So the only way they should just change it, call it A. Although I did think maybe one guy could fill in his spot. I'm not sure he has the time because I just talked to Steven about him coming on my podcast, but Strombolopoulos is a name I always think I could actually go in there and do his interview thing. Oh, Strombol could do that in a walk. He could do that. He's a great interviewer.

Strombol could do that. And I'd love to see him do it. Do you think his pants are too tight? Why do you think I look at his pants? What do you think? I get the feedback. My eyes migrate below the waist on Strombo? No. Strombo doesn't exist

below the waist for me. I don't even know what color his pants are. I have no interest in whether his pants are too tight. Only interest in whether his pants are too tight. Only he knows if his pants are too tight. Fair enough, fair enough. If he's affecting his swimmers, you know, or I don't know.

Is his circulation still working? That's all that really matters. Do you live in Toronto? More or less, yeah. Did you vote in the municipal election? Yeah. What did you think of the results, John Tory as the new mayor of Toronto? I was happy with John being the new mayor. I couldn't believe the number of buttheads that voted for that idiot Doug Ford. But it goes to show you that there is a rock solid core of people who feel

that people who are educated, well-spoken, law-abiding, doesn't represent them. Yeah, what's that about? This Ford Nation, you nailed it on the head there. It sounds like they don't like you because you're learned. Yeah, what do you got, them big 25-cent words? Like, what are you using, a word with three syllables? What are you trying to confuse me? These are people who, they don't care that Rob Ford broke the rules because these are people who believe that rules are there from the elite that are precisely the rules that have kept them down their whole life.

So they like somebody who flouts the rules. They like somebody who's ignorant and racist because they don't know. They no longer have to feel guilty for having those attitudes. Makes them feel normalized almost. Yeah, it's normalized. They're validated. A guy at one of the highest levels is just like them. So obviously their attitudes can't be so completely out of step.

They've got their avatar there, which makes them feel like they're valid, too. So, you know, the the people like to make racist remarks or things like that. They get protected by a guy like that. They get emboldened. And they're, you know, a bunch of knuckle-draggers. I'm sure some of them, their knuckles clear the ground a little bit. But in this election, there was no, none of this stuff saying, well, we want a conservative candidate.

We want a conservative. This wasn't about conservatives. You had John Tory. If you supported him, you supported caveman politics. Yes. You know, you talked about uh we were talking before off mic about wrestlemania robin doug ford were like a wrestler and his manager you know that it was exactly it was wrestlemania for four years there it was insane they just you know he even had

a chain of office which is like the belt yes um so and he was dethroned you know through the whole storyline um so the only thing missing was the folding chair. I'm pretty sure he beat Hulk Hogan in an arm wrestling match, too. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that that was rigged. Yeah. So, well, it depends how much motive Rob Ford had. If Hulk Hogan was holding his crack pipe, then he may have, in fact, had a surge of adrenaline

and been able to beat him just to make sure he could get his pipe. That's a good point. I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you. Been following your esteemed career for decades now, and you're a welcome voice on Canadian Airwaves. I want to hear more of you. It wasn't

always esteemed. When I started, everyone looked at me like I was some kind of asshole. Like, you know, get out of here. The adults are talking here. You're going to ruin Canadian broadcasting. You aren't what we're about. Over the years, I became esteemed. So now the media people, people in the media, they love me because I say the things they wish they could. Exactly. And that's basically it. I'm sort of Canada's inner voice.

Sort of like Don Cherry without the xenophobia. Is there a Don Cherry without the xenophobia? It's an empty jacket at that point in time. There's another gig for you when Don moves on, I think. Okay, I'll tell you this, that I actually have been lobbying for a position with Hockey Night in Canada. I have a short thing, 90 seconds, called Penalty Shot, which is like a combination of SNL Weekend Update and The Daily Show, for lack of a better comparison. But it's about hockey, about the players, the game. It's just this comedy, you know, sort of shots at the game.

And I'll say I'm in discussions with them about this. That would be awesome. And we got some contacts at Rogers, I understand. So get Strombo in his tight pants to whisper in the air. Maybe I won't say, hey, Strombo in the tight pants, will you give me a hand here? Strombo's always been a supporter, been a friend. I was the first guy to take him under my wing

when he started Much Music as a TV broadcaster. Do you notice the piercings have all disappeared? Well, why is that strange? Who has piercings now like they had when they were a kid? Nobody. That's a good point. You know, you grow up. People want them to

stay freeze-dried in like 1998 of course this the stuff's gonna go away he's becoming an adult he wants to spend less time with the silver polish oh that's a freaking good point actually uh you're podcasting now as you uh do you want to tell us again how we can hear your podcast and can you tell me a little bit how often you podcast? It's usually once a week. So it's on SoundCloud. It's soundcloud.com slash edthesock. I don't know. Go looking for the goddamn thing.

Ed, if you need help getting it on iTunes, you can talk to me. You know what? We did it for a while, and it was on iTunes, and iTunes loved it. They recommended it. Then I stopped. Do I hate Hollywood? And then I'm just bringing it back now. Yeah, I could get some help with iTunes.

Anytime. I can help you out with that shit. And don't forget, at EdTheSock is my Twitter. My Facebook page was shut down by Facebook. Because you're Sock? Yeah. They say I'm not real.

Well, fuck you. I'm more real than half the people there. So I'm negotiating with Facebook. I do have a fan page, but fan page is kind of not the same as a personal page. I got 5,000 friends on Facebook that don't know where to go now. That's interesting.

I'm on Facebook as Toronto Mike, but I guess I am a real person, just not my own. So am I, for crying out loud. I've been around 27 years. I've been in broadcasting longer than most people. Facebook's got to fix that. I'm going to play you out with some Toronto music, as they say.

Some lowest of the low. Oh, very nice. Wait, lowest of the low? Are you making a comment? Don't start now. And that brings us to the end of our 94th show. You can follow me on Twitter, at Toronto Mike. And Ed the Sock, at Ed the Sock.

See you all next week.