Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Larry MacInnis: Toronto Mike'd #1157

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

In this 1157th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Larry MacInnis, the longtime Creative Director of 1050 CHUM and CHUM FM about working with Tom Rivers, Jay Nelson, Roger, Rick & Marilyn, his Al Palladini and City Above Toronto spots, and so much more. 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.

Welcome to episode 1157 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals. Palma Pasta. Fresh, homemade Italian pasta and decals. Palma Pasta. Fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees.

The Yes, We Are Open podcast. A Mineris podcast production. The Advantage Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada. RecycleMyElectronics.ca Committing to our planet's future means

properly recycling our electronics of the past. Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. Canna Cabana. The lowest prices on cannabis. Guaranteed. And Sammy Cone Real Estate. Ask Sammy any real estate questions at Sammy.Cohn at ProperlyHomes.ca. Cohn is K-O-H-N, by the way. Joining me today, making his Toronto Mike debut, is the former longtime creative director of Chum and Chum FM, Larry McInnes. Welcome, Larry. Welcome, Mike. Nice to see you, man. Were there any cannabis ads on Roger, Rick, and Marilyn's show back in the day?

No, there were not. Although I was doing some creative consulting to Sumer Radio and the New Classical FM for a few years, and they did have some cannabis ads on that. Oh, CBD oil has a lot of therapeutic properties to them. And I would think that demo and their arthritis would thrive with CBD. Yeah, well, they were actually selling the cannabis on the premise that it helps you sleep better. It does, yeah. This was 2016 during the run-up to the American election between Trump and Clinton, Hillary Clinton.

Right, right. And the idea I had, they never went with it, but the idea I had was the commercial starts up and you hear Hail to the Chief, which is always played when the President of the United States walks through. And it goes on and on and then you hear suddenly, you hear the

Master of Arms at the Senate say, Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. And the announcer says, Having trouble sleeping? and that didn't fly though they were you were ahead of your time there okay so we're gonna get to you know you larry because you your name i don't think there'll be great name recognition like larry mcganis who's that but right off the top if you don't mind can i read a letter i got like it's an email but but I'm going to pretend it's a letter. It just sounds classier.

I'm going to shout out a gentleman. Tell me if you know this gentleman. Mike, and I hope I say his last name right, because I actually met him at TMLXX. Mike Ockamore? Right, Ockamore. Thank you. If you just hesitate long enough, your guest will tell you. Well, his name is so often mispronounced that I knew exactly who you were talking about. So Mike Ockamore, who I met again at Great Lakes Brewery.

By the way, Larry, you're leaving here with fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. So it was worth the drive from Markham. Mike O, as I will now refer to him so I don't butcher it, sent me a lovely note about you. Can I read this to you? Like, this is a great primer. So we get to know a little bit about you. And then you're going to take over over and i got some audio elements and this is going to be an amazing episode for everyone who loves toronto radio so again these are mike o's words but larry is the

former long-time creative director of chum and chum fm i had the pleasure of working with larry for about 30 years that's a long time so once a while, I'll do these sidebar tangents. I got to react to these things. He was my mentor and close friend. There isn't another radio creative director like him in Canada. He is the gold standard. I know you've interviewed Doug Thompson for your show. Ask Doug what he thinks of Larry.

Larry's role as creative director was unique. He didn't just oversee the radio creative department, all radio ads. He was really the fourth member of Roger, Rick, and Marilyn. He was the show's writer and director. In my opinion, Larry was just as important to that show as the three co-hosts were. Before Roger, Rick, and Marilyn came along,

Larry wrote jokes and material for his very good friend Tom Rivers when he was on 1050 Chum. Jay Nelson, too. On top of that, Larry was responsible for some of the biggest radio contests in the country. Other radio stations copied Chum's contest. Did you ever see the Chum FM TV ad featuring George Carlin? Larry wrote those. Larry has written some of the best ad campaigns in the country. He's responsible. I know you're getting embarrassed over there, Larry.

This is quite the, this is like you're getting the order of Canada. This is going to be the speech Mike's going to deliver. Okay. He's responsible for what is easily the most remembered radio campaign in Toronto in the 70s and 80s, Al Palladini's Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury.

I have a clip of that. We're going to get to that. Rick Moranis was the voice when Rick came back to Toronto to host the Juno Awards twice, I believe, on CBC. He hired Larry to write the show. I can't believe you're here, Larry. This is amazing.

Okay. Do you recall the City Above Toronto radio campaign for the city of Vaughan? It was a game changer for Vaughan. And that's a great, there's a great story behind it with Mel Lastman. Larry is also one of the best,

you can just have a nap. I'll be back to you, Larry. Larry is also one of the best. You can just have a nap. I'll be back to you, Larry. Larry is also one of the best storytellers I've ever met. And storytelling is vital to good radio advertising. No surprise that he's the best. Be sure to get his story about when baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson visited the Chum FM morning show. He was at the Scorsese SCTV reunion.

Larry, I'd do 90 minutes with you on that. Shoot that took place in Toronto. Moranis invited Larry and his wife as his guests. Okay, that's just like a nice email I got about you. Wow. Larry, how do you want to respond to Mike O's words there? Well, Mike is also a fantastic writer. I'll tell you a funny story about how I met Mike.

So Mike was hired by our creative, our copy director at the time, Dory Trowell. He was, hired him out of Hamilton and this would have been 1985. And I come off the morning show, it's about five after nine and Dory comes into my office and says, Larry, I'd like you to meet the writer we just hired, Mike Ockamore. Mike, I'm going to leave you with Larry to catch up, introduce yourself, tell Larry about your track record in Hamilton, et cetera, and then Dory left. And Mike sat down, I turned to Mike,

and it was a five after nine in the morning. I said, do you want a beer? Mike goes, what, do you want beer? I said, yeah. So I had a little bar fridge in the corner and we both cracked a beer and that was Mike's welcome to chum. Molson had dropped off some beer on the morning show that morning. So

Mike was, I think, coming from a smaller market kind of, oh, this is radio in Toronto. Yeah. So Mike's a very good friend of mine. Okay. Tremendous golfer as well. Like I said, he actually came to a Toronto Mike listener experience in September at Great Lakes Brewery. By the way, before I forget,

because we're going to start the journey with Larry here, but I'm inviting all FOTMs, including you, Larry, and, you know, Rick Moranis can come too if he wants. Everybody's invited to Palma's Kitchen. That's the Palma Pasta location in kind of near, I want to say Burnhamthorpe and Mavis is like your nearest major intersection. But in that hood of Mississauga, you have Palma's Kitchen and we have TMLX

11 taking place December 3rd from noon to 3pm. It's going to be awesome. We're going to get complimentary pasta, fresh pasta from Great Lakes. Larry, you're leaving here with a large lasagna from Palma Pastama pasta fantastic and we're also going to have some great legs beer there too so everybody is invited i wanted to get that out

of the way where do we begin with you larry like uh do you i almost want to start with tom rivers but can you maybe get us there first like did you love grow up loving radio what what made you want to get into radio well i've always wanted to be in radio. I'm from Cape Breton. I think everything begins there. Cape Breton is still a fantastic place. And it's amazing how many broadcasters, famous broadcasters across this country, are from Cape Breton or worked in Cape Breton. Do you want to name check any? Sure.

Bill Anderson, Brother Jake, Dave Reynolds. These are the nationally known ones. When I was a kid, Cape Breton had just three radio stations. It had the CBC station, it had Cheer, and it had CJCB, which also had the TV station. So CJCB especially was our Hollywood. These were our celebrities, and radio was always on in my, my home. And I loved radio. And I, because CJCB was block formatted, there was easy listening at crossover country in the morning. There was country music in the afternoon and there was the hits at night. And so I, I know all genres of music from those eras and really at a very early

age wanted to be in radio, but it, I'll tell you a story. When I was in grade eight, there was a career day at school. And Donny McIsaac, the sportscaster from CJCB in Sydney, was coming to speak. And so I wanted to sit in on that. And so he was fantastic. He spoke for about 45 minutes. I was about 13 years old, maybe 15 years old, 45 minutes. But at the end of his talk, his talk he said now are there any questions and a hand behind me i still remember the kid's name the kid's name was billy merit billy raised

his hand and he said um mr mckissick he said is it true that there's a radio station in toronto that plays hit music 24 hours a day and donnie mckissick and these are his exact words he said yes the great 10 50 chum and boom i knew then that that's where I wanted to work. Oh, wow. But I didn't get any guidance on that when I was a kid in school. The guidance counselor didn't direct me to any course or anything. And I ended up going to Acadia University taking English. And I was about six weeks into my first year at Acadia.

I'm in the dining hall one day at lunch with my then-girlfriend, and we're listening to the radio. And the local radio station, CKEN in Kentville, played farm reports and funeral announcements. Just like Les Nesman in WKP. Beautifully serviced local radio. But a song comes on a humble pie i don't

need no doctor is playing and i turned to the person beside me it's probably my girlfriend at the time i said where's this coming from and she said well it's a student radio station they have a student radio station i said what's that she said well anybody who wants to be on the radio can be on the radio here so i didn't even finish my my lunch. I took my tray off, I put it down, I went down to the student union building and joined up right away. And basically from the middle of October until April, I spent all my time at the student radio station

and knew pretty quickly I wasn't going to go back to finish my degree. So I spent the summer sending out tapes to every radio station in the Maritimes. I mean every radio station in the Maritimes. And nobody responded because I'm sure it was horrible. But I was hanging around at CJCB at night with guys I really admired and were really helpful to me.

Bill Anderson was very helpful to me. A guy named Dave Harley, George Aaron, people like that. I was making tapes, sending them out. And I get a call in August from Stan Carew, who later had a fantastic career on Maritime, CBC's uh, Saturday morning show, the most listened to morning show in the maritimes. Uh, but he was just a kid starting in himself. He's the program director at CKEC in New Glasgow. And he said, we, we don't have

any openings for announcers, but we have, um, an opening in the copy department. Would you like to take that? I didn't even know what a copy department was. He had to explain that they wrote commercials. So I said, yes. And so on Labor Day 1972, after Labor Day 1972, I started at CKAC New Glasgow and found out that not only was I being hired there, but they had never had a copy department before.

In the past, it was the salesperson wrote the commercial or the announcer wrote the commercial or the announcer wrote the commercial or the client wrote the commercial and so anything I did was better than what they had and because there were no rules and I was free to do these crazy things. I love that story I actually relate to it because in my

career I've had points where I was like the first digital marketing person this software company ever had and you get to design the template. Exactly. You get to drop the blueprint. It's really like a dream come true. Literally playing it by ear every day.

