The son of a steam-fitter, he began to write stand-up comedy as an exercise for school, which led him to try it out to see if it worked. "Hippy schools," he calls them. "We had a great time. Mostly partied a lot and occasionally attended classes...." He attended comedy workshops to improve his stand-up skills where he met and teamed up with Kevin McDonald and Luc Casmiri's group, The Kids in the Hall. "I never made a conscious decision to be a performer. I still haven't."
Famous recurring characters:
Manservant Hecubus
The Bad Doctor
Lex (of Lex & Dean)
Bruce McCulloch
b. May 12, 1961 - Edmonton
Attended Mount Royal College in Calgary where he studied journalism and public relations. His goal was to write comedy and he soon found his way to Calgary's Loose Moose Theatre Company, where Theatre Sports were invented.
He does not attribute early influences such as Python to his particular style. "I'm not especially fond of old comedy. I never watched Saturday Night Live or Python as a kid. I listened to rock music. Now to all sorts. Music moves me more than television or film."
Famous recurring characters:
Gavin
Cabbage Head
Gordon
Shona
Kevin McDonald
b. May 16, 1962 - Montreal
McDonald claims he went into comedy "because that's really all I could do. I was sort of the class clown, and after a while I stopped working on my homework and worked on my jokes for the next day. One of the teachers who liked me took me to Second City workshops and enrolled me and that's where I met Dave."
He would very much like to follow the route of other successful comedians. And do a movie. Records. Books. "All those sorts of things, like Python."
Famous recurring characters:
Sir Simon Milligan
Mr. Tisane (the tea guy)
Dean (of Lex & Dean)
Jerry Sizzler
Rudy the pimp
Mark McKinney
b. June 26, 1959 - Ottawa
The son of a diplomat, his early life was spent hopscotching between such places as Trinidad
and Tobago, Paris and Washington, D.C. "You could say I was born in Ottawa but reborn in
Calgary. That's where I began my career as a comic. I never really chose to pursue comedy -
after all, the odds are pretty well stacked against you. It just happened.
I started doing it for fun and it became a passionate hobby."
While in Calgary, he met Bruce McCulloch at the Loose Moose Theatre Company and formed
a troup called The Audience. Their reception was so encouraging that the duo ventured back
east to Toronto to participate in a late-night comedy review at an old cinema on St. Clair Ave.
It was there that they met The Kids in the Hall and, because of similar sensibilities, teamed up
with them.
Famous recurring characters:
Chicken Lady
Darill
The Headcrusher
Nina Spudniak
Satan
Scott Thompson
b. June 12, 1959 - North Bay
Thompson credits his outspokeness to his large family. "With five brothers in the house, you had to be loud! I liked to pretend. I guess because, being gay, your whole life was pretending. But I had never seen any gay comedian. I had no reason to believe it was possible. There were no comic role models for me, except Maude. So I went to theatre school.....and got kicked out."
A friend of his took him to a midnight show at the Poor Alex theatre in Toronto where he saw The Kids in the Hall perform. "At that time there were seven or eight of them," he recalls. "I was blown away. Saw my destiny. Mark brought me into the troupe. We had a lot in common. They were not content with modern comedy which is mostly concerned with reinforcing an existing (and negative) status quo. They had no fear and did anything. And there was a sense of risk. Sort of urban terrorists."
Famous recurring characters:
Buddy Cole
Danny Husk
Fran
Queen Elizabeth
