Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Mark Breslin: Toronto Mike'd #432

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Mike chats with Yuk-Yuk's co-founder Mark Breslin about being an older first-time father, the humble beginnings of Yuk-Yuk's and the many famous comics he has booked.

Welcome to episode 432 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Paytm Canada, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. And our newest sponsor, Buckle. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me is YuckYuck's co-founder, Mark Breslin. Welcome, Mark. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me here.

So glad to finally meet you. We had you booked, I can't remember now, maybe November or something you were booked. Maybe it was early November and you had to go to your son's school, is what I was told. So you had to postpone. Yeah, probably. You know, you can never say no to a parent-teacher meeting.

You're going to some kind of daddy hell for that. That's right. But I need to ask you, because I was fascinated to learn, you have a fairly young son. Yeah, I'm 66 years old and my son is eight. That is my first child. And so I had him, if you're doing the math, when I was 58 years old. I am doing the math. It's kind of unusual and yet it's not, you know, 25 years ago, 30 years ago, if a woman was 40 and she said, I'm going to have a child, everyone would say, oh, oh, oh, are you going to be okay? This is so unusual. And now you flash forward 30 years and the 40-year-old mother is a completely normal thing and it happens every day. Well, I think the 60-year-old dad, first-time dad, is the equivalent of what the 40-year-old first-time mom was 30 years ago.

And it's happening more and more, especially you hear this with a lot of celebrities, Jeff Goldblum and David Letterman. But of course, then again, Picasso, many, many, many years ago, had a child at something like 81. I'm thinking of like Anthony Quinn, I think it was. Yes, Anthony Quinn's a member of my club.

Yes, that's right. He was like an 80-something-year-old dad. And I, okay, so I have, my youngest is two years old. And sometimes, I'll admit, sometimes when I'm dropping her off at daycare and running around after her, I feel like, oh, I hate, I use the line, I'm getting too old for this shit. Like, I just feel like this is a young man's sport. But, I mean, how is it going? I want to know, is there any challenges? Well, I only have one child.

I have another friend who's my age who has two children about the same kind of age, and he's just ragged. I think the one-child thing makes it possible, because otherwise it's like wrangling cats. I've always been pretty energetic, and yet I feel my age still, in whatever way, whatever that means, especially physically, not mentally. But, you know, I've found that what you lose in energy, you gain in wisdom. And maybe you don't work as hard, but you work smart.

So also my wife is 20 years younger, and that means 20 years more of energy. That helps. And that really helps. And I have a really good child. I have a very loving and eccentric child, as you would think I would have. Is your son funny? Yes. He's funny, and he knows that comedy means a lot in our family.

In the way that a friend of mine, they're both mathematicians, math means a lot in our family. In the way that a friend of mine, they're both mathematicians, math means a lot in their family. Math means nothing in our family, but comedy does mean a lot. And so he's up on a lot of stuff. He watches Mr. Bean constantly. He makes little Mr. Bean videos on my iPhone. He's been on stage at Yuck Yucks

when everybody leaves to see what the mic is like we take him to Yak Yaks in fact, now you know that the language at Yak Yaks is completely and totally uncensored, so he's hearing nothing but a barrage of four letter words over and over and over and over again but he never uses those words

outside of the like hearing them at the club he never says them at school he never says them at home. He knows that those words are reserved for the stage. And I, who used to have every other word in my act was a four-letter word, I never swore. And that was kind of the joke of what I did.

People would say, who I grew up with, go down to Yucca, actually, got to see Breslin. He swears. Not he's being funny or he's telling jokes, but he swears because I never, ever swear offstage. That's like when people see Bob Saget on stage and they're surprised. Oh, that's so dirty.

It's like, this is the guy from Full House. And I knew Saget and booked Saget before he did Full House, and his act was filthy then. That's amazing. Later in the show, I'm going to drop some names that you would have booked and just to chat about them.

That's cool. Now, I have a note from Jody Vance. Jody Vance is a friend of the show. Of course, she was on Sportsnet and now she's at Vancouver. But she wrote me to just say hi. She says, tell Mark hi for me. I was head waitress at Yuck Yucks Vancouver, Plaza of Nations, the heydays of comedy clubs.

So Jody says hi. Well, that's great. And I wish I could tell you, hey, I remember Jody really well. But an order of counsel forbade me from having any relationships or interactions with our wait staff. But yeah, that was a cool club. We inherited that club, actually. It was originally built for Expo, Vancouver Expo in 86,

and it was just a ghost town of a place down there. And we got it for a song, and we kind of changed it over to suit a stand-up comedy, but it was a round room, and a round room is never the right room for comedy. So although we had a lot of good times there, it wasn't the perfect room. We've been in four different locations in Vancouver

since we entered the marketplace in 1988, and the place we're in now is a great one, which is on Canby Street, across from Vancouver City Hall. So Jody, if you're listening... Sorry, Jody, I didn't mean to insult you. I love you, Jody, I really do. I always had a thing for you, I swear I do.

I'm going to tell her she now knows where to bring her resume. Right. Correct. Now, when you were talking earlier about you know somebody who's like an older father like yourself, it wasn't Ralph Ben-Murray, was it? No. He's doing this too, right? He is, but he also had children from a former marriage,

so he had at least gone through this. Now, I should tell you that I come by this honestly. My father was 53 when I was born, and that would have been back in 1952 when things like that just didn't happen. And I have two older sisters, or had two older sisters, 19 and 23 years

older than me, from the same mother. So my guess is my mom, who was 44 when I was born, probably thought she couldn't get pregnant. And there I was. That's a safe bet. Now, similarly, my wife and I did not try to have a child. We just decided to stop not trying to have a child. And we had a child, which is quite different from so many of my friends who, you know, went for all these different tests and had to take all this

medication and pills and protocols. We just got drunk in Cabo. Now, we named our child Jackson after Jackson Pollock, because I don't know if you know this, Mike, but there's a Jewish tradition to name your firstborn male child after an alcoholic womanizer. I know that. And that's why we wanted to give him that name, to motivate him for the future. But actually, there is some motivation, because Pollock was really one of the first modernists

and saw the breaking down of the world as we know it through his paintings. And I have great hopes that my son will also somehow find a way to revolutionize the world in one way or another. But right now he likes Pokemon. Catch them all. Catch them all. Gotta catch them all. Catch them all Gotta catch them all Another quick hi from my good friend Mark Hebtscher

He actually records his podcast Here every Monday and Friday morning So he's been here today He was here at 9 o'clock And I mentioned you were coming in His scent still lingers You gotta follow Hebtscher there Why do I know the name?

He said he saw you on the subway I just assumed that maybe he just saw you as a famous person. I just understood. Is the issue here that the famous person takes the subway? This is a plug for the TTC. No, I don't drive. I hate driving. I have my license, but a group of concerned citizens got together,

drew up a petition asking me to stay off the streets, and because I always accede to the common wheel, I agreed. my license, but a group of concerned citizens got together, drew up a petition asking me to stay off the streets, and you know, because I always accede to the common wheel, I agreed. So I will go whatever way in transportation is the most efficient. And if that means getting on the subway, that's taking a subway. If it means taking a cab, I'll take a cab.

Walking, I'll walk. And that's, uh, Margaret Atwood's on the subway too. Ever bump into her? I have not. I have not. But I have bumped into Margaret Atwood many times in my life. I saw Margaret Atwood read Power Politics in 1971 at York University. Wow. I was 19.