And it was so great. Everybody was about my age or maybe just a little younger. Right. Doug Freeman owned the company, was a former TV host and radio host at CJCB in Sydney. So I was very familiar with him. And I was there for nine months and about,

so I started in September and in February I'm working late one night and Frank Lowe, who was doing the night shift, walked in with an RPM magazine and they were, they were looking for a copywriter in St. Catherine's and Frank said, why don't you send a reel and see what they think? I said, well, Frank, I don't really want to go to Toronto. If I go to Toronto, I want to work in, if I don't really want to go to Ontario, if I go to Ontario, I want to work in Toronto.

And he said, well, send something anyway, see what they think. So I went in the control room, pulled a dozen carts or so, recorded them, sent them off to Marine Rogan at CKTB in St. Catharines and a week went by and I heard nothing. And a week went by and I heard nothing. And a month went by and I heard nothing. And two months go by and I hear nothing. And I just figure she's written me off. And one night I'm in my office and I pick up the RPM magazine and I realize the magazine is three years old. I've applied for a job that she posted three years ago.

And I said to myself, well, no wonder. She didn't write back. She thinks I'm crazy. Right. So on my birthday, this is a, this is a absolutely 100% true on my birthday. I'll tell you in case you want to send me a card, June 8th, um, 1973, the phone rings and I pick it up and a guy on the other end says, hi, my name is Mike Kornfeldt. I'm the copy director at Chum and Toronto. Would you like to work for us? Wow.

And because I hadn't applied there and because it was my birthday and because all my friends knew I wanted to work at Chum, I hung up. Oh, because you think it's a prank, right? I hung up. He called back and he said, I don't know what's going on there, but did you send a tape to CKTB in St. Catharines a couple of months ago? I said, yes. He said, well, we've been looking for somebody for two months now.

Catherine's a couple of months ago. I said, yes. She said, he said, well, we've been looking for somebody for two months now. And we finally reached out to people in the business that we know. And Maureen Rogan said, we don't, we, this kid sent me, it's really interesting stuff. You should listen to it. He said, I can't hire you without meeting you. Can you fly to Toronto next week? And I said, no, I can't because I'm the only writer here. And he said, well, I respect that. He said, what time do you take lunch? I said, well, I take it anytime. He said, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll be there for lunch

at one o'clock on Tuesday. So he flew to Halifax, rented a car, drove two hours, took me to lunch, hired me. Two weeks later, I'm in Toronto. Larry, I'm glad you like preface that story by saying it was true. Like I trust, even though I just met you, you have a trustworthy face. I believe it's true, but that is, that is, that is unbelievable. When people hear that story, they must think that's another one of your creative scripts. Well,

I'm going to tell you something. There's a lot of things you're going to hear today. If we get to them, that you're going to say that, well, I want to get to it. How did that possibly happen? So we arrived.

So, um, so they picked me up at the airport on a Sunday afternoon. Um, Mike, my new boss, Mike Kornfeld is in the passenger side. Lots of Mikes in this story.

In the front seat, right? And Steve Boyling, who is a writer, is driving the Chum Cruiser. And as we pull away from the airport, traffic is parting to let the Chum Cruiser through.

They're honking their horns. People are honking their horns, waving at the Chum Cruiser. And Mike in the front seat turns to me, he says, they think you're a star. And, um, and, and it was, you know, that's, that was my introduction to Toronto.

And, but my boss was extremely hard on me. And I, I, I appreciate that now, of course, as an adult, I appreciate the fact that he saw this kid with talent and no skills because i had nobody to teach me in new glasgow right um so he's very hard i mean very strict and i was lonesome and and um homesick and in october this was june in october i went in and quit now this is this is a story another one of these stories that are hard to believe if you've never worked for Chum or for Alan Waters. So I went into my boss's office in October after just four months and I said, I quit. And he said, what? You quit?

I said, yeah. I said, I'm just going to go back to get a job. And he said, Larry, if you go back, you may never get out of Sydney. If you want to live there, that's fine. But I just letting you know that, you know, I said, no, I quit. I'm giving my two weeks notice. He said, okay. So I go back to my office and a couple of hours later, Mike comes down to my office and we were little cubicles. And he comes to my cubicle and he says, he was holding a credit card in his hand. And he said, I was just up talking to Mr. Waters. Mr. Waters, Alan Waters, had his office upstairs at 1331 Yonge Street.

He said, I was just talking to Mr. Waters. Believe it or not, he said, Mr. Waters has had his eye on you since you started here. And he thinks you're just homesick. So here's what Mr. Waters said to tell you. He said, take his Air Canada credit card. And he handed me Mr. Waters' Air Canada credit card, Alan F. Waters' Air Canada credit card. He handed me Mr. Waters Air Canada credit card, Alan F. Waters Air Canada. He said, take his credit card, go down to the Air Canada office on University Avenue,

buy an open-ended ticket, go back to Cape Breton, stay as long as you want, and when you come back, there'll be a job for you. Wow. And so I did. I stayed four days and came back and stayed 40 years. Wow.

Larry, that's incredible. What? There's more? There's more. But wait, there's more. Well, the second part of that is that I, my boss, three years later, my boss took a job as a creative director at an advertising agency in town. And on his first day of the job,

called me and offered me a job there. And because I wanted to try other things, get out of the copy department, do other things, I said yes. So I left and I went to an advertising agency. And I stayed there six weeks and got hired by another advertising agency and hated it. I hated everything about the advertising agency because it wasn't radio and it especially wasn't chum. There was no music in the hallway. There were no lunatics in your doorway every day telling jokes. It was just, it wasn't fun.

It was just like another office job. Right. So I left in May. In September, I get a call from J. Robert Wood, Bob Wood. And Bob said to me, are you ready to come back yet? And I said, you bet I am. He said, well, I said, but I don't want to work in the copy department. And Bob said, let's meet for lunch and we'll talk about it. So the advertising agency was in Yorkville. We met in Yorkville for lunch. we'll talk about it so the advertising agency was in yorkville we met in yorkville for lunch and um bob said here's what i want to want you to do he said i want you to make

a list of all the things you want to do and what you want to be paid for it and i'll sign it wow i was 23 and of course when you're 23 you don't realize how lucky you are. Right. So I did. I went home. I had just been married, and I went home to Lynn, and I said, she said, well, you'd be a fool not to make a list and tell them what you behave for it. So I made a list.

I said, well, I want to do a morning show. I want to write a TV show. I want to do a film. I want to do TV advertising. I want to write radio contests. I want to do a film. I want to do TV advertising. I want to write radio contests. I want to work with everybody and for nobody. And this is what I want to be paid for it. And Bob and I met again and Bob looked at the list and he said, sure, we can do that. And I was back at Chum in two weeks and stayed there until 2013. This story. By the way, just so

everybody who knows me and knows Chum and work me knows that Chum kept their word on every single thing that I asked for. Within years, I was writing for Jay Nelson. Bob called me in one day in 1978 and said, Jay wants to know if you would like to write jokes for him. I said, absolutely.

And so I started doing that. I worked on the video history of rock, would like to write jokes for him. I said, absolutely. And so I started doing that. I worked on the video history of rock, which went to high schools all over Southern Ontario. I wrote the Chum 30 for TV. I wrote all of Chum's TV commercials and all of those things for years. But the most important lesson of the story is they kept their word on everything. And I always worked with everybody and really had really incredible autonomy so I really wasn't working for anybody although at the back of your mind

when you're working for Shum, I once described it as a medal of honor that you want to shine every day. So that's always at the back of your mind that you're working for this company and you have to maintain their standards and make them proud of you. Well, just listening to this story, we're in the 1970s right now in this story.

And just to hear what it was like in radio when your owner, first of all, your owner just got an office in the building. And your owner has a passion for radio. And that leadership you described for Mr. Waters is quite remarkable. And he knew to invest in good people. This is quite a story. Listen, invest in good people like this is this is quite a story i'm not listen i'm i'm not believe me i'm not the only one that similar things happen to right what um especially um mr waters and fred charade and and and that era of leadership did was they uh invested in talent and they formed talent. They, then they,

and they were really interested in young talent and having no skills was actually, I think to their mind, probably a benefit because they could form you into a kind of a chum person. And, uh, that's what they did with me. And they did with,

with so many other people that the thing, the thing that didn't last, if you, you could have all the talent in the world at chum, but if you were bad in the hallways, if you're a negative person, if you had any of those kind of negative qualities, you never lasted there.

And so you were always working with not only great talents, but good people. Now, Larry, I'm going to let the listenership know that, you know, listenership is a term I use because I heard Scruff Connors use it back in the day. So shout out to TJ Connors, who's back on the air in St. Catherine's actually.

Although nowadays you can be living in Winnipeg and be on the air in afternoon drive in St. Catherine's. Is that, is that concept something Chum would have considered, we would have thought about in the 1970s, like this whole idea that our afternoon drive show will be out of Winnipeg.

Well, we were always, and I think probably they still are, although I don't listen as much as I used to, but I think in those days especially, everything was local. And I think that's the success of all radio anyway. Live and local, right? Live and local.

And so it's hard to be, like, Roger Rick and Marilyn was a fantastic show and had great ratings, but if we had syndicated that show, it would have, we would have suffered in Toronto because we couldn't have been as, um, laser focused on our Toronto audience as we were. Well,

no, you're, you're preaching to the choir here. Uh, nowadays you have, let's say for example, a Ross and Mocha show based in Toronto. That's heard in,

you know, several different Canadian markets. We'll get into a bigger conversation here about what's changed, but your story is today outside of the CBC, when we think of radio stations, we wonder which cable company owns it or does Chorus own that station? It's quite a different story than being able to pop in the office, the boss handing you a credit card and saying, go home and come back when you're ready that's uh well yes that's it well that didn't happen that wouldn't happen now but i don't think it happened very many places then so that is one of those rare kinds of things i was i was blessed my whole life um to and still

am to a certain degree is that people people see, especially when I was younger, saw things in me and potential in me that I didn't see in myself. And I get, you know, I'm so eternally grateful for that. And just the ability to work and the opportunity to work with so many great people over the years. Well, I want to hear about these great people. I know we have some audio,

so that's why I addressed the listenership. To let them know, I do have some audio elements loaded up here, so you can literally call for them. I'll play them. I added a couple myself just to spice things up and surprise you here and there.

But I'm ready to play these. We're going to go in order, but these audio elements I'm playing, this real talk here is only possible. I'm going to thank a couple of sponsors very quickly. I just want to thank, we talked about, you know, cannabis ads off the top. And I will let everybody know in this country that Canna Cabana will not be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. Over 140 locations across the country.

And StickerU.com is where you go to get your stickers, your decals, your temporary tattoos. You just upload your image. You get this great quality product. I have for you, Larry, a Toronto Mike sticker courtesy of stickeru.com. That's for you, buddy. Fantastic. Lots of great swag coming your way today.

