Anchorboy (6 page)

A
FTER TWO YEARS OF WORK
at TSN and following the completion of my degree at Ryerson, I, like a lot of kids my age, backpacked through Europe with my best friend. Although backpacking was the experience of a lifetime, three months of wearing the same pants is not something I would recommend. I literally wore the same pair of beige corduroys for ninety straight days, washing them perhaps three times. Looking back, I can’t believe I was wondering why I wasn’t getting more action. I did manage to make it to Wimbledon for a glorious day of tennis before returning home completely broke. Beyond broke, actually. I had to borrow funds from my parents just to make it home. Upon my arrival back in North America, I burned the pants. I’m surprised they didn’t start themselves on fire as I walked around Europe with those dirty fibres rubbing together.

Back in Canada, I suddenly had no job and no place to live, so I travelled across the country by car to visit my parents at their new home of Kelowna, B.C., where they had chosen to retire. Instead of going straight to Kelowna I thought I would fly to Regina, visit my
grandfather, and then rent a car and travel west, visiting every single TV station along the way. I was hoping to meet a ton of news directors and drum up some interest in me. I concentrated my search in western Canada because I knew the terrain, and the cities and stations were very familiar to me. After a couple of days of driving and meeting and greeting, I came upon Lethbridge, Alberta, fourth-largest city in Wild Rose Country. Following a quick visit at the Global TV station in town, I made my way to the CTV station and was greeted not by the news director but the nighttime news producer, who couldn’t have been nicer about a total stranger and gangly idiot interrupting her workday. She told me the same thing everyone along the trip had told me: NO jobs to be had at her station.

But
she did offer me hope …

She mentioned that six months previously, her main sports anchor had left Lethbridge to take a similar job at Global Television in Saskatoon. However, his fiancée had stayed behind in Lethbridge. The sportscaster was not happy being away from his lady love and had been making noise about wanting to return home. The nighttime news producer surmised that there would therefore be a job open at Global Saskatoon within a few weeks, and if I was smart I would contact the news director there. I never got the name of that nighttime news producer, but I wish I had. She essentially jumpstarted my career without knowing it.

The next day I was on the phone to Global Saskatoon and their longtime news director Lisa Ford, who had earned the nickname “Lita Ford” because, well, she basically looked the way you would have imagined the former member of the Runaways would look like twenty years after “Kiss Me Deadly.” I mean that in the best way possible. Leather jackets, long blonde hair, boots. She was awesome. I chatted with her over the phone briefly, and she told me to send her my demo tape and she would get back to me.

I went to visit my parents for a week, during which time I was
in constant contact with Lisa. I don’t know if I have ever been more determined to land a job in my entire life. The entire situation was perfect. Saskatoon was a city I’d been to many times before. There was a major junior hockey team (the Blades), and the University of Saskatchewan had some of the best athletic programs in the country. The junior football team had an especially storied reputation, and the city actually rallied around them and the other U of S sports programs. What
really
made the job special was the fact that they were still producing a local
Sportsline
highlight show right after the late news. Instead of having little more than four or five minutes to fill during the local newscast, I would be responsible for co-hosting and helping to produce a half-hour nightly highlight show. The perfect training ground for a future TSN anchor. Not getting this job would be devastating.

I returned to Toronto, where I still had no place to live. Luckily the house right behind Hooker Harvey’s where I’d lived my last two years at Ryerson was still occupied by my best friends from school, and there was plenty of room and plenty of old, disgusting couches in the basement for me to crash on. TSN had generously agreed to bring me back on as a freelance editorial assistant. I could easily have picked up my life right where it had left off, late-night hand job shows and all, but I was now obsessed with landing that job in Saskatoon and getting my on-air career started.

Two weeks later I got the call. Lisa wanted to hire me as the new sports director at Global Saskatoon. As it turned out, not only was one of her sportscasters returning to Lethbridge, another one was leaving to take a job at CTV in Ottawa. That meant there were two jobs to be filled, including the person who would be in charge of the department. In the wake of Sportsnet launching that fall and
The Score
having been on the air for a couple years, Lisa had been experiencing frequent turnover in the sports department, as more and more anchors had been treating Saskatoon as a pit stop on the
way to bigger and better things. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I planned to treat Saskatoon as a pit stop on the way to bigger and better things. She hoped that by handing me a job that was over my head I would grow into it and, more importantly, stick around for a little while. Like for five years. I had no problem with this idea. I had two weeks to pack up the few clothes I had, book a flight, and start my new job.

