Back a couple of years ago, Canadian comedian Mike Bullard, host of "Open Mike with Mike Bullard" released his first book titled "Big Thoughts from a Little Head." While on a promotional tour of Atlantic Canada that year, I had a chance to talk to this very funny and charming individual
GB- I want to welcome you to New Brunswick and tell you what a great book you have out. It's right up on my families book shelf beside The New Testament and Ben Hur, A true literary masterpiece.
MB - (laughs) Wow what kind of wacky church do you folks attend?
GB - What prompted the book?
MB-Doubleday came to me and said they wanted me to write a book and that's all I've been waiting for my whole life, a publisher to appear. I was too shy to approach them. I was rather gratified.
GB - How much mail do you get?
MB-I get about seventy five e-mails a day. I read a lot of them. I took twelve hundred of them home to write the book. It took eight months to do that book.
GB - If offered a contract state side would you accept?
MB - No, I got offered a job down their last year and turned it down. There's an American Syndicator who wants to by a hundred episodes of the show. They want to cut it down to a half an hour and sell it to MGM. I'll be lucky if I'm even left in it. (Laughs)
GB - How do you feel about Tom Green going to the States?
MB -It's good for him. It's good for everybody that he did that. People are going to come up here and look for more entertainers and for what that transcends into it, it can't be a bad thing for people to work here.
GB-What was it like to kiss Tom Green. Looked like a lot of tongue action going on there to me.
MB- (laughs) yea it was good
GB - You also have a great comedy Cd out now. Where do you get the inspiration for your jokes?
MB-Most of it's from the moment, I responded to them with my gut reaction and then the editor corrected the grammar and syntax and with the album I taped it at the Rebecca Cohn Theatre in Halifax. Did you listen to it?
GB - I have read some of it
MB- Congratulations, you'll never have a job at CBC, but you do your research (laughs)
GB - You say in your book your not much of a hockey fan, are your sure your from Canada?
MB-Ya we get a lot of letters implying that I was a communist and that I shouldn't live up here so I got a couple of hockey books so that I'd have more information at my disposal. I like to go down and watch a game at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. I watch more hockey now but I'm not a fanatic.
GB - I read you tend to make fun or Maritimers a lot?
MB-No I glad you brought that up. Actually only nine jokes out of sixteen hundred. Over sensitive down here? Id say so! Letterman slags New York and Kansas City but in Canada you can't do it.
GB - Anyone that you would like to have on the show but haven't yet?
MB-I've always wanted Pierre Trudeau but sadly that's not gonna happen now. We almost had him last year. Two weeks before he was supposed to come on his son died tragically so I don't think we well be seeing him in Public too often anymore. I'd like to get Donald Sutherland, he is pretty elusive. He is here quite often and we never seem to get a chance to get him. He is not in Toronto that often. But with us if your a eight dollar cab ride to the studio... that's our major criteria. It turns out more of these people happen to be Canadian, so that's why people think its a Canadian show but with us it's how cheaply can we get you there.
Note: this interview was done prior to Pierre Trudeau passingGB - Anyone you have had on that you would not want back?
MB-No, I can's say that as they all have been pretty good. We've had some people who have coped a lot of attitude, some of your bigger names. My criteria is if you treat people who work on the show as well as you treat me. I'm not looking to see how you treat me. I'm looking to see how you treat the people who work in production and the crew and stuff and if that's the case you won't to be back if your negative.
Interview done December, 1999 in Fredericton, NB
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