I worked in Ottawa for two years before being transferred to CBC national headquarters in Toronto. They transferred me because, one, I was bilingual—the only bilingual announcer on staff—and two, they had an opening for me on a television program called Music Hop. It was a weekly teenage music show that predated Hullabaloo and Shindig! in the United States. We had a variety of musical guests, such as Gordon Lightfoot, David Clayton-Thomas (who’d later become lead singer for the band Blood Sweat & Tears), and Lorne Greene singing his hit “Ringo.” The show was quite popular, and it gave me my first taste of “celebrity.” People would occasionally come up to me on the street and tell me how much they enjoyed the program—though being Canadian, they were always courteous and apologetic for intruding.
I had already done some live TV while I was in Ottawa. But no matter how much experience you have, live TV is always challenging. If you mess up on live TV—which I did—you had better learn how to redeem yourself. Once, on Music Hop, I was standing at home base and introduced a mystery guest named “Mr. Voice.” He was, in fact, me. It was a character I was to play in disguise. I threw to the band, who broke into a vamp intro. While they were doing that, the producers hurriedly gave me a mask and a cowboy hat. Unfortunately, they gave me the cowboy hat first, and I couldn’t get the mask over the hat. So I was a bar and a half late coming into the song. And I’m not a singer. But I caught up and got it done.
Afterward, the three backup singers came over to me and said, “For a non-singer you did really well. You saved the number.”
The director said the same thing at the end of the show.
“You did a great job,” he told me.
To which I replied: “Mr. Voice has sung his last song.”
Messing up on live TV taught me an important lesson about show business: learn to laugh at yourself.