Who: Stuart McLean
When: Jan. 24-25
Where: MY Millennium Place
So beloved is the CBC icon Stuart McLean, the award-winning storyteller’s two Vinyl Café shows in Whistler sold out in three days. And don’t bother trying to get on the waiting list.
Fans without tickets will just have to continue to tune into his quirky, hilarious stories of Dave and Morley on the Vinyl Café every Saturday on CBC Radio Two at 10:05 and 11 a.m. and every Sunday on CBC Radio One at 12:05 and 1 p.m. – along with 700,000 other listeners.
McLean captures the everyday goings on of the suburban family and dramatically charges the stories people in small towns across Canada can relate to into hilarious proportions – and does so through radio, books, albums and live performances.
Since 1994, McLean fans have laughed over the trials and tribulations of his main character, Dave. Probably the most famous story is Dave Cooks the Christmas Turkey, whereby in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, Dave remembers his promise to his wife Morley to buy and cook the holiday turkey, setting off a series of comedic events: Dave finding the only open store at 4 a.m. and purchasing a grade-B turkey, so damaged, he affectionately names it Butch. He can’t figure out the timer on the oven so he checks into the Plaza Hotel to get the hotel to cook the turkey. Then he has to get the turkey home from the hotel in time for Christmas dinner.
The journalist, storyteller and radio entertainer has worked for the CBC most of his adult life. He began with radio documentaries for CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning, leading to an ACTRA Award for Best Radio Documentary for his coverage of the Jonestown massacre in 1979. McLean went on to become a regular columnist and guest host on CBC’s Morningside in the 1980s. The tenured professor at Ryerson University has since authored half a dozen books. Two of those works, Home from the Vinyl Café and Vinyl Café Unplugged, have received the the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. The Canadian Author’s Association also awarded Best Short Story Collection of the Year for the Vinyl Café Diaries.
In addition to his books, you can listen to McLean's tales at your convenience with six Vinyl Café recordings on disc.
For almost a decade, McLean has also hit the road taking the Vinyl Café to audiences in large and small towns across the country, from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Whitehorse, Yukon. And next week he’s in Whistler.
His stories cross Canada via print, airwave, CD and even television – well almost. Working with the creators of NBC’s Frasier, a 12-minute demo pilot of his Dave family characters was produced. However, top CBS dogs turned the project down, for now.
So unless you were one of the organized few to purchase tickets to the Whistler show or are planning to cross your fingers that there are ticket scalpers at the theatre, there is always CBC radio and Vinyl Café books, available at Armchair Books in Whistler.