And it was a complete mind blower. And I've been a fan of Margaret Atwood ever since. Excellent. Excellent. Let me give you some gifts since you came all the way out here today. First, in front of you, you'll see there's a beautiful red box from Palma Pasta. That is a

frozen meat lasagna for you, Mark. Great. And I love lasagna. I love lasagna too, but my last guest declared to me that she was not only gluten-free, she wasn't eating dairy. And I realized that maybe the worst gift I could give this woman is a meat lasagna.

Can you imagine? Probably. I don't do any of those things. I don't eat healthy. I'm diabetic, and I still don't eat healthy. So, you know, I just eat what I want to eat, and I enjoy it. So I do like a good lasagna. Enjoy the Palma Pasta lasagna.

Palma Pasta has four locations in Mississauga and Oakville. If you go to palmapasta.com, you can find out exactly where they are. But their exciting new venture is this new building they call Palma's Kitchen, which is near Mavis and Burnhamthorpe. So go to palmapasta.com today and discover Mississauga's best fresh pasta and Italian food. Also, because Valentine's Day is around the corner, a real cool, fun thing to do is to buy, they have heart-shaped ravioli, which is really popular.

Aww, that's sweet. It is sweet. Romance. If you want to be romantic. Yeah, here, I love you, honey. Here, have some pasta. Get fat. Well, hey.

Then I won't love you anymore. There's also some beer in front of you, Mark. So that is a six-pack of craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. Six-pack now, but by the time the podcast's over, it could be a three-pack. That's happened before. It's happened before. So Great Lakes, a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke. 99.9% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario. Now, I have to tell you about beer.

Now, you know there are two basic religions in Canada. One is beer and one is hockey. Yes. And I tend to be an atheist on both. Oh. However, and this really offends beer drinkers, really offends beer drinkers, I only like to drink, get this,

light beer in the United States, which has an alcohol content of what, 0.1, 0.2 or something? It's mainly water, I think. It's water. I think the swill from my hot tub is more alcoholic than that. I'm not a big beer drinker. I have to admit it. I would say that you like what you like, and there's no shame in that.

But I'm sure there's somebody you can give that to. When you pass somebody a six-pack of craft beer from Great Lakes, suddenly they owe you. That's what I'd say. They owe you. Well, my eight-year-old, I guess. I don't condone that, but as you will. I'm going to let Brian Gerstein ask this next question because I want to talk about it off the top. But Brian Gerstein is a real estate sales representative with PSR Brokerage. So let's let Brian take it from here. Hi, Mark. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Might.

represented with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Might. You can call or text me at 416-873-0292 if you are planning to buy and or sell in the next six months. No obligation, just happy to run the numbers for you so you can make an informed decision. Do keep in mind that the days of selling your home on a multiple way above list are gone, and you need an experienced realtor to market your home to its best ability. Mark, you are one of only 7,000 people to have been appointed into the Order of Canada last year.

What was that experience like, and was it the pinnacle of your career? Congratulations. Thank you. It was, well, I knew that people were applying on my behalf, but you can't exactly apply for it yourself or push it yourself. That's considered really gauche. So you just have to sit back and wait and see what happens. Now, just to tell you how long it takes to get one of these, if you get one of these, and very few people do get one of these. I think Brian said the 7,000 people in the history of the country have gotten them, and there's probably only 3,000 people

who are alive in the country that have won. So it's a pretty rare thing. It's not an arts award. Very few people in the arts actually win them or are awarded them. I actually have something after my name now, which is CM, right? Canada member. Nice. It stands for a lot of other stuff you can't really say on the podcast, I would think. But it was incredibly gratifying because, you know, I didn't have the easiest ride to the top.

There were a lot of people who were against me and a lot of institutions that were against me and what I was doing. I mean, to back it all the way up, quite bluntly, I always believed in a very, very, very uncensored kind of comedy. And that was not the dominant kind of comedy. Second thing is I was doing stand-up comedy and there's no history of stand-up comedy in this country until I come along and pioneer it back in 1970s.

And then the third thing is I always espoused a kind of urban comedy. That's not code for black, but that's code for people who live in apartments and go to restaurants, as opposed to most of the kind of sort of hickey comedy, you know, small town comedy, rural comedy, that hoser comedy that's sort of the dominant theme. So because of all these things, I wasn't the most obvious person to get it. But then again, I've put about $80 million in the hands of Canadian comics over the last 40 years. And I think, if nothing else, that's an achievement.

I've kept the Canadian comedy industry Canadian. Does that sound like a political speech? No, I was just checking your sweater there and looking for the pin. I would not take the pin off if I had the order again. Well, except I wore the pin on my bathrobe

when I was loading the dishwasher and it didn't mean I could load the dishwasher any differently. I usually wear the pin when I'm wearing a sport jacket. I just didn't wear it on the sweater. But yeah, I wear it wherever I can. And sometimes people actually see what it is and know what it is.

I think you're only my second guest to have. I have to do a little homework. I know Molly Johnson has it. She has one, yes. So you two are in a, that's a very, forget the 7,000 Canadians, 3,000 living Canadians, two guests on Toronto Mic that I know of have the Order of Canada. So that's amazing.

It's amazing. When exactly did you get it? Well, you know what happens is you go to the actual... Well, first of all, you know about a year before the actual ceremony. So a year ago, November, I got a call from the governor general's office. Will you call us back, please? Well, I didn't pay that much attention. I thought they said the receiver general's office. So I called them and immediately said, look, I don't know what the problem. I thought they said the Receiver General's office.

So I called them and immediately said, look, I don't know what the problem is here, but I pay my taxes and my accountant is Jay Gold and all you have to do is call him. They went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is the Governor General's office calling and we would like to give you the Order of Canada. Do you accept? Wow. We would like to give you the order of Canada. Do you accept? And I said, well, considering the way that the native people in our country have been treated over the past 150 to 200 years, I would have to say absolutely not. Actually, what I said was, I can be on a plane tomorrow. And then I asked them, does anybody say no to this? Who turns it down? was. I can be on a plane tomorrow. And then I asked them, does anybody say no

to this? Who turns it down? That was my question when you mentioned that. Yeah, who's turning it down? Mordecai Richler turned it down twice. Oh, wow. And David Suzuki turned it down. Really? People might turn it down if they feel that they're taking an award from a government who hasn't

done what they've been activists for. But there's an interesting sidebar here. John Lennon got the OBE, was awarded the OBE, which is the equivalent in England, in 1967, and he turned it down. Many years later, John Lennon said the only regret he ever had was turning that down. So I'm glad I didn't turn it down.

I was never going to turn it down. So they said, you can't tell anybody until we announce it in about a month. So it was really difficult because I would have to go out with friends for dinner and they'd say, what's new? And I wanted to tell them I got the order of Canada. But instead, what I had to say was we're having a drink special at the Niagara Falls Club, two for one, you know, before 7 o'clock. So that was tough. And then it came out and, you know, my social media was flooded.

And they told me you'll be coming to a ceremony and a dinner, formal dinner sometime in the next year. Did they cover your parking? Because I know that you don't drive, but that's expensive, right? The Ottawa... Well, they fly you and your guest. Okay. And they'll put them up.

But I also traveled with my son and my mother-in-law. So I had to put them up. So they wound up paying about half of it. I got you. Because I didn't have to bring them, but I wanted to bring them. So anyway, you do the ceremony. It wasn't until like early December. And it's very formal.

You bow. They read your, you stand on a little dais and they read your accomplishments. And then they put a pin on your lapel. That night, there's a very, very formal black tie dinner. I had to go out and buy a tuxedo. If you can believe this, this tells you more about Canadian show business than anything. I've been in Canadian show business for 40 years, and I didn't own a tuxedo.