I'm not even done. I'll save some more for later. Okay, so in this journey, you helped me out here because you do spin a good yarn here. Now, how do I get you to working with the gentleman I used to wake up to as a young man, but I was not listening to him on 1050 because I'm not quite that age, but I was listening to him on CFTR. But what can you tell me about Tom Rivers?

Tom Rivers was a 10-year-old boy in a 400-pound body, and that was all his charm. He was just delightful. When I started at Chum, Tom was doing afternoon drive, and then he left in 1976 to go to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and eventually ended up in Alaska as the program director. And during the Iran hostage crisis, it was Tom and his cohorts at this little radio station in Alaska as the program director. And during the Iran hostage crisis, it was Tom and his cohorts at this little radio station in Alaska that did a parody of Barbara Ann called Bomb Iran,

and he became notorious all over the world with that. But anyway, when Jane Elson was retiring from Chum and his last show was Christmas Eve 1980, about a month before that, Bob Wood called me in his office and said, I'm going to tell you who we're hiring to replace Tom, and I'd like you to write for him. Replace Jay, I said. He said Tom Rivers.

I was so thrilled because I was a huge fan of Tom's. Tom and I had been friendly when he was here earlier, been at the station earlier. And so when Tom arrived just after New Year's in 1981, he moved into my office. We shared an office. And Tom's idea of the kind of show he wanted to do was modeled on his experience at KFRC in San Francisco

where Dr. Don Rose was doing the morning show. It was a lot of one-liners and characters and sound effects. And Tom brought me into that kind of orbit. And so I wrote all his characters and his one-liners and things. And that's where I got the nickname that 20 years of chum friends call me Larry Gagman. And that was given to me by John Rohde, actually. John came from Alaska at the same time Tom did to host the morning show at Chum FM. So they kind of came together as a combo.

So a couple of days writing Tom's show, in that very first week he was there, Tom showed John some of the material I had written for him, and John said, you're not Larry Hagman, you're Larry Gagman. Larry Hagman was on Dallas at the time. And so Tom made that stick by making Larry Hagman my kind of on-air name, and then it became the name that everybody at the station called me, and it's become kind of a name that I'm still called by some of my friends from that era. So that's where Larry Gagman came from but Tom I would get up at three o'clock in the morning and I've always written everything that day I very seldom ever wrote anything the day before

because the way I work was I get up at three in the morning be at the station at 4 4 15 write the morning show on the run for Tom I I did similar things for Jay, but not to this extent because I wasn't writing that many characters for Jay. But I was writing characters for Tom, Marshall Tucker and Roach and Swami Rivers and all of those characters, as well as the one-liners that Tom would do. And we had fantastic on-air producers,

technical producers in those days that made that show really kind of like a radio version of The Muppet Show where tom was kind of like kermit and every all these the world revolved around him and his characters right guys like kevin putnam and al tricky are two i remember who did fantastic work for us in that era and so i would work there until the show would be over at nine o'clock and often I would have a nap and this continued for my whole career there. I would have a nap and then spend all day at the station doing my other jobs, which are the creative director aspects of, uh, contests and promotions and things like that.

Meeting with clients and, and, uh, and program directors and everything. And, um, and so that continued for about six months and then they decided they wanted to go in another direction on the show and we changed the show completely i still continue to do it we brought in a guy named bob humanik who was a good friend of tom's and had worked in in toronto radio previously and at cfgm he had been a creative director there and we did about another six or eight months doing that kind of a show and then they pulled me off of that show and pulled

Bob out of the show and went to more of a kind of almost like a classic rock morning show where Tom was just introducing records, introducing them and back selling and that was kind of the sowed the seeds of Tom leaving the radio station. He didn't agree with the programming changes

and there were some personality conflicts. And so Tom was gone. Well, he was a big personality. So I mean, I do work closely with Larry Fedorik. And so I do get quite a few, he worked with Tom later at CFTR and then again at Mix 99.9, I believe. But so I have a vibe.

And also Mike Cooper was here too. And he told a couple of Tom Rivers stories. So when you're that, I don't, I think you have an expiry date when you're that kind of a character, right? Like you can't just go somewhere for 40 years. Well, Tom was very, very good at everything. He was very good as just a straight ahead disc jockey.

He was very good as he did his own voices and his own character work he was also a very good comedy writer himself and um but he was the pied piper if you were you were on tom's team you're on tom's team and you would do anything for him he really had tremendous leadership ability within the radio station and so you kind of marched to tom's tune because you're on tom's team and that was fun but he because you're on Tom's team. And that was fun, but he wasn't always on the same team as management. And so that could be tricky. It could be tricky, but a fantastic person. I went to the Superbowl with Tom in 1981, 81. Yes.

Remind me who was in that Superbowl. Cincinnati and San Francisco. Oh, right. Yeah. And San Francisco got hammered. It was like, well, the Bengals were getting hammered in the first half, and they came back and almost won in the second half. Oh, is that right? Okay. But Tom knew somebody who knew somebody, and we ended up going on the bus with a Molson-sponsored bus

full of bartenders and Tom and I. And we stopped over in Sarnie overnight, and then we'd end up in Pontiac, Michigan on the Sunday to the game. And Tom had a very small 8- or 9-inch TV that sat on his lap throughout the whole game so we could watch the replays and everything. So we had a fantastic time. And Tom baked a chocolate cake and filled it with about half a pound of marijuana and sat on his lap crossing the border.

And so the halftime show was quite something. I can only imagine. By the way, are you still in contact with John Rohde? You dropped his name, but I try, I would like to talk to John, but he seems to be off the grid maybe. John is so gifted and such a fantastic guy. John now owns a winery in Prince Edward County. Hanging out with Bernie Finkelstein

and Steve Anthony. He's very, very busy. He's got his sleeves rolled up and his tractor oiled and he's working all the time in his vineyards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he would do the voiceovers on much music, right? I feel like John Rohde's big voice was one of those voices. John has a very conversational style.

He might have done some voiceovers on Much Music at one point. Those were done by Mark Chambers, did those. Mark Daly, of course, we know, did the City TV stuff. The voice. John Major did a lot of voiceovers on Much Music. J.D. Roberts, of course, had his own show with Cheney Becker on Much Music.

If anyone knows this stuff, it's the listeners of Toronto Mic. Absolutely. Did you hear the recent Ian Hennomancing discussion with John Roberts by any chance? No, I did not. I want to play a little of The Voice because you said it. Let's see what I have here. The following program contains adult

themes, nudity and coarse language. Viewer and parental discretion is advised. There's a little Mark Daly for you. There's the voice. So Tom Rivers, Mark Daly, these are two gentlemen. They were very good friends by the way, Tom and Mark. They worked together at CKLW. The Big Eight. Yeah. And we lost them both

far too soon. Far too young. Along with Jungle, I mean it's Jay Nelson there as well. Well, we lost Far Too Soon as well. But yeah, keep dropping these names. I just love to hear these old radio names. Okay, so what's next for you, Larry? And then remember, if there is a piece of audio that makes sense for the story you're at,

just call for it. Let me tell you a little bit about the Al Paladini story. Okay, yeah. Al Paladini will not be familiar to people who are younger, i'm surprised at how many of my clients or i think you gotta be 40 plus i think but it's amazing to me even to this day when when somebody finds out if i'm in a meeting with a client because they do mostly copywriting these days if i'm in a meeting with a new client or or i'm meeting somebody for the first time and they find out al paladini's name comes up they'll come back right back and say any paladini's a pal of mine.

I would say that. It's one of those things that has stuck. So what happened was, part of the promise that, as I said, Bob Wood made to me, was that I would get to do film work. And that came about when Chum decided to do the video history of rock and take it to high schools all over southern Ontario, which they did over a three or four year period. But we were, we produced it at, um, at CKBB,

at, um, CKBR and Barry, uh, the TV station. They go off the air at one o'clock in the morning and Roger Ashby and I, and Bob McMillan, who was the production manager at Chum at the time, we would hop in Roger's, uh,bird, and we would drive to Barry, and we would, as soon as they would have the air, we would start working on the film. In those days, it really was film. Very early days of video,

just basically almost pre-video, and we would work until they signed on again in the morning. Then we would go to the hotel and sleep all, you know, sleep till the afternoon, get up, have dinner, and then go back into the TV station and work again. So we did that for two days a week for 14 months. Wow.

And the film got made, and it was one of the things that you can only do at a radio station that has those resources. But during that period, while I was working on that film, a sales guy came into my radio at the end of the my office one day a guy named bill cross he said all right i've got this um car dealership that i'd like you to do a demo for pine tree link and mercury he said they live way out at weston road and highway 7 and i said well bill i'm going to bury tonight and i won't be back until friday but i'll be here until 10 o'clock and I'll be happy to maybe give the guy a call

and see what I can write between now and then. He said, sure, I would appreciate that. So I look at the information sheet that Bill has given me, but there's no phone number on it. So I call directory assistance, and I say, can I have the phone number for Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury? She says, just a second, sir. And she comes back and gives me the number, and I call the number,

and the receptionist picks up the phone and says, good evening, Pine View Pontiac Buick. What happened was right across the street from Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury is a dealership called Pine View Pontiac Buick, and even the directory assistance operator was confused by it. I wasn't very, very old or experienced in those days. I think it was probably 24 or 25, but I knew I had to do something to, to set them apart. And so I, I looked down further down the sheet and I saw the contact name

and the contact name was Al Palladini. And I've told this to my students since at Humber and Seneca. And every time I've done a seminar, like angel dust from heaven. As soon as I heard Al Paladini in my head, Eddie Paladini is a Pal of mine, fell from the heavens for me. And so I knew I was going to build the entire campaign around the name Al Paladini, and I was going to make Al Paladini a comic character. Self-deprecation really works, especially when you're doing advertising for yourself.

And I knew that I was going to use Rick Moranis on it. When I was away at the advertising agency, Rick got hired to do afternoon drive on Chum FM. And I was listening at the advertising agency. He was Rick Allen, right? He was Rick Allen at CFTR. Okay. Yes.

Go ahead. But he was then using his real name, Rick Moranis on Chum FM. And I heard him the first time I heard him in the afternoon, I called Duff Roman, who was the program director at Chum FM at the time. And I said, Duff, who's that guy? I said, he didn't say anything funny, but he, I

can tell he's a funny guy just by the way, his phrasing. And Duff said, well, he is a funny, he does stand up, but yuck yucks, his name is Rick Moranis. So I actually have reached out to Duff said, well, he is a funny, he does stand up, but yuck yucks, his name is Rick Moranis. So I actually have reached out to Duff before I came back to Chum as a fan of Rick. And so when I met Rick, kind of the day I started back, we became friends instantly. We're about the same age.

