Ward - Is this live?: inside the wild early years of MuchMusic: the nations music station

David Bowie meets his fans on Queen Street West, August 1987

Its impossible to talk about the beginnings of MuchMusic without talking about Christopher Ward, because in many ways there is so much of Christopher Ward in MuchMusic.

Ive had the privilege of knowing Christopher for thirty-four years.

In 1982 Christopher and I auditioned for the touring company of the famous Toronto comedy theatre known as the Second City. I was still in high school, living at home.

I was eighteen years old.

Christopher was thirty-two, already an accomplished songwriter and musician, and I knew of him because he had hosted an afterschool television show on the CBC called Catch Up. The Second City touring company auditions went on all day. It came down to Christopher and meChristopher got the job.

He came over and said, They picked me, but I saw your audition and I think they should have picked you. People say things like that and rarely mean it, but Christopher is a generous and special human being.

A few months later, now nineteen, on my last day of high school, I auditioned again, and this time I was hired by the Second City touring company, joining Christopher in the troupe playing every small town outside of Toronto. We spent countless hours in a crowded van through blistering heat, sideways rain, and the unforgiving Canadian winter. I was a punk rocker filled with piss and vinegar with no life skills whatsoever. Christopher, on the other hand, knew the rigours of the road. I came to describe him as an entertainment survivalist. He knew it was a good idea to get a sandwich for the long post-show drive back to Toronto. He knew to keep a Tuborg beer on ice in the van. He knew to get a Walkman. He knew to make a good mixtape. I, however, was often hungry, thirsty and bored.

Knowing I would never get it together, he took mercy on me. Without judgment, he would buy an extra sandwichfor me; keep an extra Tuborgfor me; get a splitter for his Walkman, and loan his extra set of headphonesto me. We both loved the Clash. The only band that mattered mattered to Christopher, and he was thirty-two! As a nineteen-year-old who could have passed for sixteen my mind was blown. Hes thirty-two and cool music is still important to him? Who is this fucking guy?

On those drives home we would go over the show together, constantly trying to improve, listening to tapes of the improv sets, trying to figure out how to best entertain, how to lead an audience without alienating them, and how to please a crowd without pandering to them.

One day he told me that he had been offered the chance to fill six hours of programming on a local Toronto TV station called Citytv. A station made famous in Canada by figuring out a way to show pornographic films late at night. Very rock n roll. Christophers show on Citytv would be called City Limits. City Limits was on the air from midnight until six oclock in the morning on Friday and Saturday. Coming up with six minutes of entertaining television once a week is a difficult endeavour. Coming up with six hours of entertaining television twice a week is a Herculean task. But Christopher was up to it. And in true Christopher Ward fashion he took on this task without a peep of hesitation, with only the glimmer in the eye of an artist who sees an opportunity and is grateful for it. Christopher would show music videos, weird short films, and interviews with local musicians and artists.

Christopher asked me to perform on his show. City Limits was the first time that I did the character Wayne Campbell on television. The premise was that Wayne was Christophers annoying cousin from the not-so-prestigious suburb of Toronto called Scarborough. Scarborough is the New Jersey of Toronto, and in the depths of winter it can get so bleak that locals call it Scarberia. I wore a cheap, long-haired womens wig underneath a baseball cap covering my short punky haircut. Wayne would often interrupt the show, unannounced. Rumour had it that, because of Waynes unannounced appearances on the show, Citytv received viewer complaints for letting Scarborough ruffians into the studio. I still cherish that as my greatest review. There was never a script for Waynes appearances. Christopher just believed in me, gave me the ball, and let me run.

Christopher himself had funny recurring characters, including a fictional Liverpool British Invasion band called the Double Deckers. Sort of a cheeky, chappy, Scouse Chad & Jeremy. Christopher allowed me to be a member of the Double Deckers; and as the son of Liverpudlian parents, I can tell you that he did a very good Liverpool accent. We would do interstitial pre-tapes, or bumpers, that took you to commercial. Later when I wanted Austin Powers to have a band, called Ming Tea, Christopher was the first person I recruited to be a band member. And in the spirit of Christophers show, Ming Tea became the bumpers between the scenes in