So I had to go buy a tuxedo, and my wife had to go get a gown. And we went, and we're sitting at tables of 10, and it's very formal. And I'm asking people what they did to get the award. And one person would say, well, you know, I'm very close to developing a test for the gene that controls prostate cancer. And another person would say, I rescue indigenous women from battered relationships. And they say, what do you do? And I said, I open up a dirty mouth and I do drink specials. So I was sort of in a... I didn't know anybody there. Well, again, congrats.

Was the food good? Yes. The food was very good, but very small portions. It was gentle. I gotcha. And the governor general, who's been under some... She's been under some criticism that she's not social enough for the job. The schedule's a bit lighter than the...

Yeah. Well, we didn't find anything like that. She was fantastic. She was very good to the kids that were there. She took a little folding chair and went from table to table to table to table and talked to everybody. She was incredibly inclusive. And after the formal part was over, She was incredibly inclusive. And after the formal part was over, we went into an ante room where Glenn Gould's piano sat. And a woman who won the award for being the best interpreter of Chopin in the world played Chopin. And then everybody had a sing song.

And she was there. The governor general was up right to the end of the night. She was the last one standing. So I give her complete credit. No, good to hear. Good to hear. So again, congrats. That's an exclusive company and well-deserved. Before I take you back to 1976, I'm

just going to play a little game with you here. Remember the time. We're going to go on a time machine on this day. It's called Alzheimer's. Do you have some good bits about Alzheimer's? I'm not sure that's... The only thing about Alzheimer's. Do you have some good bits about Alzheimer's? I'm not sure that's... The only thing about Alzheimer's is it must be great to have Alzheimer's

and then get married because then you would exchange do-eyes and afterwards the marriage would always be fresh because it would be a new person in the bed every time. That's a good point. I always see the bright side of things. I try. On this day 40 years ago, so 40 years ago today,

the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 was this. Let me know when you can name this. Do You Think I'm Sexy by Rod Stewart. Yeah. And I have a story about that. He performed that privately for me and about 15 friends on a tour that he was on just shortly after that. I was living in this loft and the loft was on top of a nightclub on Yorkville called Dinkles. And that's where he had the party, his after party.

And it was really late and it woke me up. The noise came from the basement. So I got dressed. I went down and started to scream at Paul Dinkle and he said, come on in. And I went in and there's almost nobody there except Rod and his little entourage. So Rod treated us to this song

with him strutting around like a rooster and singing it to the bed track. Amazing. I was hoping you might have some. Oh, I saw him in concert or whatever, but that's amazing. I know. It was a really strange Rod Stewart story, I guess.

But I did see him the last time he was in Toronto just in the summer at the, I don't know, would they call it still the Molson Amphitheater? The Budweiser stage. The Budweiser stage, sorry. So I saw him there. I took my son, my wife and I took our son to his first rock concert, and he loved it, except it was a bit too loud.

A bit too loud. Yeah, you've got to ruin those eardrums to make it. Stuart still puts on an amazing show. He's an amazing man. I hope I have his energy when I'm his age. He's like a decade older than me, right? He's 77? Well, I was reading today, the stones are coming.

Well, not to town, but above us, I guess. Oro Medante. Yeah, I saw that too. But I wouldn't trek out there. That's just too much trouble. Burles Creek, I guess. I don't know. It's too much trouble.

But I've seen the stones at least a dozen times. In 89, when they did the steel wheels... I beat the guy to death at Altamont, actually. I was the guy. That's a great doc. Yeah, give me shelter. Give me shelter, that's right.

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Oh, that's someone else. The guys at the Sears were Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. Oh, wow. Sorry. Didn't mean to insult the Bay. The Bay. Oh, that's someone else. The guys at the Sears were Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to insult the sponsor. Those Bay guys suck. I take it back. You know what? They wrecked my watches, those people there. Yeah, you'll never forget them. I'll never go to them again. But if you go to

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Rod Stewart, he was in Faces, right? With, uh... He was in Faces before he was solo. Yeah, that's right. With Ron Wood. Right. And Rachel, what's the name of his wife, his longtime wife?

I know they're no longer together, but Rachel, I want to say Rachel, not Rachel Wood. No. Rachel Hunter. That's right. Yes. Yes. Well, he has daughters who are models now. Right.

You know, I mean, he's no spring chicken. No spring chicken. 1976. But he struts like one. He struts like one. This is when you, was it Joel Axler, you and Joel? Yes, Joel was my best friend in high school. And we're still best friends.

Joel's moved up to Walkerton, but I still talk to him every week and I see him once a month. I'm glad to hear that. That's when you opened the first Yuck Yucks, right? Yep. And in the basement of Toronto's Church Street Community Centre? Correct. 519 Church Street. So what's the origin story there?

Do you mind? No, the origin story is I graduated with a degree in English literature from York University in 1974, which would prepare me to work for any taxi company in the world. I had no idea what I wanted to do. It was all the 70s. People didn't have five-year plans. You kind of just did what you felt like doing. And I was very lucky to get a job as one of the first programming people at Harborfront.

It was the first summer they opened. Because I always knew a lot about entertainment. So at the end of the summer, they asked me to stay on and I started programming for them. And I stayed in that job for two years. And among the things I did was a comedy night. And I never thought that I would have any kind of a career or even a hobby in comedy, though looking back on it, I realized I read Mad Magazine since I was eight years old, and I must have seen every sitcom all through the 50s and 60s. So I was kind of prepared for this, although I didn't really realize it. It was like a bomb that went off that I had no idea I was sitting on. And after two years,

they've made a huge change in the way Harborfront was administered. They fired all of us, and all my friends who were comics said, we have no place to play now. There were places you could play, but you had to watch your language, you had to watch your content. It wasn't what we thought it should be. We had a much more punk version and we were really into punk at the time if you take a look at the year you'll see that there's an overlap and I had a friend who was running a folk music club in that community center on Saturday nights so I said do you mind if I bring some comics by and they can do sets in between the folkies he said sure let's try it called up my friends we all went down It was a disaster because the Folkies and the comics were nothing alike.

The audiences for them were nothing alike. The Folkies wore browns and creams and earth tones and smelled of patchouli and they were all full of love. And the comics sat in the back, chain smoking, wearing black scowls on their faces and hating everybody. So that didn't work. But then I had the best idea I ever had, which was I went to the community center and said, can I have one night to do comedy here? And they said, well, we've got Wednesday open. And Wednesday's the worst day in show business.

And I said, I'll take it. And they said, it's $38 to rent the room. And I went, ooh, how am I going to get $38? And I thought, well, I'll charge a dollar at the door, and that'll give me enough money to pay the rent, pay the lead comic, and have something left over for myself. And that's how simply it all started. Such humble beginnings.

It couldn't be humbler. At 10 o'clock, the custodian would come in the room, flip on the lights, even if a comic was on stage and said, that's it, you all have to go now. Now, nine weeks later after this, the room only held about 100 people, long and narrow. I got a call from a guy named Jack Capizza at the Globe and Mail who said, hey, Mark, I hear you're doing something interesting in comedy down on 519 Sure Street. Can I come and take a look at it? Maybe I can get something in the paper. I said, yeah, sure, go ahead. I'll see you on Wednesday. So on Wednesday, he showed up with his notepad. There were maybe 40 people in the room. We did our punk comedy

stand-up thing. He made notes, and at the end, he said, well, he said, I think maybe I can get a little something in on Saturday. I said, that's fantastic. Saturday morning comes along. I always get up later than everybody else. So I get up at around 11, and I had one of the first answering machines in Toronto, and it would always have the number of calls that you

had. So usually there'd be one or two. Right. But there were 43. Oh. What? Who died died so i started playing them mark you got to go see the globe and mail mark pick up the globe and mail mark go get the globe and mail so i got dressed i ran out and i got the globe and mail and there was a two full two page spread on yuck yucks and how it is the most radical innovation in comedy in decades. The next week, the very next week, I went to 519 an hour before the show to get things ready. And instead of having a few people waiting to get in, they were lined up around the block.