I think we're only born three months apart. We have the same sense of humor. He's a fantastic human being. And by that point, I had been using him to do character voices and on the, on, um, on, on other commercials. And so I knew I would use him on the Al Paladini commercials.

So we did a demo. I wrote the spots, um, a couple of spots, uh, Rick produced them. Rick voiced them, Sikh Stebiak,

the late, great Sikh Stebiak, who was my production partner for over 25 years at Shum, Sik produced them. We sent them out with Bill to Al. The next day, we were expecting rave reviews. The next day, Bill comes back and says he doesn't want to go with them. Wow.

I said, why not? He said he wouldn't say, but he does want to go with them. We were very disappointed. So nine months later, a new salesperson starts, a guy named Doug Thorne. I didn't tell Doug that I'd already sent the commercials out with somebody else. I bring Doug into my office. I play him the commercials. I said, when did you pitch these?

He says, I would love to pitch those. So he goes out, comes back the next day. He says two things. Al doesn't want to go with them. And B, stop sending guys out with them. So five years go by. Five years go by. I'm sitting in my office one day.

The phone rings, and the guy says, hi, my name is Vince Giamblanco. Are you Larry Bigness? I said, yes. He said, you wrote commercials for Pine Tree, Linker Mercury. I said, yeah, but many, many years ago. He said, well, we've been doing Al's Italian language commercials for Chin Radio and his print ads. And we've been trying to get him to do mainstream radio for years.

And I and my creative director were out at his dealership last night. And we were, again, pounding on him to go with Mainstream Radio. And finally, my creative director said, Al, have you ever done English language radio? And Al said, no. But he said, but there's this, somebody, a chum, had been sending me stuff years ago.

They said, do you still have it? Al said, well, I'll look. So Al went to his filing cabinet. And one of the cassettes that I had sent out, he still had. He put it in the machine. And this is the way Vince explained it to me. He said, my creative director is sitting there beside me, and he's looking at the ceiling.

And we play the commercial, and then it ends. And my creative director says, Al, please tell me that you haven't been sitting on these commercials for five years. And Al says, yeah. He said, I like them. He said, and everybody here likes them. He said, and everybody here likes them. He said, but my wife hates them. And she says they're making fun of her family. And the creative director said, Al, they're going to make your family famous.

So this has always bothered me, Mike, about radio and advertising agencies. They wouldn't, I sent two different salespeople out. Right. We got the brush off. Right. As soon as the guy from the advertising agency says we should run them, they were on the air. Right. And so they made an instant impact in Toronto Radio.

He went from the 11th biggest dealership in Southern Ontario to the second biggest dealership in Southern Ontario in six months. And all he changed was, and so it got to the point where about a year after they ran they started running so they'd run he'd run in the spring and in the fall yeah and very successful they were on and he bought big he bought six or seven the top line radio stations heavy rotation we'd run four at a time so because they're full of jokes um we didn't want them to burn out so there's a lot of different ones i think we ended up doing about 60 different ones. Wow. So about a year later, Al invites me and Zeke Stebiak out to dinner in Vaughan at a restaurant called Rose's just to thank us for the commercials.

So we're sitting there at dinner, and the whole time we're having dinner with Al, he's signing autographs. This is a car dealer. Right. So we're sitting there at dinner, and the whole time we're having dinner with Al, he's signing autographs. This is a car dealer, right? People coming up to him during dinner to sign autographs. And then, of course, a couple of years later, he runs for the legislature in Ontario, and he told me this story as well. He said the first time he ran, he would go door to door, and he would knock on the door,

and as soon as they would open the door, he would say, I'm running for the provincial legislature. They would start to shut the door and then he would say, I'm Al Paladini. He said, half the time they would invite me in for dinner. Which, and then Al had put it best, he said, Al said, I don't know whether you knew what you were

doing, Larry, at the time. He said, but you figured out that you didn't have to sell cars. And that's true, Mike. We never mentioned a price or a model. It always ended the same way. Visit Al Paladini's Pine Tree Link and Mercury at Western Road and Highway 7 because any

Paladini's at Palomar, we never mentioned. The only exception was he'd have a barbecue sale every spring. We called it Havaweenie with Al Paladini. And they would have to close traffic in what was then about to be Vaughan. Okay. And so.

Yeah. I'm dying to play this thingn. Okay. And so. Yeah. I'm dying to play this thing. Well, this is just your one. I'm like, I don't have, I don't have them all. I have, Doug Thompson is very good. Doug has archives of everything. And Doug recently sent me a whole bunch of Al Palladini spots that I didn't really have in my

own collection. I sent this to Rick when I got it from Doug and Rick wrote back. He says, yeah, he said, this still brings back lots of funny memories. When this was recorded when I got it from Doug and Rick wrote back. He says, yeah, he said, uh, this still brings back lots of fun, uh, funny memories. When this was recorded, I think this particular spot, Rick was in, um, London, um, making a little shop of horrors. Wow. And Al flew him back to record a new batch of commercials. That's how much he had invested in, in Rick. Um, and the success of these,

this is just one of them. And, And they were all basically the same as this. The conceit was that Al was making fun of himself. And as Al said to me later, he said, what I realized, Larry, is that you don't have to sell cars. You just have to sell me. Because if they like me before they meet me, then I can sell them a car. And he did.

So this is just one of them, one of my favorites. At Al Paladini's Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury, you can lease all makes and models. Don't tell my wife about the models part. Al Paladini has become a household word. Uh-oh, we better call a plumber. I think I plugged up the Al Paladini. And in the words of Al Paladini's mother, Al Paladini's Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury is the best Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury ever owned by a son of mine

who I still call Albert. I don't care what he says. Visit Al Paladini's Pine Tree Lincoln Mercury at Weston Road and Highway 7 because any Paladini is a pal of mine. Wow. Of course, that's all, Rick. He's the announcer and he's all the voices. And you always bring your own kind of personal experience into it.

Everyone by a son of mine who I still call Albert, I don't care what he says, this comes from my own life. My mother and father and all my friends from Cape Breton still call me Lawrence, not Larry. And that's where these kinds of things come from. And I love the household name, plugged up the al paladin anyway rick is uh rick is a and i'm under no illusion that um if rick hadn't done these ads that they would have worked uh it's all his performance on every ad bring and we would just say he would

they would just be on script mother father uncle and he would he would dream excuse me dream up the voices on the spot. He's fantastic. All right. A few quick hits from me here regarding Rick Moranis. I had Ingrid Schumacher on, by the way, and she talked about training him on the board at 104.5 Chum FM. Okay. Firstly, to let people know that there is an amazing deep dive with Dave Thomas that

was done in 2022. So Dave Thomas on Toronto Mic'd. So go into the Toronto Mic'd feed, find the Dave Thomas episode because it's long and it's deep. And there's lots of talk of Rick Moranis. And I knew, well, I knew Rick was a good guy. I've never met him, but man, I'd love to get Rick Moranis on this show. But I had Ian Thomas on this program. And Ian talked about his son had an accident and a spinal cord injury injury and there was this like a benefit and I think he sent a note to Rick Moranis and Rick like

immediately said I'm going to be there and we can promote it as Bob and Doug McKenzie like reunion to help the benefit so like I'm hearing this story from Ian Thomas and I realize to borrow a term I hear from my good friend and co-host of Hebsey on sports

Mark Hebbshire that Rick Moranis is a mensch yeah he's a really good person really good guy no no errors about him at all he's just a wonderful wonderful guy because I know listeners right now are at least somewhat interested in Toronto radio that there's a great Rob Cowan episode of Toronto Mike. Rob Cowan and, in the 70s, Rob Cowan and Rick Moranis did a lot of comedy stuff together. They were kind of a comedy duo of sorts before SCTV kind of took Rick to stardom. But it's great that you still have this relationship with Rick Moranis.

That's amazing. Are you thinking of Rob McCowan? I know Rob McCowan was Rick's partner. Rob Cowan? Because it's Bernard Cowan's son. Yes, yeah. Elliot Cowan and Rob Cowan. Yeah, so Cowan.

Yeah. Rob Cowan, yes. I hope I got that right. Okay. All right, Larry. So the Rick Moranis story I wanted to get, but is Rick the reason? I'm going to just jump around a bit

because I mentioned Dave Thomas, but one of the questions I had for Dave was where is this Martin Scorsese, a CTV documentary? I was very excited when they filmed it. I heard Rick was going to be there, your friend. And that's how you got there. We're going to talk about it.

But I mean, it's clear at this point that Martin Scorsese, who's a great film filmmaker, of course, one of the greats, but he's sitting on this and I don't think I'm ever going to get to see it. You were there. Would you have any idea? It was fantastic. It was

on stage at the Elgin, I think. Yeah, Winter Garden Theatre. Yeah, Winter Garden. It was all the cast were there on stage, and they sat down, they reminisced about and they each played their favorite episodes. And,

um, Jimmy Kimmel was the host and Jimmy Kimmel had his favorite episode is my favorite. He, everybody kind of featured their favorite bit and talked about it. And Jimmy Kimmel's favorite bit. And my favorite bit of all of the SCTV bits is the bit where Rick Moranis is playing Mike McDonald,

singing harmony to, he runs in and does the quick... Ride Like the Wind on Christopher Cross and then gets in the car. I love that one too. Yeah. And he drives to another location and just to get there just in time to be harmony on another hit. Anyway, they played that and they played a whole bunch of stuff.

There's a great tribute to John Candy was done in it. John Candy's family was there. Everybody's family was there. I know Joe Flaherty's upset about this too. It was about three and a half hours long. I understand it was being cut down to about 90 minutes or two hours. And I'm like you. Where is it?

Okay, because you know what happens. Nature abhors a vacuum here. So there's no word from Scorsese just that he's working on other projects or whatever. So Dave Thomas is frustrated. He doesn't think we're ever going to see it. no like no word from scorsese like just that he's working on other projects or whatever so you know dave thomas is frustrated he doesn't think we're ever going to see it uh i know joe flaherty went public recently that he's frustrated i'm frustrated you're frustrated uh because of this where is it people are starting to like make like they're trying to speculate right and there's i've heard

for example maybe it sucked no no no no yeah so that's why i'm glad you're here because finally you were there i mean i mean dave no, no. Yeah, so that's why I'm glad you're here because finally you were there. I mean, Dave Thomas was fantastic. No, it was fantastic. The trouble they would have was how do you get it down to 90 minutes or two hours? Which is, by the way,

a little silly when you think about it. If this is airing on Netflix, this 90 minute is your own invention of a cap. It's like a podcast. There's no ad.

