Anchorboy by Jay Onrait Page A

to be leaving Saskatoonfor other reasons. I had made amazing friends there in a very short time, people I remain friends with to this day. I will never forget my time in that city, but it was time to start wandering back east.
    Goin’ to Winnipeg …

CHAPTER 13
Felching is Funny
    M Y CO-HOST ON
T HE B IG B REAKFAST
was Jon Ljungberg, a Massachusetts-raised stand-up comedian by trade who, when travelling through Winnipeg twelve years earlier, met a girl at a gig. The next thing you know, he had two kids and a nice bungalow in the Windsor Park area of town. We immediately hit it off. I remember walking into the station for the first time and seeing him in a Hawaiian shirt, like a complete parody of a stand-up comedian. He was so friendly and immediately offered to take me “for a drive.” I assumed at that point I’d either get fed or raped, and I thought it was probably pretty likely the former. Off we went, and within twenty minutes we were having a conversation about how funny the concept of “felching” was. Felching is a sex act in which a man extracts his own semen out of his partner’s anus through a straw. Literally in tears laughing as Jon waxed poetic about the concept, I said to myself, “I will get along with this person. This person and I will be friends.” We are still friends to this day. And felching is still hilarious.
    We would have about eight thirty-second “chats” on the show every single morning, five times a week for two years. Jon’s sense of humour, like mine, was mostly just silliness. We would tape “best of” shows at places like the amusement park and the Forks Market, stopping at various businesses and using props or eating food. I knew everyone in the city within three months. The mayor, all the restaurant owners, all the local bands, they all came by to be on the show. It was really fun. I would have loved to have been making more money, but I didn’t think about it that much.
    When I finally met Darcy in person I was swept off my feet. She was so sexy and so indifferent to my antics, but she was a good boss who gave Jon and me a lot of leeway to have fun and be ourselves. I was really starting to show my personality on television—three hours of unscripted live TV will do that for you. The only catch was working mornings, something I did not handle well back then and still don’t to this day. Jon asked some of the local radio DJs for advice about how to feel more awake while doing the show, and they all said, “You will never feel awake while doing a morning show.” It was a bit like the advice the camera guy gave me at ITV:
You will always be working when everyone else is off
.
    I told Jon I had a crush on our boss, and he laughed at me and wished me luck. During the first A-Channel Christmas party in December 1999 I decided I would approach her about going on a date. I figured that everyone at the party had been drinking, and if she was appalled or offended or worse wanted me fired, I could explain it away the following Monday morning by telling her I had had too much to drink and didn’t mean what I had said.
    We were living together within a year.
    I really had no plans to leave Winnipeg. I honestly thought I might never leave.

CHAPTER 14
Humiliated by a Woman on Live TV
    “ EVER BEEN IN A BAR FIGHT? ” asked Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett to TNT NBA reporter Craig Sager after a particularly contentious win over the Orlando Magic in early 2012.
    I’ve had my ass kicked in a bar once or twice. Most recently, it happened just before I left my first wife. Our relationship had truly hit the skids, and I was out with Dan O’Toole and a few of his friends one night. I’m not a person who has ever enjoyed nightclubs very much, but they insisted on hitting a typical douchified Toronto establishment, the name of which I will withhold to protect the innocent. Having had a few too many cocktails, I was susceptible to engaging in conversation with people I shouldn’t