And I counted, and I still remember, 902 people. Wow. And we never looked back from there. 902 people. And we never looked back from there. A friend of mine shortly afterwards came in from California that I went to school with who was a business whiz.

He was studying business at Stanford. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm doing this show. And by this time, I was on stage as well. I'm doing this show. Come see it. So he went to see it. And he said, well, I said, what did you think? He said, well, I don't know. It was funny, I guess.

I'm not really into comedy particularly. But you have a business here. I said, I do? He said, yeah. He said, let me raise some money for you and let's get this going. And, you know, about a year later, we opened up in Yorkville

six nights a week. We never looked back. Amazing. Amazing. Did you take that guy to lunch? Who ever wrote that Globe piece? The Globe guy? I'm still friends with him. Wow. Still you take that guy to lunch? Whoever wrote that Globe piece? The Globe guy? I'm still friends with him. Still friends with him and his wife. Do you ever wonder

in that alternate universe, I don't know what happens if that never gets published? What ends up with Mark Breslin? Well, you know, I mean, Yuck Yucks could have simply struggled along for a long time there and then maybe I would have opened up the place anyway.

It would have just taken longer, or maybe I would have just gotten bored because it hadn't become a success, and I would have gotten into something else. Teaching, writing, would have been law, would have been something with words. But you know, the law thing is interesting. I was being groomed as a nice Jewish boy with a big mouth to go into law. People say you should always follow your dream. But I never had a dream to follow. I was always running from my nightmare. That nightmare was a law degree.

Wow. And that's as far away as you can get, I think, what you were doing. I think so. It was closer to criminal activity than law. Right. Now we're going to get back to Yuck Yucks, of course. We have you there in Yorkville. But I want to play a theme song to a show

and talk to you about that briefly. Go ahead and shot the flat line, then let's quit. Okay, everybody clear. Officer Alex Murphy shot to death in the line of duty. Legally, he's dead. We can pretty much do what we want there's a new guy in town his name's robocop mercury

Mercury Zoo Do you recognize this theme song? Yeah, it's from the four-story arc that I did on some RoboCop series. I didn't even have to audition for the role. The director wanted me and only me, and he made it really easy for me. Only four episodes? There were only four episodes I was in. It might have been more episodes. But I played a character called Archie Nemesis.

Get it? Who's kind of like a kind of Alex... It was kind of like an Alex Jones character looking at it back now. But, of course, Alex Jones did not exist in those days. So it was a fun job. I liked it. I was in Mexico, and I was in a boutique somewhere in Cabo, and a woman came up to me and went, Archie Nemesis! Oh, that's great! She recognized me from that...

Four episodes. Yeah, from that show, which must have played a lot in Mexico. So at the time, you're still based in Toronto, right? And you're obviously doing things like that. But what happens, you get recruited to help run the Joan Rivers show, right? On Fox? Yeah, and that was completely out of the blue. That could not have been more out of the blue.

I didn't have a huge resume in television. I had some stuff I'd done. I was one of the producers on Evening at the Improv in Los Angeles. I'd done a bunch of sort of under-the-radar comedy specials for CBC local outlets, things like that. But one night, I guess it was 1986, it was a

July night, and I was about to go on stage, and the box office girl came up to me and said, Mark, you've got to take this call. It's a call for you. I said, oh, no, no, I'm about to go on stage. She said, I really think you should take this call. It's Joan Rivers. And I went, Joan Rivers? Why would

Joan Rivers call me? I took the phone call, and sure enough, it was Joan Rivers. And it was Joan Rivers saying, look, I've got this new show coming out on Fox. It's the fledgling show and the landmark show on Fox. And I need to talk to somebody about the comedy

on it. I hear good things about you. If I fly you down next week, would I need to talk to somebody about the comedy on it. I hear good things about you. If I fly you down next week, would you come and talk to me? And I went, yeah, sure. She said, great. I'll put you on the phone with Dorothy, my assistant. You'll tell her when you want to come down. We'll make all the arrangements, and I'll see you next week. Now, here's what I didn't know. About a year before, maybe two years before, there was a comic named Marjorie Gross. Marjorie Gross became one of the writers for Seinfeld. on Canada AM. And then they asked me to be on that show and critique her after her

set, which was a bizarre thing to do looking back on it, but I did it. Alright. Joan Rivers is at the Hairdressers. I tell this story because I want people to know how ephemeral show business can be and how much luck can play a part in your life.

Because I could never have planned this. So Joan Rivers is at the hairdressers, and a woman says to her, you got a new show, Joan. You got to put my niece on the show. And she goes, OK, how do I know about you? I'll send you a tape. So she sends Joan Rivers the tape. Joan Rivers is working out in her house on the treadmill. She's got the tape on, and the tape is over of Marjorie,

who's very good, and eventually did do the show. And then Joan doesn't get off the treadmill, but I come on, and I wax rhapsodic about Marjorie's act and why it works and what I think she should do and what she didn't do. And Joan goes, who's this guy? I don't know who this guy is. I know everybody in comedy.

So she calls up Howie Mandel, who she knows. And Howie, of course, started at Yuck Yucks and was a friend. She says, who's Mark Breslin? And he said, he's a really smart guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So Joan invites me down. When I tell everybody I'm going down for the weekend they all go it's a job interview and I go no she just wants to pick my brain Mark it's a job interview oh okay maybe so I go down and yeah it's a job interview amazing like that sounds uh it's so random like

what were the odds that she'd ever see that footage? Yeah, one in a million, one in 10 million, one in infinity. I don't know. But sometimes things like that happen. And sometimes, unfortunately, it happens the other way. The missed connection. The guy who could completely change your career, but there's a snowstorm and he shows up on a different night. Things like that. If you're going to be in show business, you have to accept some of that randomness. For sure. Let's hear a little bit of the Joan Rivers show and then I want a few more details there. Live from Fox Television Center

in Hollywood, it's the Late Show starring Joan Rivers, Joan's guests tonight are David Lee Roth, Pee Wee Herman, Elton John, and Cher. It's a big guest. Mark Hudson with the Party Boys and the tramps. And now, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Joan Rivers! Thank you. That laughter is not canned. That was real in the studio.

I'm like, how long does this go on for? That's amazing. I don't know, but we can go out for a drink and come back. Here it is. I just want to hear a voice. Is this the first episode? Yeah. I have a whole...

You brought my book. Thank you. I have a whole monologue, which you won't do tonight. I am just... It's been five months, and so much has been said, and so much has been written, and I am just so, so happy to be here, and I thank you all so much.

So there you go. Brings back nothing but great memories. I was going to ask you how that experience was, and did you stay on good terms with Joan? Yeah. It was the best professional experience of my life. It started off kind of dodgy. Joan brought me in as the comedy producer. Nobody knew who I was. They stuck me in a room

without a window full of potato chip boxes and I started making calls. And then I had a couple of comics on the show that nobody had heard of, but they absolutely killed. And then TV Guide did a review of the show and said whoever's doing the comedy on the show deserves the kudos because they're the best comedy booker in the business. And after that, pretty good, well, could do what I wanted.