This is not City TV. The story I heard was that he got distracted with the Irishman and that was the reason. It's not City TV. The story I heard was that he got distracted with the Irishman, and that was the reason. But it could be anything. As you said, it's just rumor at this point. It's all speculation,

but I'm trying to get Scorsese on Toronto Mike to get to the bottom of this. I'm working on it. Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to be a gangster. Okay. Lots of great... I'm glad you were there and you could talk about it, but that's cool that you were invited there.

Was it a full house? Like, how many people were there people oh yeah it was it was a full house for sure and a lot of family of cast and crew all i think that that was a great everything rick has always told me about when they did sctv was that it was very very tight cast and the cast was very tight with the crew and it was like great radio stations. It was a family. And so everybody was represented there. It was really first class. There was a cocktail party afterwards. Wow. It was first class all the way down.

It was great. So you had, of course, everybody. Was there anyone, like any obvious people missing? Maybe they couldn't make it, but Catherine O'Hara was there, I'm guessing, and Eugene Levy's there. No, no, Catherine and Eugene and... Rick and Dave.

And Andrea was there. They were all there as far as I know. John, of course, had passed, but his family was well-represented, and as I said, there was a tribute to him in it, and his family stood up for him. You know what? I'm angry now.

I want to see this. No, it's great. It's great. I got to make some calls after this, Larry. Okay, I just checked. This is amazing. I think we could do six hours, but I don't have six hours. So we have to get these clips,

but can we get Roger, Rick, and Marilyn in place here? Can you tell me how do you end up working on that show and how does Roger, Rick, and Marilyn come to be? What an iconic brand of like Toronto morning show. My first day in Toronto after I arrived on the weekend I arrived in Toronto on, uh, after I arrived on the, the weekend I arrived in Toronto, my first, um, day, I had my, uh, clock radio set to wake up to listen to Jay Nelson because I had seen Jay Nelson on, on TV as a guest on various Canadian talk shows. And I just, I'd never heard him on the air and I wanted to hear him cause I, I'd heard so many great things about him. So the alarm goes off

and the first voice I hear is Dick Smythe doing the 8 o'clock news. And of course, it was like I'd landed on another planet. I'd never heard news presented in that entertaining yet authoritative way. I'm Dick Smythe. Yeah, no, he was fantastic. He was just amazing. It was June 25th, 1973. So

Dick comes out of the news and now back to more music and they play Shambhala by Three Dog Night, and the introduction, the intro was fantastic. Oh my God, Jay Nelson is fantastic. It wasn't until the second record, which was Will It Go Round in Circles by Billy Preston, that I realized that it was Roger Ashby, who was then only 23 years old, and he was filling in for Jay.

So the very first person I met at the radio station when I arrived that very first morning was Roger walking through the lobby from the studio. And, and we became, Roger and I became friends very early on. Roger and I are very similar senses of humor. We can finish each other's sentences. We really do connect on,

on, on that level. And of course, when we did the video history of rock uh with bob mcmillan and barry uh over the that 14 month period we became very close oh man so when i left when tom was fired i said i remember saying i think i might have even said it to my wife i said i don't think i'm ever going to have that much fun again ever and then of course, a couple of years later, um, Ross Davies asked me to sit in, uh, with Roger the first time Roger was, uh, Roger, uh, started in, uh, after Labor Day 1985, I believe,

uh, I went in and sat in with him. And before long I was writing material for him. And then we wanted a co-host for him and we auditioned and I know you've had Roger on, right? Roger's been on, well he's been on, he's been over here, but also he joined me for an episode I should cross promote here, which is episode 1050. Right. So he was one of my guests for 1050 and if people want to, we had

a bunch of great people from 1050 chum on that episode and then I actually, the aforementioned Doug Thompson's he came over and did like a 90 minute with clips and it's amazing. And I tagged that on the end. So if you're hungry for more 1050 Chum chatter, go to episode 1050 of Toronto Mic'd.

So Roger and I were friends before we ever started working that closely together. And then I know he's told you the story about auditioning for a co-host and marilyn was hired initially just to do traffic and come in and chat with roger a couple of times an hour but within a couple of weeks we realized that she she should be in that room all the time and um and so she became a hit very quickly and uh they connected right away roger rick and marilyn and tom jokic uh who was our producer who's also an fotm i just need to shut out the fotms but uh rick rick as well

by the way he's been over a couple of times uh so you know that these people are great people and great radio people and we were really a tight and still are we still are uh consider ourselves family even though we're're no longer working together. Okay, let me get to the nuts and bolts here. And I'll just shout out very quickly, since I want to shout out Rick Hunter, who came on the program and told some great stories about 1050 Chum. And he was really tight with Roger from back in the day.

Like they were BFFs, I think, since they were like kids or something. So, okay. So, Roger Ashby comes over from 1050 Chum. He's on 104.5 Chum. What's Rick, is Rick Hodge, like how did he get in there? Was he? Well, Rick had been there.

Rick had been there through several previous morning shows. Right. He was a constant. He was the existing piece of that puzzle. You know what I call that? That's like being the Freddie P because Fred Patterson,

who I was on his show this morning because I produce Humble and Fred's show, but Fred Patterson was part of Pete and Geetz on CFNY. And he sort of stuck around when they eventually, after a few different things, they went and got Humble Howard out of Montreal. He was co-hosting a show with Jeff Lumby. But Fred was like that,

to kind of connect all these morning shows was Fred Patterson. Well, what happened was when Tom left, Roger was filling in. Well, Roger was in, at that point, he was in programming. And I think that's where he could speak for himself, but I think that's where he maybe even saw his future was in programming because Roger is so detail-oriented and has such a great programming mind. But he would be filling in while they were looking for a permanent host

for the morning show. We used to call it Lotto 6 to 9 because Roger sometimes didn't know who was going to be filling in the next day. And then it was suggested that he would make a great

morning show host on FM because FM was moving into more of an adult hit format at that point. And of course, the very first day Roger was on the air on Show because FM was moving into more of an adult hit format at that point. And of course, the very first day Roger was on the air on Showtime FM, everybody knew he fit like a glove. And that's a cliche to say the rest is history, but he really did fit like a glove.

And he was, even without a co-host, even without Marilyn in there, he still would have been a substantial morning show with Roger hosting. But Marilyn brought all her magic to it. And Rick, of course, is the perfect kind of like... One of our TV commercials I wrote for them was... One of the lines Marilyn says at the end of the commercial is, it's a shame I never had brothers

because she would have been able to deal better with Roger and Rick. All you need to know is that she's still there. Like Marilyn still, the morning show is still 104.5. So what year was it when the three of them finally... I believe she started in

86. I think Roger started in 85. So remind me of this. When does the format change? Because in 86 the music that's being played on 104.5 is still like that Q107 album-oriented rock, right? Am I right? No, I think we had moved into more of adult hits at that point. We were playing Genesis and Phil Collins and stuff like that.

Everything's a blur to me. No, you don't get that way. But I think that's why Roger was such a great fit there. Although's a blur to me. No, you don't get that way. But I think we had, that's why Roger was such a great fit there. Although Roger could play any format. And he,

Roger legit loves the music. Yes, exactly. He loves his music. He famously had that radio studio in his basement as a kid, like where you would do his bass and the broadcaster.

Yeah, his father was a carpenter and built him a studio. Well, then the rest is history. He was on 1150, right? Somebody pointed out, I did an episode of 1150 and like, where was the 1150 deep dive? And I'm like, I would have done it

except that I don't have any personal connection to 1150. Therefore, but somebody had to kind of reach out and say, hey, why don't we, anyway, so it never happened. And maybe one day I'll finally do that. But okay.

Can I play best of Roger Rick and Marilyn here? This is a clip. I think it's the story of me at the baseball game. Or is this a clip that you found it's the story of me at the baseball game. Or is this a clip that you found on your own? Let's play it and then I can't remember if I found this on my own. I think it's from you but let's play it. It's a couple minutes here.

Okay, go ahead. We'll find out what it is together. We were talking about peanuts the other day. Peanuts in the shell. Yeah. And we're talking about how some are salted and some are unsalted. And I said to my understanding, the ones that were salted were soaked in a salt brine, like a liquid, and it would penetrate the shell. So we got an email from David, who runs David Roberts Foods. I'm sorry, it's from Ron, who works for David Roberts Foods.

And they are the official supplier of peanuts to the Blue Jays and the Rogers Center. Okay. It says right on the bag. Look, it says the official peanut of the Toronto Blue Jays. That's right. And who would want to eat the unofficial peanut of the Toronto Blue Jays? Well, they're not so good. These are the official ones.

So he sent us some peanuts. Thank you very much, Ron. Jumbo peanuts, Roger. Jumbo. And he said, you're right, they are soaked in a brine, but he said they're also vacuumed. They're put in a vacuum tank. They're soaked in a vacuum tank where they actually get the salt to penetrate the shell by sucking it through.

And then we take and slowly dry the peanuts for over four hours when they are finally ready to be roasted. So it's quite a procedure. It is, and that's why they're so good. And worth every second of it because they're so fantastic. Yeah. Now you can get salted and unsalted. To tell you the truth, I prefer the unsalted ones. It is, and that's why they're so good. And worth every second of it because they're so fantastic. Yeah. Now, you can get salted and unsalted. To tell you the truth, I prefer the unsalted ones.

But Larry here prefers the salted peanuts. It's got to be salted, and the more salt, the better. And I know that when we've all gone to a Blue Jays game, because we often go as a group down to the Blue Jays game, Larry's the first one to buy a bag of peanuts, and I'm there mooching his peanuts because I love peanuts in a shell. I was at a game with Jeff Howitt and our sons. So we took up basically the whole role one time. And I've got the peanuts going. I had about three bags, seriously. And, you know, I'm eating them throughout the whole game.

There's shells flying everywhere and peanuts. Jeff has taken a couple. I look down about the seventh inning in front of me and they're all in front of me. You know, the seats are a little lower. Yes, they are. There's a girl. I'd say she's about 18 or 19. She's wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. And the hood of her sweatshirt is filled with pita shells.

So here's, honest to God, honest to God, the hood was, it looked like somebody was selling them in a hood. So I give Jeff the elbow. And Jeff jeff goes we gotta get out of here he said well if she puts her hood up for some reason while you're sitting behind her she's gonna know so you know what we did we left before the game was oh yeah because i didn't seriously i didn't want to be there when you know she stood up and she pulled the hood up and there'd be nothing seriously it looked like uh a war at a zoo. You couldn't tell her.

You couldn't bring it up. It'd be very embarrassing. You just had to get the heck out of there. Okay, she's listening right now. She's going, you're the one. That is... That's a good story. You know, and really, the seats are really close, too.