I
WAS HAPPY TO HAVE
landed my first real on-air broadcasting job in a city of 200,000 people and not 20,000 people. Instead of me finding an apartment in Saskatoon right away, my parents arranged for me to rent a room with my great uncle Reg, whom I had visited once in Florida but never really spent much time with. In hindsight it was like the set-up for an ’80s sitcom or a Bravo reality show: Young hotshot sportscaster moves in with seventy-year-old retired model plane enthusiast and hilarity ensues. Like a multi-generational
The Odd Couple
.

Uncle Reg was a widower who had a nice bungalow about a ten-minute drive from the TV station. I had my own room and my own bathroom for the bargain price of about $300 a month. I was more than happy to stay with him, and we hit it off right away. Reg was long retired from working at General Motors, and when he wasn’t working on model airplanes in his basement and terrorizing the waitresses at the local Zellers diner, he was probably having a nice long nap. He was also a natural-born jokester, and I think he
genuinely enjoyed having the company after having been alone for at least a decade at that point. His wife, my auntie Joyce, had died relatively young. He had a large mirror hanging in his entranceway, and I used to love to pretend to fix my hair for about ten minutes before I left for work every day, much to his disgust. He would retaliate by draping a towel over said mirror for me to witness when I arrived home. Just a couple of frat boys we were.

About a month into my job, my new co-anchor on
Sportsline
at Global Saskatoon, Derek Bidwell, told me he was having a Halloween party and invited me along.

Derek was a classic life-of-the-party guy, the one in the middle of the room good-naturedly making fun of everyone and making them laugh. He was born and raised in Saskatoon and had played for the Hilltops Junior Football Team. It seemed like the entire town showed up for the party at the bungalow near downtown that he was renting with a couple of his buddies. Derek dressed as a wizard or something and wore this long robe—it was a little like something you’d imagine Hugh Hefner wearing at the Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion. The party was a blast until everyone in the living room heard a massively loud THUMP and looked down the stairs into the basement to see Derek sprawled on the floor in significant pain. He was attempting to head downstairs to get more beer when he tripped over his flowing robes and went tumbling down to a likely concussion. He was off work for several days. I’m pretty sure he’s recovered, though with Derek it’s sometimes hard to tell. He will enjoy that joke.

I had brought along my favourite booze mix from university: beers and tequila. Back at Ryerson it was my drink combo of choice. I genuinely always loved the taste of tequila even before we all started drinking
good
tequila. For Derek’s party I thought I’d bring tequila for everyone and get the party going, but the party was already going when I got there, and for some strange reason no one
was that interested in drinking the tequila except me. I had even brought along salt and limes in a little Ziploc bag. It was all a little “Anal Retentive Fisherman” of me. It goes without saying that I had way more than my share of tequila that night.

I remember taking a cab home, and as the driver pulled up to Uncle Reg’s mid-century bungalow, I puked all over the backseat. I am still amazed that I remembered the address in that state. The cabbie was obviously furious. I threw one twenty at him for the cab ride and another for his trouble, and by “his trouble” I mean my vomit. Somehow I managed to stumble into the front door. Once inside I tried desperately not to wake Uncle Reg, who was scheduled to begin the drive to his winter home in Florida the next day on November 1, the same trip he made every year. Once I had started vomiting beer and tequila, my stomach was not about to stop until all the offensive residue had been purged from my body. I puked violently and loudly throughout the night, relieved that I did indeed have my own bathroom and was not sharing one with Uncle Reg. My great uncle was a sound sleeper, and I peeked in on him a few times to make sure I hadn’t awakened him with my juvenile antics. I finally got to sleep around 4:00 or so.

The next day I was scheduled to host
Sportsline
at 11:00 p.m. For the average hangover it’s reasonable to assume that by 11:00 p.m. you should be somewhat recovered and perhaps ready to go out and accomplish whatever task is in front of you, but on this particular day the booze had hit me harder than usual. After dragging myself into the shower and throwing on a suit, I went into the TV station and spent a good portion of the day sleeping on the couch in Lisa Ford’s office. I felt like absolute death, and it wasn’t getting any better as show time approached. To this day, I have never been that hungover in my entire life. Somehow I managed to finish writing all my scripts and even edit my own highlights, but this was interrupted by frequent trips to the washroom to vomit and to wish death upon myself.

I made a promise: If I was able to make it through that broadcast, I would never, ever drink heavily the night before a broadcast again, no matter how late the broadcast was the next day. Clearly a recovery time of more than twelve hours was still not enough for my delicate body.