And I became good friends with Joan and with her husband. And we did things socially. And it was all a really great experience until they fired her. And that was really weird. So when they fired her, I quit. And I left my letter of resignation on the executive producer's desk. It was the vice president of Fox. And that weekend, I happened to have a girlfriend in town from Toronto. And we were at my house in the hills. And I had a little pool. And we were swimming. And I heard a knock at the door on a Saturday afternoon. So I went to see who it was. And it was the vice president of Fox. And he said, I was just driving by. Well, let me tell you, those streets, you don't just drive by. It's like spaghetti. It's twisted spaghetti.

You have to really make an effort. And he sat down with me and he said, look, I know Joan brought you into here, but we're impressed with you. And we'd like to offer you the job of producing the entire show now. And I said, but who will host it? He said, well, that's going to be part of your job to find a new host, have a new host every week. I said, well, okay, but I'll only do this if Joan says okay, because she brought me in. It's her choice. I'll go home otherwise. Remember, I still had a really good business back in Canada. And I

called Joan and she said, no, no, take the job. Just let me know everything that's going on. So I did. And that lasted for another seven, eight months. It was difficult. Fox wasn't really happy with anybody that we had. They would sometimes fire the guests before they even started,

which happened with Frank Zappa because he wanted a robot to co-host the show with him, which would have been great. I was 100% behind it. Zappa would have been amazing. That guy's so sharp. I know.

Zappa would have been great. But you've got to understand, this was 1987. And the whole notion of anything indie had not occurred to anybody yet. And anyway, after eight months, they finally cashed me out with a big, big, big, big, big, big check to go away. And I took it and I went, I moved to Maui and I opened up a Yuck Yucks in Maui. And I stayed there for about a year. And then I thought it's time to go home. And I came

home. Then I worked for Joan again on our daytime show in New York in 1991. But that show did not work out as well for me because it wasn't a funny show. It wasn't an entertainment show. It was a victim show. You know, she would have on, you know, four widows of firemen who had died in battle in New York City. And then after all, they all had a good cry. She'd say, and now he he's a very funny man. And we put the comic on.

So it wasn't the greatest, but I got, you know what? I got to live at the Plaza Hotel for a year on Joan's dime. You can't, that sounds amazing. So it was all good. That's all good. That's all good. Now, earlier when we were talking about when you had a, you have a young son and

you're in your 60s. We talked about Ralph and Murgy. So let me play. This is a much shorter clip. I didn't realize that. They probably weren't applauding quite so long. Oh, I want to hear about that. But here, let's hear this shorter clip. Oh, look, an audience.

Join me every Friday night at 11 o'clock. It's our new time. See you then. Friday night with Ralph Ben-Murgy. A new time right after Kids in the Hall. Fridays at 11, 11.30 and you can blast. Just a short promo there. That's Friday night with Ralph Ben-Murgy on CBC. I've had Ralph on the show. We talked extensively. Tell me about your role on that show. Well, I was brought in to executive produce it in the second season. The first season was considered not a success.

And because of my success in Joan and Joan's show, they thought, well, maybe Mark can do something with it. There were lots of problems with that show. One of them being everybody at the CBC resented it because it was using up a tremendous amount of budget and excitement when, you know, it was pop culture and pop culture was considered flimsy at the CBC by all the people there who are very serious about entertainment. And then it has to have some kind of, you know, social value. And the show didn't have a social value. It was a talk show um with entertainment and that was part of the big problem and then it's questionable whether ralph really was the right host for that show um i think ralph is a guy who's the funny guy in a very serious environment not necessarily a funny guy in an entertainment environment so you know when you'd watch him on

what was the show he did midday yeah yeah when you'd watch him on, what was the show he did, Midday? Yeah. Yeah. When you'd watch him on Midday, he was really funny. He offered wit to the show. But I think on a show like this, they don't want wit so much as they want broad, actual humor. And Ralph was having problems with the monologue. There were things that just wasn't completely right for him. But I also think no matter who had done that job, no matter who they gave it to, I think the CBC people would have collapsed it from within because it just didn't fit with their CBC programming ethos. I had a good time on the show doing it. It was only once a week. It wasn't the hardest job I ever had. doing it. It was only once a week. It wasn't the hardest job I ever had. The CBC people who were not bureaucrats were great to work with. They had fabulous producers and they had fabulous

sound people and lighting people. They were as good as anything I saw when I was in LA. So all of that stuff was great, but it was a show that had problems and nobody really wanted it except us. And so when they canceled it, I wasn't completely surprised. They were more looking for like a Rita McNeil special or something. Yeah, I always said Ralph would have a much better chance

of having this work if he gained 300 pounds. We used to say terrible things in the schoolyard. We called her eat a big meal. I know, of course. Terrible. I'm guilty of my lines like that, too. But it was just so perfect. You couldn't resist as a 10-year-old.

Yes, but people watched that show. And people loved that show. And you've got to remember, you'll never go broke in this country by programming something that takes place in the Maritimes. Ron James got his New Year's Eve special canceled, I hear. They didn't do it this year. He said they canceled it.

I wonder why. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. Is there a back story? I don't have the back story yet because he was in to promote last year's, but I haven't had him in again. But I've got to get him back to find out what happened, because he's all about Maritimes and references. Well, you know, Ron is a poet. I think the world of Ron James.

Not only is he funny, but there's lots of funny people out there. But Ron is also a poet if you take a look at the words that he uses for his jokes. He uses a hoser persona, but the actual jokes and the actual words are not hoser words. The same thing is true of Derek Edwards. Do I know Derek Edwards? I should know Derek Edwards. Maybe, maybe not. He's a guy who's... He doesn't know me either. He has a major following in Northern Ontario.

Because, yeah, Ron James, you couldn't miss him. He was all over the place. But, okay, so now back to Yuck Yucks for a moment. So you've got the flagship, I guess, is what, 1290 Bay Street? No, that was a long, well, that was then. Right. We're talking 1978. Okay, yes, right. So you move it, Young and Egg is the... Then we moved it to Young and Eglinton.

Actually, we had two clubs at the time. We kept 1280 Bay, because this was the boom in the mid-80s, and we opened up at Yonge and Eglinton. Then we got rid of 1280 Bay, and then we moved from Yonge and Eglinton down to our present flagship, which is at 224

Richmond Street, right near Simcoe. Now, Mike Rogotsky's a listener of the show, and he heard you were coming on. He had a couple of questions. The first one was... I won't answer that. You don't have to answer the first one, because it's going to tie into when we're going to talk about some bigger stars.

I won't answer that either. He wants to know of all the big stars that came to perform at Yuck Yucks. He wants to know who is the biggest disappointment. See, people always like to hear that story, right? You know, I would answer that. I'm not afraid of the recriminations that I will have to deal with in the industry.

I would say that anybody who's a star deserves to be one. The problem is that there are a lot of people who deserve to be stars who are not stars. But anybody that I've ever worked with, anybody I've ever worked with, I could see why, even if it wasn't my personal taste, I could see why these people became rich and famous. And is there anyone specifically that, big star that you were disappointed in? No, no, because I'm saying that anybody who becomes a big star

becomes a big star for a reason. That's a good answer, Mark. I like this. I'm not trying to be political. I would tell you that somebody stunk if they stunk, but they don't stink. That's a good answer, Mark. I like this. I'm not trying to be political. I would tell you that somebody stunk if they stunk. But they don't stink. That's the thing. Well, Grigotsky, what he thinks stinks

is because he tells me in this note how much he loved the Yonge and Eglinton location. And he wants to know, why did you leave Yonge and Eglinton? It was a weird shape of a room. And the only way to make it the right shape was to lose seating. And we wanted to be downtown where the action is, where all the clubs are, where all the dance clubs are, and we could design the room from scratch. That room did not exist as an entertainment venue beforehand, so we could make it exactly right for comedy, which it is.

as an entertainment venue beforehand so we could make it exactly right for comedy, which it is. Milan is the owner of Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. They're a sponsor, but he's got a question. What time is it? It is exactly 2.30. No, no, no. I meant his question would be, what time is it?