Word of warning. Don't go to a Blue Jays game wearing a hoodie. No. And yesterday, we're eating peanuts in here. I looked below Larry's chair over there. I think he thought he was a Jack Astor. Wow, there's some Larry McInnes on Roger. Actually, at that point, there's no Rick, I suppose.

Well, Rick was there. Oh, he was there. They called it the Rogers Center, which timestamps it for me. Rogers Center. But okay, so let's do that quickly here because the whole, I'm still calling the show Roger, Rick and Marilyn, even though only the M is there still.

Okay, so Roger, Rick and Marilyn, and this story has been told in great detail. If you listen to Rick Hodge's first appearance on Toronto Mike, but Rick Hodge got an offer. He left basically. He decided it was time to leave. He got a good offer from Standard and he was going to be on a 10, 10 and easy rock humble Howard,

who we mentioned earlier was part of this easy rock four person team that eventually did not work out. But so this, this is where Rick Hodge went. And at that point, it's just Roger and Marilyn. And then Darren B. Lamb i am i right with my timelines darren b lamb becomes uh the third person in the booth the third person and yes but i was i have

been taken out of the show basically at that point and was writing still writing the show but no longer in directing the show so i have really no no experience. Although I had worked with Darren many times when he filled in with Roger. It was kind of Darren and Marilyn and Haji. I mentioned in that clip earlier Jeff Howitt. The other thing about that morning show that was very, very important to its success was the quality and the style of its newscasts. Jeff Ansell, Larry Wilson, Jeff Howitt, all tremendously gifted people in news.

Elaine McDonald was on that as well at one point. Many, many years with Jeff with Jeff Howard as the morning host, real, um, relatable newscasts and really people in, in the news department who were able to play along with the show without losing their credibility. And so they were really valuable members of that team as well. And they're not, although they're not mentioned in the name of the show, they were all very important to its success. Now I, I, you, you obviously won't have any answers here,

except that it's one of the great Toronto radio mysteries which we talk about. Mike Cooper actually says a great deal about this, as does Maureen Holloway on Toronto Mic. But sort of the mysterious CHFI disappearance of Darren B. Lamb is one of those stories. So go check out those episodes for more. I'm going to play a clip.

So this one I did bring to the table because I think this is interesting. This is actually somebody who I really admired as a interviewer, Brian Linehan. Did you know Brian personally by any chance? I did know Brian from his appearances on the morning show. And one time I was coming down the stairway at Chum, and he was about 5.30 in the evening,

and he was walking through the lobby with Joan Rivers, and I know that Joan and I share the same birthday, June 8th. Oh, June 8th. So I'm coming down. She was immaculately dressed. She and Brian were very good friends, and they're walking through the lobby, and I'm coming down, and Brian says, oh, hi, Larry, how are you?

Would you like to meet Joan? I go, Joan, I said, we have the same birthday. And she said, different year, I bet. But she was delightful. So Brian Linehan had Howard Stern on his show. They were talking about Private Parts, the 1997 film about Howard Stern's life. And here's a little excerpt, I think.

You might have heard this, but if not, you'll be very interested in this, Larry. The motion picture is Private Parts. The star is Howard Stern. I sat down, I shook hands, and if not, you'll be very interested in this, Larry. The motion picture is Private Parts. The star is Howard Stern. I sat down, I shook hands, and you said, I almost worked in Toronto. That's true. When I was in Detroit and my station went country, which was a real bad time in my life, I got an offer. Was the station Chum FM? Yeah, that was the station. I was in touch with the program director there, and he said to me and he called me up and he said, I've heard about you. I've heard what you're doing in Detroit.

I think you'd be good here. And he offered me a job, and I said, do I get paid in American money or Canadian money? He said Canadian money. I said, wow, that's such a major commitment. Wow, that's a whole different world. It was like my hands were shaking. And I actually thought very seriously about moving there. I thought it would have been a good place for me.

But I went to Washington, D.C. Sort of my goal was to get to New York, so it seemed like I was getting geographically closer. So that's why I went that way. This sounds like we almost got Howard Stern at Chum FM. Yes, I knew that. I knew that he had been offered a job there and that he had declined. You never know what could have happened in radio history.

Okay, this is fun. Okay, now we're going to punch this up. So we are going to start hitting some of these great clips you sent in. Although I do need, actually, before I do that, Mike O'Ockamore? Mike O'Ockamore, yes. Okay, good. I'm nailing it.

I love it. Please tell me the Reggie Jackson story. Oh, my. I'm wondering how to tell it. it. Please tell me the Reggie Jackson story. Oh, my. I'm wondering how to tell. Just a real talk here. Give it to me straight. I'm a real diehard New York Yankees fan. If the New York Yankees were playing the Blue Jays in the playoffs,

it would be a tough call for me. So that gives you some background. So we found out that Reggie was going to be on the morning show on behalf of Compact Computers. The staff of Compact Computers had gotten together and done bake sales and raffles and things all year. And they were going to donate $10,000 to the Chum Christmas Wish. And we were very excited that he was coming in to present it on the morning show. And of course I was very excited to meet him. So he was, uh, we were told he was going to be in the station about seven 30.

He was going to go on the air with Roger, Rick and Haji at 10 to eight. And so we had, we always had, we, we, our studio was a big room and the Roger, Rick, and Marilyn, I sat between Roger and Marilyn, and when Haji came in to do his bits, he sat where I normally sat. And so I had an eye on the door. The door was open. It was always open because the room was so big. We just liked to have the door open,

and there was nobody else in the building anyway except on the AM side. And so at about 7.25, I see Reggie and an entourage walk by. Now, the green room that we used was my office. My office was a nice, large-size office. It was a nice office. It was the office we used where guests would hang out before they went on the air. It was the green room for guests. So Reggie, with our promotion manager, Dwayne Reed is walking by

the control room with Reggie and his entourage. So I go, on the break when they get into music, I'm going to go and brief Reggie. Let him know what's going on. Because that was also part of my job. There's Mr. October and you can't believe it. I can't believe it. And one of my jobs was, I know

that as long as celebrity guests know there's somebody in charge, they relax. Right. Right. So my job was to go in and tell them exactly what we're going to be doing and not to worry and everything was going to be okay. So I walk into my office and there's a really odd vibe in my office. Reggie is sitting alone on my couch and it's a pretty big couch. He's sitting in the middle.

And it's a pretty big couch. He's sitting in the middle. He has both arms up along the back of the couch, and he has a baseball cap with compact on it pulled down low over his eyes. And over by my desk, farther away, nowhere near Reggie, is the entourage. They're kind of all gathered around looking at their shoes. It's a very odd vibe. But I walk in, and I'm all joy. I walk in, I say, Reggie Jackson, my name is larry mcginnis um i'm so

excited to meet you i hold out my hand and i hold it out and i hold it out and i hold it out it's just hanging there and reggie doesn't raise his head or from under the brim of his hat and he goes right wow okay but i keep smiling and I go, Reggie, you're going to be on it about 10 minutes. I've written the names of Roger Ashby and Marilyn Dennis beside, right where you're going to be sitting. So you don't forget their name and it's going to be easy.

We all love you. Right. Right. So I run back into control room and I say to Roger and Marilyn, I said, we may have a problem with Reggie. So they said, no problem. We'll, we'll deal with it. So the time comes to put Reggie on the air. So I go back to my office, Reggie's sitting on the couch. The entourage is looking very uncomfortable. I say, okay, it's time to go. Reggie stands up off my couch i said just follow me so we go to my doorway but instead of turning left to go to the chum fm control room reggie turns right to go where which

is where the am control room is and i put my hand on his shoulder lightly to redirect him and he cocks his fist wow pulls back his arm and looks like he's about to hit me he's gonna slug larry mckinnis this is exactly what happened. I said, Reggie, not a problem, Reggie, but the studio is this way. So we go into the control room. Reggie sits down in my chair, and my notes are there for him in great big letters so he doesn't forget. In the interview, Reggie deliberately mispronounces Marilyn's name, deliberately sounds like he doesn't want to be there,

deliberately mispronounces Maryland's name, deliberately sounds like he doesn't want to be there, dishonors the people from Compaq who have done all this work for months to make this donation. In the middle of all of this fiasco, I go to the back of the control room. Standing at the back of the control room is a big man in a suit. He looks like a Secret Service agent, and he's actually got an earplug in his ear. So I go up to him and I say, hi, how are you doing? Larry McGinnis. He goes, hi. I go, and what are you doing here? He goes, well, we've been working in shifts with Mr. Jackson since he came to Toronto.

We had a guy work with him for eight hours, and I've been working with him since midnight. I've been with him since midnight, and my shift with Mr. Jackson will finish at 8 o'clock in 15 minutes. I say, how's it going? And he doesn't, looking straight ahead to where Reggie Jackson is sitting without changing the look on his face, he goes, what do you think?

Reggie Jackson is the only celebrity in the long history of Chum that I know of, since I was there, who has ever said no to doing an ID for the Chum Christmas Wish. All it was was, hi, I'm Reggie Jackson, and I believe in the Chum Christmas Wish. Madonna did it.

Elton John did it. George Harrison did it. All of these huge celebrities did it. Prime ministers have done it. Reggie would not do it. And Mike Ockmore had a similar ugly experience with him trying to get him to record an ID. So Reggie, you know, it terribly disappointed me because because I've met- You never meet your heroes, right? Well, no, but I'm telling you, Mike, I've met probably over a thousand celebrities in all my

years, up close where I had to direct them. I remember Kathy Lee Gifford was in one morning, and I'm doing the same thing with her. She was delightful. She was promoting something. She's sitting in the chair, ready to go on the air. And I lean over and I said, we're going to be on in five minutes. We're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about this. And she goes, you're Gilman. I said, no, I'm Gagman, but I do the same job. But that's what it is. I've never met, Tony Bennett spent 20 minutes in my office with me and he couldn't have been more delightful. People who sometimes think, who come with a bad reputation, turn out not to be bad people. Right.

Right? But Reggie was really horrible. Well, that's disappointing, Larry. It is. It is disappointing. And then I find out, of course, after the fact, that I'm not the first or probably the last person that Reggie's ever been rude to.

No. And, you know, there was that famous instance where he almost killed the Queen, but thankfully Leslie Nielsen stopped him from doing that. And the queen ended up living a good long life. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of this community since 1921. All right, now I need the City Above Toronto story, and then I want to play that great memorable clip.

