From 1983 to 2002, humorist Arthur Black hosted Basic Black on CBC Radio, Canada’s top place to hear interviews with some of Canada’s...well, let’s just call them “eccentrics.” Here are some of Black’s most memorable guests over the years.
• Lydia Hiby—a pet counselor to talks to animals telepathically. Yep, she’s a psychic for pets.
• Imre Somogyi—a psychic who can tell your future by reading your feet, toes, and in between (humans only).
• Trevor Weekes, author of the 1983 book Teach Your Chickens to Fly. (Weekes was at least kidding...we think.)
• A woman known only as “Jeannie M.,” who is the world’s first and foremost maker of taxidermied rats to be used as Christmas tree ornaments.
• Didgeridoos are a distinctly Australian instrument. Not many people in Canada make them, but Paulu Rainbowsong does. He demonstrated to Black how he makes them out of PVC pipe.
• Performance artist Linda Montano. At the time of the interview, she was in the middle of her latest project—she’d tied herself to a man for a year, literally—with a six-foot-long length of rope.
• The important civil servant in charge of a very important office in Gimli, Manitoba: the Skunk Control Officer.
• Judy Williams, who runs Wreck Beach—the Vancouver playland paradise for brave Canadian nudists.
• “Marge the Rancher” of Saskatchewan. She launched the company “Marge’s Muffs,” which makes “ballmuffs”—winter gear for the exposed scrotums of bulls.