Oh, man. I'm like, it's 2.30. Come on, get with the program, man. Come on. Here's Milan. Hey, Toronto Mike. This is Milan from Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. Hello, Mark.

Hi. Thank you for all you've done for the comedy scene here in Toronto for so many years. Two-part question. I'm a big fan of Brampton's own Russell Peters. Is it a surprise to you what a global success he's become? And two, is there a story you can share about him? Thanks again, Toronto Mike. And two, is there a story you can share about him?

Thanks again, Toronto Mike. Well, you know, I've been saying to anybody who would listen for a very long time that Russell Peters was an amazing comic and they should do something. People should book him. I was at, just for laughs, oh, I don't know, I couldn't give you a year, but Russell Peters was there. And it was before he became, you know, global sensation Russell Peters. He was just the person they booked. And I was working with a U.S. company to try to find them talent to represent. And I sent them to see him. And I said, well, what did you think? And they said, well, yeah, he's good. But what is he? He's not black. He's not white. He's not Mexican. How does he fit in to the U.S. marketplace? We're going to take a pass. And that really saddened me. But then, of course, the internet happened and it changed

everything. And Russell was one of the first comics to know how to use the internet to promote his work. And so all these people all around the world that could speak English but were never represented, in a sense, by a comic that spoke to them, found that they had a hero in Russell Peters. So that's why it's amazing today that Russell Peters can sell as many seats or more seats in Jakarta or in Sri Lanka than he can in Manhattan, which is something completely new. So Russell has completely changed the game. Now, tell me about your experiences with Mike Bullard. Sure. I didn't have anything to do with the show that he did. I was not working on that show at all. I was on it twice, I think.

And Mike has an older brother named Pat. And Pat was a comic when I, roughly around the time I first started out. Pat was a very handsome guy, very debonair. He was a debonair comic, if such a thing could exist. And he went to the States and did very well as a writer and as a host. He hosted, I can't remember, it was like a relationship comedy show. I can't remember the name of it. It's on the tip of my tongue. But he had this younger brother, and he said, can you take care of my younger brother? So Mike said, look, I only want to host.

I said, why would you only want to host? He he said because i want to have a talk show someday and i thought okay that's kind of crazy fine if that's what you want he was a good host but he knew what he was doing he knew what he wanted and he used um yuck yucks and stand up to prepare for the job that he really wanted. And then he got that show. And it was, I guess, the longest running talk show in Canadian history? I think so. Maybe, I don't know how long the Zofsky show ran on CBC in the 70s.

I can't remember that. But okay, if Mike wasn't the longest running, he was the second longest running. It was a successful show. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, I'm going to ask you about a couple of comics who are no longer with us, but first I want to ask you about Eric Tunney.

Yeah, I wasn't close with Eric. He worked for me, we booked him, but I never was tight with him. It was sad when he, I guess he drank himself to death. It was a kind of slow suicide, I consider it to be.

He was very hot in Canada, moved to the States, never got any real traction, and I think he saw a lot of people who were less talented than he was go further than he was, and that can be very, very devastating. I first discovered Eric Tunney when he was

co-hosting the Ed the Sock show on Cable 10. I think everybody hosted that one for a while. first discovered eric tunney when he was co-hosting the ed the sock yeah okay cable 10 i think everybody hosted that one for a while yeah well how uh uh oh gosh what's his name he's actually he's in uh there's something about mary he's the police officer harlan williams yes yes that's the first time i discovered him uh was doing that show yeah harlan's great harlan was considered called breslin's folly for a while because in the beginning, his stuff was just weird. It wasn't funny, but it was weird. But I thought what he was doing weird might turn funny, and it did.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. For every success I have like that, there's a failure, you know? But it's like music and an A&R guy who will listen to a bunch of bands and go, that one, and you ask, why that one? And they can't really tell you. They just feel it, and I felt it with Harland. Now, Mark, whenever I have a comic on, and actually Ralph B. Murray is a good example.

I had him on, and whenever I mention this comic, comics tell me that this comic I'm about to speak of, who's no longer with us, is the greatest comic they ever saw. So let me tell you who he is before you even say it. Yes, go ahead. Mike McDonald. Correct.

Of course. Mike McDonald was the greatest. Certainly in his real heyday, 1980-ish, Mike McDonald could do four hours on stage, then come back the next night and do a different four hours. He was physical. He could do physical comedy amazingly well. He could do observational comedy really well. He was an amazing storyteller. He was an amazing guy. When Mike died, I went out and I spoke at his memorial, and, you know, I was very close to tears, of course. It was very, very sad to see what had happened.

But Mike was a cat, and a cat has nine lives. And if anybody else had done what Mike had done in his life, including, by his own admission, heroin and coke addictions, life, including, by his own admission, heroin and coke addictions. He was a tough guy. He pushed a guy down the stairs at punchlines in Vancouver. He would get into fist fights, all kinds of stuff. Anybody else would have been dead, but not Mike. When Mike got hep C and his liver started to go, we thought that's the end of Mike. But he had a liver transplant. And liver transplants leave you very weak for a long time. And some people never really come back fully. Mike came back fully and had another four years of headlining around the country. I feel those were bonus years for Mike. And he got more than maybe we ever expected him to get.

So, Mark, I hear you and I hear others say the same thing. How amazing, he's the best. What a great stand-up. He could do four hours, whatever. So why did Mike McDonald never achieve, I would take, like a mainstream success? Like the average Joe doesn't know Mike McDonald. Well, the average Joe can only know somebody through the electronic media. Mike didn't look good on TV. These days, it wouldn't mean so much. But in those days, when it was all network, they wanted pretty boys. They wanted Jim Carrey. They wanted Tim Allen.

These are good looking guys to have talk shows. Even Drew Carey, he may be overweight, to have talk shows. Even Drew Carey, he may be overweight, but he has a very symmetrical face and a very pleasing face. Mike looked like an army sergeant, and he looked like he was going to rip your head off if you said the wrong thing. And he might have, actually. So that was a major part of it. He was intelligentic. A second problem was that he shifted over from what his strength was when he found God. He had to find God to get rid of the heroin. But as a result, he was no longer doing I hate my parents material, but it became I love my parents material. It no longer became I hate authority figures, which had a big audience for him, to what kind of an idiot doesn't follow authority? So he became much more conservative in the way he delivered stuff. And I think he lost his core audience

and never found it again. You mentioned Jim Carrey. I got to ask about Jim Carrey. Sure. Now, you know, what I would do if I were a normal human being, which I'm not, is I would take all this credit for Jim Carrey and say how great he was right from the beginning. I saw it. I thought he was a genius. But that wasn't true. I actually thought he was kind of a guy

who should perform at county fairs, doing kind of sentimental stuff, impressions of Henry Fonda and Elvis. And I could not understand why people were going nuts for him. I just couldn't understand it. So we never really got along. And then he went to the States and he had a terrible first sitcom called Duck Factory, which scuppered his career so badly that when I wound up in LA three years later and I said, let's put Jim Carrey on the show, the producer said, why would we do that?

He's had it, he's finished. And it took a very slow climb back for him to be able to do it. Now, just to show you, I'm just not on his wavelength of physical comedy. I went to see the preview of Ace Ventura, which was his breakthrough movie. And I saw it with my friend Joel Axler. And we watched it. And at the end, we looked at each other and said, oh God, I feel so bad for Jim. This is going to just be horrible. And of course, what happened

on Friday when it opened? It was the number one movie in the country. Is that the wrongest you've ever been? Yeah, pretty much. So when I'm wrong, I'm really wrong. Go big or go home. Exactly. And then I started to like a lot of the stuff he was doing after that. He was never really a great stand-up. He was a great entertainer. That's different, though. But he was never a great stand-up.

