Have just enough to drink to be able to do it, but not enough that anyone could tell. That’s how I hosted my first TV show. Every night.
Last Call was a live late-night experiment that lasted less than a year, and was so bonkers that people still bring it up with me today. Seriously, it was on the air for maybe seven months, and twenty years later people still ask me about it. It was a wild, drunken disaster created by wild, drunken disasters. We shot the show in an actual working bar every weeknight at eleven. I’d sit with a fake bartender and a few other hosts and talk shit about the day’s headlines, interact with the actual customers, and interview whichever celebrity had a publicist insane enough to book their star client on our show. The Globe and Mail described it as “a bunch of C-list celebs chatting in a bar about their C-list lives” and “an hour of tedium with a trio of hosts most would walk a block to avoid drinking with.” An instant classic.
I had no business being on that show. I didn’t have any confidence and I’d never hosted anything in my entire life. The only things I had going for me were that I was a great producer, a better writer than most, and I didn’t give a fuck. Most nights, that last one really showed. I was ticcing like crazy, and my stage fright was so bad that earlier that year, when I was asked to say a few words at a friend’s wedding, I had such incredible panic attacks that I lay down in the back seat of the cab the entire way there. I strapped one seatbelt around my upper half and the other one I wrapped twice around my legs, convinced I was going to pass out and hit the floor if the driver stopped too quickly. I couldn’t catch my breath and reconsidered that entire friendship the whole way to the church. But there I was, not long after, on live TV, on a show that bothered people so much one viewer turned up and sat at the bar for the entire taping, with the sole intention of attempting to smash a thick-bottomed cocktail glass over my head when I walked off set. I was pulling in $55,000 a year, making me, without question, the lowest-paid host in the history of late-night television. And I was almost disfigured by a weak-armed fan with bad aim in my second month on the job.
“Hey, fucker! Fuck you!” he yelled, right before the glass went flying by my face and one of the bartenders—a real one, not our TV one—tackled him to the ground.
I don’t know whether I just have a punchable face or what I was doing to rub people the wrong way even on TV, but I felt like that glam kid again, the skid whose hair was too long, legs too skinny, wearing homemade costumes and yesterday’s eyeliner. The shit magnet always running away from a fight in jeans with no give and shoes with no grip.
I didn’t want to be hated, and most nights I did really try to do a good job. But no one needed me to do a good job; they just needed me to do all the crazy shit nobody else was willing to do, and if I could do it wearing only bikini bottoms, then even better. Anything for a laugh—and that’s what people had a problem with. There’s a pretty sizable part of the population that hates seeing other people having really dumb fun, especially when they’re getting paid for it. It bothers them because it’s not them. That’s why Instagram influencers and TikTok stars are as hated as they are loved. I looked like somebody else’s waste of money. But with me, on that show, people skipped right past jealousy and went straight to rage.
I’d roll into the station at ten every morning, sit through a few story-pitch meetings, and say yes to doing whatever crazy ideas they had. I never refused anything.
“Can you review The Passion of the Christ, but as a comedy? Like with a laugh track?”
“Sure, of course. No problem.”
“Then can you sneak your way into the Liberal Party convention and ask party members embarrassing questions? Like about sex and stuff? But don’t be too blatant. Don’t let them know it’s about sex—we’ll take care of that in editing. Does that make sense?”
“Of course it does. Like butt stuff, but not really butt stuff. Do you want me to wear bikini bottoms or regular clothes?”
“Maybe wear a suit there but have the nut huggers underneath.”
“Done.”
My mom didn’t care what I did. She just cared about the hours I worked, and the amount of sleep I didn’t get. While working this show, I’d fall asleep around 2 a.m. and be up again at seven. Mom was terrified that I was going to work myself into the hospital, like I did when my lungs collapsed. Whenever I checked in with her, she always ended our conversations the same: “Okay, hon. Just don’t work too hard. You can tell these people no sometimes.” I could hear her using every ounce of Mom Restraint she had.
“I know, Mom. But the only reason they keep me around is because I’m the guy who doesn’t say no. I’ll try. I promise.”
I broke that promise every time.
After the morning meetings, and a full day of writing, producing, and shooting stories, we’d all have from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. free before we had to be across town to shoot the live show at the bar. That’s when the most talented crew of people I’ve ever worked with would head to a pub and get more drunk than I’ve ever seen people get, yet still be able to do their jobs. All of us. Every night. The show’s main advertiser was a beer company, which meant during the show the hosts were expected to drink, or at least pretend to drink, their beer on-air. I hated beer, so, just outside of the camera view, I always had a double vodka soda in a pint glass to pound during commercial breaks. Everybody who worked on that show had a drink within reach. I had two.
I went in every night, sat at that bar, and did the best I could. I wanted so desperately to make somebody proud. That’s what I lost when my dad died, and what I missed the most: the person who was always most proud of me was no longer with me. He would have loved all the crazy shit I did on that show.
I’m pretty sure Taylor hated the show. She didn’t say as much, but she also never brought it up. I actually don’t remember much about our marriage. But I remember how much it bothered me that she never asked about the show, and I don’t have one single memory of her asking how my day went. We never fully agreed on art, or entertainment, or what it meant to have a voice and a platform or what you put out to the world, but I had a pretty good handle on what she thought was shit. Everybody likes doing foolish things, but nobody wants to look like a fool doing them, and I started to get a sense that Taylor thought she’d married a fool. I remember feeling like I’d let her down.
It kills me that all these years later this is what I remember of our marriage. I have no memory of us doing normal married-couple things. I don’t remember us ever cooking dinner together or having a favourite show that we’d never miss. I don’t remember what I’d get her for her birthdays, or when we stopped having sex.
I can’t say for sure that my doing this show had anything to do with why Taylor and I broke up for good, but I can’t say for sure that it didn’t, either. We went through too much too soon. Our marriage started with most people we knew wishing us luck but telling us to our faces that they didn’t think it would last. I probably spent more time trying to prove them wrong than I did trying to be a good husband. Proving people wrong was always what drove me. I think maybe I held on too long because I knew that if my marriage ended then I’d never be able to put my dad’s death fully behind me. If I met someone new, even years later, then they’d want to know his story just to be a part of my life. But I couldn’t see myself ever wanting to retell or relive any of it.
I spent the days leading up to the night we ended our marriage coming to terms with the fact that maybe this was it. Maybe this would be my last actual relationship. This was my rock bottom. You always hear stories of people’s “rock bottom”—that last bender, huge loss, or catastrophic mistake. My rock bottom was different. My rock bottom, my lowest point, was when I came to terms with the fact, and convinced myself, that I was okay with never becoming a father. I couldn’t see myself ever getting married again. The risk was too high, and I didn’t have anything left.
I remember the night we broke up, like officially, but I have no idea why it was that night as opposed to any of the others. The conversation happened in our bed, fully clothed, lying on top of the blankets with both of us staring up at the ceiling. We never made eye contact, and neither of us fought for a single thing. We didn’t so much end our marriage as we let it go. Even today, if anyone asks what happened or why we split, the only answer I give is, “Sometimes you need a whole lot more than love to make a marriage work.” We loved each other with everything we had, but it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough.
Nothing was ever going to be enough again.