Okay, so that came directly out of Al Paladini. So the success of Al Paladini, So the success of Al Paladini, when the city of Vaughan decided they were going to become a city, they had been Maple and Woodbridge and a whole bunch of other smaller communities. They were amalgamating into a city and calling themselves Vaughan. And they wanted to do advertising. And at that point, Al Paladini was on the board of trade there

and personal friends with the mayor, Lorna Jackson and recommended me. So I go out with a producer and we sit down for about two hours in Lorna Jackson's office. And she gives me all the stuff that you would expect her to give me information wise. It's close to the airport. It's close to transportation hubs. It has low taxes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go away and I write, and it's a mistake I've made,

but try not to make. I wrote what I thought she wanted. And so it was a good commercial. I don't remember the details of it, but I go back six weeks later to present it to her and her committee. And I do my whole presentation. I read the commercial and there's a long pause.

And she says, Larry, I could have got anybody to write that. I wanted the guy who wrote any Palladini's a pal of mine. And that was actually liberating. I said, okay, great. I'll come back with something. So I go back. And in those days, I used a great big Selectric typewriter. So I couldn't take that home with me,

and I had to work in a certain environment to create. And so I was working late at night for a couple of weeks on it, getting nowhere. And finally, I realized that I didn't even really know where Vaughn is. I've driven there back and back a couple of times, but I really have no idea geographically where it is. So I go in the newsroom, and Bob Summers, who for years did traffic reports on both Chum stations.

Absolutely. Shout out to Amber Pay, who's an FOT. And Amber as well did traffic. But Bob was working that night. It was a Sunday night, and he was working there late because of cottage country traffic. Right. And I said, Bob, I said, where is,

can you explain to me exactly where Vaughn is? And we had one of these great big roll maps on the wall. The nuns who taught me in high school, in school, had one as well. Great big map, huge map, as big as the biggest TV you can think of. And it was on a roller in the newsroom wall, and he pulls it down, And he walks over to it.

And he says, that's Lake Ontario. And that's Yonge and St. Clair where we are. And that's Markham where you are. And way over there to the northwest, it's not even on the map, that's Vaughan. And I look at it and I go, it's above Toronto. Boom. And then I realize, oh, my God, that means two things. It means it tells you exactly where it is and tells you exactly what it is.

And it tells me that I have to bring Toronto into it if I'm going to make the point. So I don't believe in comparative advertising unless you're nice to the other guy, because if you splash mud, the mud always gets splashed back on you. So, um,

I, I realized, well, I'm going to be kind of sly about it. I'm going to do a comparison between Toronto and Vaughn. And I'm always going to say nice things about Toronto. I'm just going to make Vaughn sound just a little bit better. And a guy named Greg Johnson produced this commercial. He also recorded the Mookie Mash, sang on the Mookie Mash, which was a... For Mookie Wilson. And Rock and Robbie, which are two songs we did

for the Blue Jays. But Greg Johnson produced this commercial, and this again was... I'll tell you the Mel Lastman story after you play this. Okay. But this again was hit with like a bomb in the city when it aired. Toronto is a wonderful

city filled with over two million wonderful people. Vaughan is is a wonderful city filled with over 2 million wonderful people. Vaughan is also a wonderful city filled with wonderful people and lots of horizons. Toronto has many street corners where you often see talented artists displaying their paintings in very ornate frames. Vaughan has the McMichael Canadian Collection. Toronto has a Midway and Exhibition

where dozens of skilled barkers hawk their wares and you can ride a charming antique roller coaster for three weeks every year. Vaughan has Canada's wonderland. Toronto has Canada's tallest buildings standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the harbour. Vaughan has the Courtright Centre for Conservation, Boyd Conservation Area, and Black Creek Pioneer Village. Toronto is a wonderful city.

Vaughan is above it. The city above Toronto, the city above. If you'd like to know more about Vaughan, the city above Toronto, Oh, that jingle. Yes. So, after that hit, there was a lot of talk about Vaughn and kind of put it on the map and delivered. And it ran heavy, again, on all radio stations. And one day I'm sitting in my office and the phone rings and I pick it up and it said, a voice says, can I speak to Larry McGinnis? I said, speaking. He said, Larry, this is Mel Lastman. Mel, at that point, was the mayor of North York before they amalgamated.

And I said, Mr. Mayor, nice to talk to you again. Mel had been in many times on the morning show to promote the North York Winter Carnival. He was always a delightful guest, very, very knew how to entertain and knew how to play radio. And he was fantastic to have on. He said, Larry, he said, I'm calling about the, I'm given, this is the phrase he used, he goes, I'm given to understand that you're responsible for those City of Vaughan commercials I hear everywhere.

I go, yes, Mayor, I wrote those. He said, you know, Hazel is very upset. She was on CFRB the other day on the talk show, and she did nothing but complain about those commercials. I go, well, there's nothing I can do about that, Mr. Mayor. He goes, and he says, I have kind of a beef about them myself. I go, well, what? He goes, well, he said, you say in the commercial

what he goes well he said you say in the um in the commercial that um north york that um black creek pioneer village is in vaughn i go yes it is i said some of it is in north york but most of it is north of that and it's in vaughn he said i'm going to tell you something larry he said the only part of black creek pioneer village that's in vaughn is where the horses turn around to take a piss. And he laughed. And then he said, would you like to do some commercials for North York? And I said, absolutely. And a very good friend of mine,

a guy who had worked at Chum, a guy named Bernie DeBrookie, who had been the creative director at the Big Eight, CKLW, and later worked for us at Chum and worked with me on Air Herald, which is another bit we did for the Jay Nelson show. So Bernie and I wrote this great campaign for North York where Mel just is telling lie after lie after lie. So the premise was he's sitting in his office. The phone rings. Somebody calls from Switzerland and says, is it true we're thinking of moving to North York?

Is it true you have great skiing there? And then Mel says that the biggest mountains in Canada are at the corner of Yonge and Sheppard, and then he opens the window and he odles, and the echo comes back. And they never aired because they amalgamated with Toronto, so we never got them on the air. But Mel was a fantastic guy.

Mel was a guy, when he met me to talk about doing those commercials, he met me in, in his office and was asking all about my, my, myself and my family and everything. And then I met with him a month later to present the creative. The first thing he did was ask him, ask about my wife by name and my children by name. Now, either he cared enough to write that all down when I left, which is impressive, or he remembered it, which is even more impressive.

But he was such a fantastic retail politician. Absolutely, yeah. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home there as well. So I'm going to play the air held, but I want to give you one more gift real quick here. So you've got the Palma Pasta lasagna, you've got the sticker you sticker, you've got the beer from Great Lakes Brewery,

that brown box that your hand is on, that is courtesy of Moneris. That is a wireless speaker for you, Larry, to take home with you using Bluetooth. You can listen to some great music and some great podcasts. So that's going home to you. Again, Moneris sent that over for you.

And I would just make sure people know, in fact, I'm going to record with Al Grego, who hosts Yes, We Are Open. We're going to record tonight and I'll drop it Friday morning so that Larry gets the full day because I want people to hear this episode. And don't skip this episode. But Yes, We Are Open is available. Go to YesWeAreOpenPodcast.com to subscribe.

Al Grego has been telling the stories of Canadian small businesses and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity. So this is a great podcast. He's won some awards. We'll talk about that again tonight. And another podcast I highly recommend is the Advantaged Investor Podcast from Raymond James Canada. Chris Cooksey hosts that. He's got these great experts on to basically offer valuable perspective for Canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed, and focused on long-term success. And just because I want to shout him out,

Sammy Cohn, and Cohn is K-O-H-N. He's the drummer for The Watchmen. They didn't play a lot of Watchmen on Chum FM because at that point they had changed their format there. But you probably heard a lot of Watchmen on, for example, CFNY. And that's his side hustle now because he's one of the top realtors in Toronto,

in the top 1%. And he would love to answer any and all questions about real estate at sammy.cone at properly, L-Y, properlyhomes.ca. So write Sammy. You can ask him a question about drumming or real estate. Sammy would love to hear from you. Can I just play Air Herald?

Give me a little, just let me set it up just quickly. So this is when I was writing for Jane Elson, and I had hired Bernie out of CKLW. Actually, he had left CKLW, and he was going to be hired to be the creative director at CFGM in Richmond Hill at that point. And the Thursday before he was to start, he dropped in my office just to say hi

because he had seen me at an awards thing and he just wanted to meet me. And so he's sitting in my office and he said, I brought a reel of my work. Do you want to hear it? I said, sure. So he put on the reel and the first commercial was 30 seconds.

It was a spot that had won all the awards the previous year at the awards festivals. And I said, did you write that? He said, yes. And then the second spot started. And I got 15 seconds into it. And I stopped the tape. And I said, did you write that as well?

He said, yes. I said, would you like to work for us instead of CFGM? He said, yes. And so I went into, we weren't looking for a writer. But this is another chum thing. And we went into Bob Wood, I said, Bob,

Bernie DeBrookie, who is the former creative director at the Big Eight, has accepted a job in Richmond Hill, but I think we should hire him here, he said, is he worth it? I said, yeah,

I said, I think if we pay him what he was offered in Richmond Hill, he will come, he said, okay, offer it to him, and so I called Bernie, and he started the next Monday with us,

instead of CFGM, and this is another great story, so he calls, so he's in next Monday with us instead of CFGM. And this is another great story. So he calls, so he's in a position then of having to call the guy who hired him at CFGM to say he's not taking the job. So he calls the guy on Friday and he says, I'm sorry, I've changed my mind. I'm not coming. He goes, you're not coming. He said, no, I can't. He said, why? He said, I'm starting a chum instead. He said, no, I can't. He said, why? He said, I'm starting a chum instead. He said, well, I can't blame you for that. And so Jay Nelson comes into the office one day and says, I have this great idea for a gag, a homemade airline. It's called Air Herald. That's all he

said to us. And so Bernie and I love that idea. A guy to do literally a homemade airline. So we want the commercials to sound homemade. We want the voice to sound like he's not a professional or slick at all. And at this point, Al Paladini, I thought, was a write-off. Al Paladini had already been turned down by Al Paladini twice. And so we used the same conceit that I had used for the Al Paladini commercials, which is Al is saying these things, and he doesn't really know the real meaning of them. He thinks they mean something positive

when they really mean something negative. So we used that device through about 54 of these gag ads. They only ran in spot sets. Jay never referred to them outside of the spot sets. They ran every morning, a different one every morning for about eight or 10 weeks. They also ran at a radio stations across Canada and Winnipeg and Halifax and other stations. And they were written up in the Sunday Sun and the Sunday Star. They had a tremendous following. And this is just one of many, again, that Doug Thompson found for me.