But I loved Mask. I loved the one with... Oh, Dumb and Dumber. I think it's a genius comedy. I've loved a lot of the stuff that he's done since. Now, Jim and I had not talked in 30 years. And last year, through a mutual friend, I got an email from him saying, hey, you know what? We should not be enemies. We should be friends. We have a lot more in common than we do in terms of what we might not see eye to eye on. So we've been writing each other back and forth. And he said when he comes to Toronto, he has relatives up north. He said, I'll come see you and we'll have dinner. That's great to hear.

Which is great. He probably caught wind of the fact you were getting the Order of Canada. He thought, I better... Maybe. But I don't think he needs me. I loved his series, by the way, on stand-up in the 70s in LA. I'm dying up here. Okay. I loved his series, by the way, on stand-up in the 70s in L.A. I'm dying up here. Okay.

I loved that series. I thought it was fantastic, and I felt very badly when it got canceled. He's got another series I'm digging where he's like a Mr. Rogers type. I watched that, but I'm not. It's a bit twee for my taste. So now here's somebody I always found to be just hilarious. Let's hear you tell me you never thought he was funny either. Norm MacDonald.

No, no, no, no. Norm and I, I think Norm's a genius. I thought that right from the very beginning. Norm and I keep in touch a lot. In fact, when the Aspen Festival was happening, we were both there. I don't think we left each other's sight for a full four days. But the Norm MacDonald story that I like doesn't involve me, but involves my nephew, Howie Wagman, who runs the Ottawa Club and has since 1985.

Norm's from Ottawa, and there's an amateur night. And Norm is one of the many, like eight people or ten people on an amateur night one night um first time he's ever been on stage goes on does his stuff how he thinks this is great and then as norm leaves the building he says to how he well that's the last time you'll see me so how he runs after him and says what are you talking about he says oh, I bombed pretty badly. I don't want to do that again. And Howie said, you're out of your mind. You are fantastic. You've got to come back.

I'm putting you on the show next week, and you better show up. Amazing. It just makes me laugh. He's just so... He's fabulous. The way he delivers his lines. He's so smart, too.

I just... Yeah. Good old times, old times again. What about Howie Mandel? We alluded to him earlier. No, Howie I loved from the moment I saw him. And I loved him because, unlike so many Canadian comedians at the time, and we're going back to 1978, 79,

Howie would do anything to get the laugh. It didn't matter. He would go low. He would go high. He would put on a costume. He would sing a song. He would do anything to get the big laugh. And that was so not Canadian.

And I loved him for breaking the rules. Now, here's a Howie Mandel story that not a lot of people know. He wanted to go to Los Angeles and try out his stuff there. And we had a friend who was a comic at the comedy store who also worked at Yuck Yucks when he was in town. And he said, I can get him on. I can get him on. And I thought, great. And I thought, I'll go with him to be part of this experience, to have some fun. And you know what? I don't think I've only been to Los Angeles once. So let's do it. This would have been 1978, probably. Yeah, 1978.

So we go down, and this could never happen today for obvious reasons. Howie was irrepressible. His act didn't stop when he was on stage. He was doing his act everywhere. He took off his clothes and put on the Bobby diaper and went to the public address system and did a routine as Bobby to the plane. Today, he'd be shot by the air marshal.

That's true. But in those days, it was like, oh, look, it's a dinner show package on the plane. And Howie did very well when he got there and came back, stayed for a while, and then moved down. What's his involvement in the Just for Laughs? He's a partner. I's his involvement in the Jesper Laffs?

He's a partner. I don't know how involved he is on a day-to-day basis, but he's a good name. And, you know, I guess if they need him to make a phone call to talk to important producers or important comics, he's the guy to do it. What about, who do I got here, Jeremy Hotz? I love Jeremy. Just love Jeremy. And we met him in Ottawa when we first opened up the club.

He was an amateur. And he was kind of sort of funny off the top, but he found his voice, his narrative voice, which is an important thing. You know how they sometimes say about a comic, I could listen to him read the phone book. Well, you could listen to Jeremy read the phone book. Well, you could listen to Jeremy read the phone book because he's got such an attitude about everything is shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Chris, do you make good cookies? Just don't mail them, you assholes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, great stuff. So everything is grievous to Jeremy Hauntz, and it's a wonderful place to come from because you can make anything funny.

So, yes, he has good material but that character that character is like platinum yeah i agree i agree uh sam kinnison he uh he was a big part of yuck yucks right my good friend sam now you know um in the early 80s i used to go there weren't that many canadian headliners And although I was committed to booking Canadians first, sometimes I just didn't have enough. So I would go down to Los Angeles and everything was on a nascent, it was a really nascent scene. There weren't a lot of comics around like there are today. And I would go to the comedy store and they would put on their inventory for me. I would watch them and I would book one or two people to come out back to Toronto and perform there. I only had the one club at the time. So I was there watching, you know, a dozen comics. They were all good. And then they

came up to me and said, OK, we have the last guy. We put him on just so that we can clear the audience and give them their bills. If you want to leave now, we can talk about who you like. I said, no, I'm not going to walk out on a guy. I'll just sit and watch. How long is he going to be? 10 minutes? 12 minutes? And he started off by breaking a chair on stage.

And then it got even darker after that. Wow. Wow. I was married for two years. Ah! Never seen anything like it. So the comedy store people came to me when the lights went back on in the room, and they said, okay, who do you want to book?

I said, I think the last guy. And they said, the last guy? Yeah, he was really good. He did the material about the flying and what you can't eat on the plane. No, no, no. No, I mean the actual last guy. And they said, you want to book Kinison? I said, yeah.

I said, are you sure? I said, yeah. I said, are you sure? I said, yeah. And I booked him. Now, this is the story that Norm MacDonald loves to tell. Kinison comes in. No one had heard of him. No one knew him. The shows start on Wednesday nights, and they usually go through until Sundays.

He does his Wednesday night show. It's Sundays. He does his Wednesday night show, it's weak. He does his Thursday night show, it's worse than weak. He clears the entire room. I mean the entire room. There were 150 people there when we started and by the time we were finished, there's no one left

except the wait staff. So I go backstage and I take a $100 bill out of my pocket or 250s, whatever it was. In Norm's story, it's $1,000. No, it wasn't $1,000. It was $100. And Sam's looking at it like,

uh-oh, he's going to give me $100 and say, hit the road, Jack. And I said, Sam, this is your bonus for tonight in addition to what we would normally pay you because you cleared the room. If you clear the room any other night or any other show, I will give you another $100 for each show

that you clear the room, but Sam, you have to clear the entire room or you don't get a thing extra. He was stupefied, but it led to a very close relationship with me. And once Sam had figured out how to do his act in a way that would work, and he was a big star, he kept coming back to Yuck Yucks. In fact, he would invite me if he had a big gig in New York. When he hosted Saturday Night Live, I was there. When he did the Young Comedian special for Roddy Dangerfield, I was

there. And interestingly enough, that was a story in itself, because we went out afterwards, him, me, a couple of guys, a couple of girls on the town. And I said, who are these people? And he said, the guys were bodyguards because he owed money around town. And I thought he was joking. And I said to

one of the bodyguards, are you sure we're safe? And he just pulled up his pant leg and there was a.38 strapped to his leg. Yes. So that was Sam Kinison. But I can't imagine when you heard the news of his untimely demise.