As 11:00 p.m. drew closer I began to have serious fears: My nausea had not subsided, and I was going to be sitting on a desk for half an hour with no chance for a quick bathroom break. The commercial breaks were only two minutes long, and the bathroom was a one-minute walk from the set. It began to dawn on me: Exactly one month into my broadcasting career, there was a very good chance I was going to vomit uncontrollably on live television, thus ending my career in one of the most spectacular flame-outs in the history of the business. I was destined to become an urban legend. All of this also occurred just as the Internet era was about to blossom, meaning there was a good chance that someone would save the tapes of the incident and I would become one of the first YouTube sensations. My chances of career recovery would be slim.

I emptied a garbage can under my desk in the newsroom and brought it up on set with me. At the very least I could lean down and puke into a bucket like a normal person rather than doing it all over the desk like some neanderthal. That would show class and sophistication on my part. Maybe that would save my job: “Jay, we’re really disappointed that you puked on live television;
however
, nice work bringing the bucket up to the desk! Quick thinking!”

I sat down in my chair behind the
Sportsline
desk and organized my papers. Once the opening theme music kicked in, my mind started to focus and my stomach started to feel better. Somehow I made it through the show that night. A little adrenaline kicked in and settled my stomach just enough to get me by. I drove home, relieved that I wouldn’t have to head in early the next day to face my boss and explain myself for the vomit—that someone now had to
clean up off her set—just before I was escorted out of the building.

As for the promise I made to myself to not drink that heavily the night before a broadcast ever again, I have kept it, for the most part. I was never very good at leaving the party early, and someday it will probably be my downfall.

Six months after the near-vomiting experience on the set of
Sportsline
, I had moved out of the bungalow and was now living in my own apartment in downtown Saskatoon. Uncle Reg had just returned from Florida, and I drove up to his place for dinner and a visit. It was nice to see him, hang out for a bit, and hear his stories about all the older ladies who had been “pawing at him” throughout his time in Florida. When he was ready to crash I got up to leave. I made sure that he saw me stop and check my hair in the mirror in the entranceway, and then I started out the door. Uncle Reg waited atop the front steps as I walked toward my car, and just as I was about to open the driver door he called out:

“Oh, by the way, I hope you got someone in to clean the bathroom after that night before I left.”

I looked up and saw him smiling.

“You were on the big white telephone with Ralph all night!”

A
FTER MY INITIAL BRUSH WITH
death by vomiting in my first month on the job, I started to settle in at Global Television. At the ripe ol’ age of twenty-four I was hosting
Sportsline
five nights a week at 11:00 as well as a short four-minute segment on the 6:00 news. I was also in charge of assigning stories to the other two guys in the department. Derek worked alongside me during the week. The weekend anchor desk was manned by R.J. Broadhead, who was just making the transition from radio to television at the time. I thought R.J. was an excellent broadcaster, and we got along swimmingly. His voice was so powerful it was almost like he was putting it on, but then you met him in person and realized that he had just been blessed with an incredible set of pipes. His father was a longtime Saskatoon radio host, so R.J. came by his talents honestly. I’ll always remember that after Lisa told us she had hired him, Derek mentioned that R.J. had left a message on the sports department phone. He said he couldn’t believe the voice. He played it for me, and I sincerely thought R.J. was doing a bad impression of Troy McLure
from
The Simpsons
. It was like the imitation I do of a “broadcaster,” all overexaggerated syllables and dulcet tones.

Derek recovered from his brush with death at Halloween and remains a friend to this day. Having made the move to Calgary years ago, he has worked steadily in radio and television there ever since. Whenever I talk to Derek these days about our time working together in Saskatoon, one of the things I love to bring up with him is the Big Bang Incident.

This had nothing to do with the popular CTV/CBS sitcom of the same name, which was not around at that point—a good thing for me because I probably wouldn’t have been secure enough at the time to accept everyone telling me how much I look like the guy who plays Sheldon on that show, actor Jim Parsons. Since I joined Twitter I probably hear that I look like Sheldon ten times a week, and it’s not necessarily intended to be flattering. Nonetheless, this particular Big Bang Incident involved something different entirely.

It was about two months after I had started at Global Saskatoon and one month after the worst hangover of my life. My new boss, Lisa Ford, called Derek and me into her office and informed us we would be emceeing a Champions for Christ luncheon that was set to take place that week, and it had all been arranged by a salesperson at the station. Derek accepted this without question, but I was taken aback. “A
Champions for Christ
lunch?” I repeated with massive skepticism. “Is it even appropriate for us to be involved with that?”

It was and remains to this day a completely legitimate question. Champions for Christ is an organization that brings pro athletes of Christian faith together under one roof to do charity work and celebrate the teachings of Jesus. I knew they did a lot of wonderful work in helping those less fortunate. I also knew I did not share their beliefs, and I felt that was reason enough for me to not have to participate in this luncheon. Take my beliefs away and I still found it
inappropriate for us, as the news-gathering arm of a television station, to align ourselves with Champions for Christ. It was one thing to sell ads to them promoting their luncheon. They had every right to promote whatever they wanted as long as they were willing to pay for the advertising and weren’t offending anyone. However, to have anchors from the station emcee their luncheon was inappropriate to me. Just as inappropriate as having one of the station’s news anchors emcee a political fundraiser.