This is just one of the 50 or 60 that we did. If you are thinking about getting married soon, now is the time to plan your honeymoon around Air Herald. We will give you all the privacy you want because I know what it's like to be disturbed. Hello, this is Harold Burley, captain and president of Air Harold. Yes, if you are going on a honeymoon, you can fly on Air Harold for one-third the regular price, and children fly free. I remember on my honeymoon, my wife said,

this is the farthest I've ever gone with any man. But I was in Kitchener once with my sister. So call your travel agent and tell them you want to take your honeymoon flight on Air Herald. Most newlyweds are so busy with each other, they always leave the flying to me. Except last week, I heard one woman say, I hope you can keep this thing up.

Fly Air Herald. We wing it. You know, people remember, because I get notes, you know, there's not a lot, I don't know if you know this, Larry, there's not a lot of coverage of radio and radio history out there. So I've become kind of a place people go to hear people like Larry McInnes on for, you know, 90 plus minutes talking about chum and chum, chum,

10 50 chum and chum FM. And I'm, I, I take this responsibility very seriously, but I do get notes about air Herald, which I don't have any personal memories of air Herald, but I'm glad that we can kind of. Well,

the funny thing about that is that we always had some kind of special. This was the newlywed special. We had trips to the Superbowl. We had trips to Russia for the Olympics. We had trips to Hollywood, but they always said, call your travel agent and ask for airhold. And so what happened was people knew it was a gag, obviously, but they would still call their travel agent and ask. And the travel agents would call us and laughing about it, say, we got another call today. And so everybody was kind of in on the joke, and that kind of made it kind of united.

And we gave away flight bags, which all they were were brown paper bags with a rubber stamp that Bernie and I had made up that said, Fly Air Herald, we wing it. And we gave away 1,500 one morning, and while they were still lined up all the way up Yonge Street to get them, we had to run down to get more paper bags, and we were making them

and stamping them in the office while people were coming to pick them up. So it was just crazy. You just jogged my memory on something that Roger Ashby told me during that episode 1050 I alluded to earlier.

So episode 1050 of Toronto Mike and Roger was talking about he's got bricks from that building because now it's condos, right? Did you get anything from the building? I have an on-air sign

from one of the studios that's now at home and Jeff Howitt has an on-air sign that he has in his basement, on his washroom in his basement. So when his basement is in use, the light comes on and it says on-air. Amazing. Everybody gets, I got, actually, I don't know if even Mr. Charette knows this, but I went up on the last day before they tore down the building and I got the chair out of Fred Charette's office. So I've been sitting in,

I've always wanted to sit in Fred Charette's chair, and now I've been sitting in it since I think 2009 or whenever it was we moved. So I have Fred's chair in my office and I have an on-air sign as well. Good for you, Larry. All right, my friend, we have a couple minutes here. I've got like five clips,

but you call for the one you most want to speak about if you can recall the audio. Okay, we have a couple minutes here uh i've got like five clips but if you call for the one you most want to speak about if you can recall the uh okay i have a list here okay um larry's choice we'll call this larry's choice i'm gonna do a pro it's a promo for the little richard promo okay so this is for the roger ashby oldies dance and this goes back to the kind of the camaraderie we had at the radio station. Remember when I started there in 73, we had two of the greatest radio stations in the country playing two diametrically opposed formats.

On one side, you have Terry Steele and Jay Nelson and Scott Carpenter and Roger Ashby playing Tie Yellow Rib Around the Old Oak Tree. And on the other side, you have David Marsden and David Pritchard. Pete and Gates? Pete and Gates playing Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd at the very same time. Right. But there was always intermingling in the hallways

because the radio station was all on one floor. Not like these days where you go to a corporate radio station and it's siloed where production may be in the basement and the writers are on the fourth floor and the sales to people are maybe in another building. Everybody was always in everybody else's business. And when I tell people what was the magic of that place, 1331 New York street,

it's just that we were always in each other's business. So there was always somebody in the hallway telling a joke or in your office telling a joke, or if you had an idea, you're running up and down the hallway telling everybody and getting feedback. And often Mike Holland, who was doing middays on 1050 Chum in those days, or no, he was doing middays, but he was coming on at 10 o'clock. So Roger, Rick, and Marilyn are on the air,

and Mike just walks in one morning on the morning show and without telling us just bursts into a little Richard impression. Okay. And so it goes on for about three or four minutes and it's hilarious. And at that point I was tasked with doing a promo for Roger Ashby Oldies Dance. tasked with doing a promo for Roger Ashby Oldies Dance. And so it occurred to me after the show that I could, if I could repurpose a portion of what Mike had done on the, on the air, on the morning show,

on Roger Rick and Marilyn show, I could make a promo out of it. So Bob McMillan produced this. Gore James is the voice, the answer voice, and the rest is Mike Holland as little Richard. Gore James is the voice, the answer voice, and the rest is Mike Holland as Little Richard. And now, here to talk about the Roger Ashby Oldies dance for the United Way at the Palais Royale is Little Richard.

Out of all the songs that were ever put out, it was Tutti Frutti that did it for me. That's great. But I think, Richard, we should say that the Roger Ashby Oldies dance is coming up Saturday night, September the 20th. I wrote Tutti Frutti. Everybody steal Tutti the 20th. I wrote Tutti Frutti. Everybody steal Tutti Frutti. Everybody do Tutti Frutti, but who get the credit?

Do you think I made any money back then? Well, okay. Roger Ashby's oldies dance. That's what we're here talking about. Tickets are $10 each at Studebaker's, and they're available here at Chum FM also. I was on a bus. Tutti Frutti, oh, Rudy. Tutti Frutti, oh, Rudy.

That was one of the band members, and I knew I had myself a bus. Tutti Frutti, oh, Rudy. Tutti Frutti, oh, Rudy. That was one of the band members, and I knew I had myself a hit. But I'm sure you want to tell everybody to dress up for the Roger Ashby oldies dance. We came to a stoplight in the bus, right? And somebody hit the brakes real fast. And I went over four seats at once. Wop, bop, a-loo, bop, a-lop, bang, boom. You can hear the laughter in the background. Yeah, no, it's that kind of magic in the hallway all the time.

I got a lovely email from, so Mike Holland, I believe he's really a Mike Boulier. Mike Boulier is his real name, yeah. So I like to share, and I actually showed you these CDs a minute ago, because I, thank you, FOTM. Stephanie Wilkinson, she sent me these CDs. I loved as a younger guy, the Blue Jay songs

that Variety Village would have these charities, you know, radio stations would submit these songs or whatever and it would always be like a chum thing. And there was one, I think it predates the CDs actually,

but there was Here Come the Blue Jays or something, which I always thought was a great song. And then I got this love and I shared it on TorontoMic.com

and I got this lovely note from Mike Holland about how that was him, I guess. Yes, yes. He's quite a singer and musician. Yeah. It was great.

And it was great to hear from him. And did you have anything to do with any of these Blue Jays Variety Village singles? The Mookie Mash that was produced by Greg Johnson, who also did the City of Vaughn commercial for me. And Rockin' Robbie, which is based on Rockin' Robin. Oh, they won't play that one anymore. What's that? They won't play that one anymore.

No. But I was involved in those, but not the writing of them. I was just kind of involved in my creative director aspect. It's just kind of like making sure they got done. But they were very successful for us as well. Amazing, Larry. Honestly, these stories were impeccable. So Mike Ockamore was correct.

I would love the chat. So before I play us out here, and we got to take that great photo by the tree. So I got to get you your lasagna out of the freezer anyways. But I just want to let you know how much I enjoyed this. Like I love geeking out on Toronto radio history. And I'm glad I can share this with the universe. So we remember these great moments from 1050 Chum and 104.5 Chum FM.

Well, thank you, Mike, because I've enjoyed many of your podcasts and I'm honored to be included. And before we do play us out, I want to find out, did you decide to just leave? Why are you no longer? Like I always say,

former legendary creative director. Well, I got packaged out because it was when Bell Media bought Astral, they had redundancy and they kept Pat Cugliari, who's a friend of mine. Pat is a fantastic writer as well. And I was ready to move on anyway. I was 60 years old. I'm doing all kinds of work now with Durham Radio in Oshawa.

It's at The Rock and K36. I saw Lee Eckley last weekend. Lee is on The Rock. I was rusty with him. I'll tell you, just if I might quickly. Go ahead, yeah. Just quickly, Durham Radio is one of the best kept secrets in Canadian radio. It's a little outside of Toronto with these really great radio stations,

not corporate ownership. Doug and Mary Kirk are the primary owners of the company. It reminds me very much of 1331 Yonge Street in that the employees are all on the same floor. Everybody's in everybody else's business. Everybody's having a good time. Doug Elliott's there. We still have a Christmas party.

Doug Elliott is there. I've been there because my buddy Bob Ouellette was there, and I went for a tour and stuff. You're right at the airport's right there. It's a cool location. It's at the airport. Who was it? Some chum people are there. Benji Karsh is there. Craig Venn's there. He's an FOTM as well.

But yeah, so just Saturday night I met Rusty and boom, I was where was I again? It'll come back to me in a minute. But I had a club seeing Rusty and there was Lee Eckley and I was very excited to see Beef there

so yeah it is a great station those stations are great and I also did work with Moses Nymer at his stations and they have great people there as well so I've been very busy I have my own advertising clients across Canada so it's good it's good for me well long may you run by the way Sneaky D's is where I was you'd think I could

remember where I was Saturday night but I had a great time shout out to Cam Gordon who was there with me and by the way Sneaky D's is where I was you'd think I could remember where I was Saturday night but I had a great time shout out to Cam Gordon who was there with me and thank you again Larry I loved this and that brings us to the end of our

1157th show you can follow me on Twitter I'm at Toronto Mike of our 1,157th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Tell us, where can we keep up with you? Do you have a website, or do you want us to connect with you on LinkedIn?

How do we connect with Larry McInnes? I'm on Facebook. I don't really have a website. People get a hold of me just through word of mouth, so that's the way I like it. That's the way to go. So if you want to get a hold of Larry, you got to go through me. I'm the gatekeeper here.

Okay. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Moneris is at Moneris. The next episode features Al Grego. We're going to talk

and kick out some jams. It's going to be amazing. Raymond James Canada, they're at Raymond James CDN. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. Ridley Funeral Home're at Raymond James CDN. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. Canada Cabana are at Canada Cabana underscore. And Sammy Cone Real Estate is at Sammy Cone. See you all tomorrow with Al. Everything is kind of rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold

But the snow, 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, you've been under my skin For more than eight years Thank you. For me and you But I'm a much better man For having known you Oh, you know that's true

Because everything is coming up Rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Wants me to date 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 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 grey Cause I know that's true Yes, I do

I know it's true, yeah I know it's true How about you? All that picking up trash And then putting down roads And they're brokering stocks Thank you. 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 It's just like mine And it won't go away Because 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 Sacré-Cœur 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 The end 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, yeah. Everything is rosy and gray, yeah. great