I was devastated. You know, and of course the irony is that he was sober on that trip, on that car trip, and the guy who crashed into him was drunk and probably would have been one of his fans. 17-year-old kid, probably would have been one of his fans. Very, very, very sad.

We lost somebody completely groundbreaking, completely original, and it would be very interesting to see what Sam Kinison would do and what he would say in this new atmosphere of political correctness, which is poisoning the creativity in the clubs. Not in Yuck Yucks, but in many other clubs. Because when Sam Kinison came to town, it was an orgy. The waitresses had sex with him. many of them, all at once, with major drugs involved. Wow, that's the 80s, right? I miss the 80s.

I miss the 80s. And the 70s and the 60s, for that matter. Oh, man. It's funny because you talked about what would Sam be saying today, and I think the same thing of Frank Zappa. That's what I think of. What would Frank Zappa have to say about today? Yeah, well, you know, he had his group. He was married with kids and had his groupies,

and the arrangement was, when he was on the road, it was groupie time. Oh, like a ball player has that arrangement. I guess so. I don't know that much about sports. But, you know, there was a time when sex was considered a great thing to do, and you wanted to have sex, male or female, you wanted to have sex with as many

people as you possibly could, and you only said no when there was a really good reason not to. So does AIDS ruin all that fun? Is that essentially the... Well, AIDS certainly stopped the party. The pills started the party, and AIDS stopped the party. But even so, even for the first couple of years, in the first decade after AIDS, there was still that lingering feeling around people that sex was good, sex was fun, why can't we have more sex?

The solution to life is more sex. And if you try to suggest this now, like tomorrow I have to go do a lecture for Sheridan College to a bunch of art students. And if I said that to them, they would look at me like I was from another planet.

Yeah, for sure. It's the times have for sure changed on that front. I think this is true. Tell me if this is and i a few more things i want to get to try to get you out of here in 10 minutes and i intend to say it you know what they're not paying me strombo george strombo lopolis yes his first thing on tv was a yuck yuck yuck show is there do you know anything about this or uh no this is i got this so my friend was telling me this like i you know anything about this? No, this is... I got this... So my friend was telling me this.

I don't know about this, but I was on his show as one of his guests and he did a really great job and it looked terrific. But that was many years into... Right. I think that was like the year

before they took the show away from him. Yeah, his CBC show. The Red Chairs, right? You were on a Red Chair? Yeah, that's right. I was on that nice Red Chair. The previous guest, Bill King You were on a red chair? Yeah, that's right. I was on that nice red chair. The previous guest, Bill King,

who's a great musician, by the way. He did keyboards for Janis Joplin. Oh, yeah? Yeah, Bill King. He's amazing. But he,

and I don't know the context of this, and I'm wondering if you'll know, but he heard you were coming on and he wanted me to ask you for your thoughts on Jackie Gleason.

Okay. Is that out of left field? No, it's not out of left field. And I'll tell you, Jackie Gleason was one of the great comics in history. But he proves what I've always thought, that a great comic can be very good at doing drama. And as funny as Jackie Gleason was, he was also equally good in say The Hustler

and a number of other movies that he did so I also see Jackie Gleason was also wonderful in that he was a Falstaffian kind of character, I mean we're talking, we just mentioned the idea of comics or people in show business kind of being comfortable with vice and Gleason of being comfortable with vice. And Gleeson was very comfortable with vice.

Overeating, over-drinking, too many showgirls. And I like that, because if people in show business can't do it, for the rest of us, who can do it? Right. And when you're describing how Jackie Gleeson, you know, can be a great actor, dramatic side, everything, I'm thinking Robin Williams is like the greatest example of that. Robin Williams everything. I'm thinking Robin Williams is the greatest example of that. Robin Williams is another example of that.

Alan King is an example of that. There's lots of examples. Billy Crystal is an example of that. Hey, very funny guy, but if you go to see his one-man show, 700 Sundays, you'll be in tears. He will take you to tears with the stories about his father. Wow. I want to thank just quickly a couple more sponsors before we wrap up here.

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But you don't even have to, you're automatically charged through the web application. Interesting. Another web business that's completely changing the way we do business. Absolutely. And another one that's changing the way you do business is Paytm because Paytm is changing the way you pay all your bills. We all have to pay bills. With Paytm, it's an app for your smartphone.

You pay all your bills in one place, but you get rewarded for paying your bills. You had to do it anyway. You're getting rewarded for doing it. But what I like is you can easily apply, like if you have a credit card that gets points, you can pay things with the credit card you couldn't pay with the credit card normally,

if that makes sense. You can use Paytm to pay by credit card and then you can get your rewards. You can double dip. You get rewarded in both places. Well, I think that's good, although I do have an alternative that I use. It's called a shredder.

A shredder. Come and get me! You did a documentary. You're in a documentary. 2013, there's a documentary called When Jews Were Funny. Yeah, Alan Zweig. Right. And what is your line in that?

You say Jews were bred into intelligence due to the Holocaust. Is that your line in that? You say Jews were bred into intelligence due to the Holocaust. Is that your line? Yeah, it isn't just the Holocaust, but when you're being slaughtered for 5,000 years by enemies everywhere, generally it's the strong survive, the smart survive. People who came to North America, Jews who came to North America, had to be pretty smart from Western Europe and Eastern Europe, knowing that something horrible was going to happen, rather than playing ostrich and being slaughtered, you know, five

years later. My family did not go through that, but we went through earlier stuff. My family came here from the Ukraine, Jews from the Ukraine in the 1880s, and we were avoiding the Tsar, who were also coming into villages and just wholesale slaughtering Jews called pogroms. So it's always been something. I just found that very interesting, and then I was glad you could elaborate on that. So it's sort of like a survival of the fittest, but in a... It's survival of the fittest. No, thank you.

Right, I was going to say. You know, thanks for the... Yeah. Because, yeah, typically some pretty unfit people in my family were able to survive just fine. So I think that's the big difference. Jews are funny and smart. And how this connects to what we've been talking about for the last while is, you know, Jewish people have basically created the comedy business in North America over the past hundred years, and especially in the first 70 or 80 of them. And there would not be a recognizable comedy world without Jews.

Is there going to be a movie about your life here? Because your life is a bit of a movie here, I think. Why no one has ever approached me to do a documentary is beyond me because it would be very colorful and would embrace so many different things. As you know, I fight for free speech.

I fight for a lot of things. I am not a conventional Canadian businessman trying to hide from the spotlight. I hog the spotlight. I'm colorful. I don't know why. However, I have written, along with my co-writer Eric Baird, an origin story, a screenplay called Welcome to Yorkville

about the start of Yuck Yucks. We have had it optioned by Michael Hirsch, and we're seeing where it goes. Excellent, excellent. And Yuck Yucks, do you want to share a little bit about the future of Yuck Yucks? What's next? Anything? World domination.

It's a bit late for world domination. The internet did that. We are opening two new clubs this month, one in Burlington, one in Oshawa. I've got a couple more deals going, and there's a television series that's pending. But I can't talk more about it than that. I'm always looking for opportunities.

Well, from those humble beginnings you shared and churched there to this, well done. So congrats again on the Order of Canada. And these are some fantastic stories. I could have easily done several more hours. Thank you. Well, maybe I'll come back because I just want to say, although my beginnings were humble, I am not. And that brings us to the end of our 432nd show.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at Mark Breslin 5. That's a numeric five at Mark Breslin 5 on Twitter. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptors Devotee. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair is at Fast Time

WJR. And PayTM is at PayTM Canada. See you all next week. Drink some Guinness from a tin