Lisa did not understand my concern. What was the big deal, she thought? You show up, introduce the guest speakers, eat a free lunch, and leave. Derek just didn’t care. He was friends with the salesman whose Christian beliefs had led to CFC advertising on our station, and he was the one who wanted Derek and me to emcee the event. If we were to drop out, Lisa would need to find someone else, which would be a headache she didn’t want to have to deal with at this point. Had I flat-out refused on the basis that I didn’t share the same Christian beliefs, then I obviously wouldn’t have been fired, but I knew I would be labelled as a guy who wasn’t a “team player.” Even my new friend Chris Krieger, the station’s news anchor and obviously a good judge of what was and wasn’t appropriate in our business, thought I was being too much of a stickler about the whole thing. “In the end it doesn’t really matter that much,” he said.

So, a few days later, Derek and I made our way to the luncheon along with our camera guy, Paul Yausie, who was going to get some footage of the event to send to Champions for Christ later. Everyone attending could not have been nicer. I decided to just relax and go with it. Admittedly, I was also somewhat excited to hear the guest speaker that day: Mike “Pinball” Clemons.

Pinball was a running back for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League and had put together a prolific Hall of Fame career. But that’s not why the man is such a beloved figure in the Canadian media landscape. He’s a beloved figure because he
is one of the most charming and charismatic athletes to play pro sports in North America over the past three decades. He speaks passionately, smiles constantly, and has an incredibly infectious way about him. For years people have asked Pinball when he is going to run for public office, maybe even mayor, but so far he has resisted that calling. He coached the Argonauts on two separate occasions, but after his playing career he generally made his living as a motivational speaker.

After we briefly introduced ourselves, and then a man of the cloth said grace, the entire group dug in to the catered lunch. We happened to be sitting at the same table as Pinball, and he was gracious and kind to everyone seated around him, asking and remembering names, essentially interacting with people like a really good politician would. I told him I wasn’t really a fan of him in his playing days because he had repeatedly burned my Edmonton Eskimos. This delighted him to no end. Unlike a politician, from Pinball you got the impression the laughter was genuine.

After lunch was over it was time to introduce Pinball. He approached the stage to high fives from the crowd and gave Derek and me a big hug as we passed him the microphone. He then completely took over the room, speaking like a southern Baptist minister. A more gifted orator you would likely not find anywhere. He talked about his personal belief in Jesus Christ and how Christ’s teachings had made him a better player and person. The content of the speech wasn’t groundbreaking; he was literally preaching to the choir. The delivery was mesmerizing nonetheless. I was riveted by Pinball’s ability to capture the attention of the audience, moving from one side of the stage to the other, making eye contact with everyone in the room. A true professional speaker and worth every penny.

Then Pinball made the decision to attack those of us skeptical about Bible scripture, those of us who believe that “science” and “evolution” are the primary reasons that life exists on this planet
today. In particular, Pinball wanted to discuss the now widely accepted big bang theory, which states that the universe essentially exploded into creation millions of years ago, leading to evolutionary life on planet Earth. We may have learned about it in high school science class, but even if Pinball had been paying attention in those classes he was having none of it. As far as Pinball was concerned, the story of Adam and Eve was the only logical explanation for life on Earth.

“Are you telling me”—now Pinball was
really
getting fired up—“that millions of years ago, there was a big bang? And after this so-called big bang, POOF! There was Derek …”

Pinball gestured to Derek, and Derek looked over at me. Suddenly, out of nowhere, we had become a part of the show! Even though I thought a large part of what the man on stage was saying was complete gibberish, I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t waiting in giddy anticipation for Pinball to mention me too.

“Are you also telling me …”

Here we go …

“That millions of years ago, there was a big bang, and POOF! There came Jay?”

Pinball gestured to me. Pinball mentioned me! You could not wipe the smile off my face! This must be what it’s like when teenage girls are pulled onstage at a Justin Bieber concert. Pinball was my Bieber!

I didn’t leave the luncheon a religious convert, and I still thought it was inappropriate that we were asked to attend and emcee the event, but the truth is, in the end the entire exercise was pretty harmless. I learned one important thing that day: Pick your battles in this business. Sometimes being known as a “team player” is better than fighting for principles you don’t really care too much about anyway. It’s not a defeatist attitude, it’s a practical one. Sometimes you just have to say “Poof” and let it slide.