Breaking up is hard to do. That’s the opinion of my friend Gord, who was chatting about Jian Ghomeshi this week.
Gord was a huge fan of CBC’s Q — the national arts and culture show that made Ghomeshi Canada’s most popular radio broadcaster.
And then the man with the velvet baritone was fired. After which Jian made an astonishing disclosure on Facebook, which led to, well … other astonishing disclosures.
Well, it’s been a rough few weeks for Gord. He said it was like losing a girlfriend. (By the way, Gord has instructed me to make clear that the phrase “losing a girlfriend” is here used in the platonic, non-BDSM, heterosexual, CBC-listener’s sense.)
“I’m getting ready to delete all his podcasts,” he lamented. “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
This was sad. Surely, deleting podcasts is the radio listener’s equivalent of burning an ex-girlfriend’s photos and letters.
I’d just heard Tom Power, a guest host on Q, interview Flea, the bassist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Flea spoke eloquently about his role as co-producer and actor in the film Low Down, about jazzman Joe Albany. And as the interviewer, Power had done a terrific job.
I told Gord as much. Surely Q has not lost its lustre entirely — what with this intellectually alluring Power fellow on the scene?
“Maybe,” he said. “But I liked Ghomeshi. Liking a new host on Q would be like dating your ex-girlfriend’s sister.”
We went on to reminisce about Ghomeshi and what might have been his greatest moment on radio. It’s probably the time he interviewed Billy Bob Thornton in 2009.
On the show, the film star acted rude and downright bizarre. It was because Ghomeshi had the temerity to mention his acting career. And Thornton had told the CBC producers he wanted to be interviewed solely as a musician, not as an actor.
The interview was strange in the extreme — at one point, Thornton startled babbling nonsensically about a monster comic he’d read as a kid. Amazingly, Ghomeshi was able to continue, thoughtfully and with all-Canadian courtesy. It was spectacular (and spectacularly uncomfortable) radio. It was the first time I recognized Ghomeshi’s great talent and skill as a radio interviewer.
What a waste, I said. Gord agreed, and then went on to complain that all his “touchstones” were disappearing. There’s Ghomeshi. And there’s Tom Magliozzi from Car Talk, who died last week at the age of 77.
Car Talk is a massively popular program on National Public Radio in the U.S. (it continues in reruns). Established in 1977, the show consisted of two mechanics — Tom and his brother Ray — talking about cars. People would phone in with their car problems, and the brothers would attempt to diagnose them on the air.
If you’ve never heard of Car Talk, it might sound silly and dull. It was anything but. Not only were the Magliozzi brothers experts when it came to auto repairs (no dummies, they’d graduated from MIT), they were extremely funny. Speaking with working-class Boston accents, the brothers would joke and banter, treating each new caller like the latest arrival at the greatest dinner party in the world.
The best part of Car Talk was the laughing. Each brother had a good one, but Tom’s was perhaps the greatest laugh in history. One commentator wrote that “Tom’s cackles and snorts were a kind of virtuoso performance in infectious inflection.” He hooted and guffawed in the most uninhibited manner.
Tom died Nov. 3 of complications resulting from Alzheimer’s disease. A tribute show hosted last Saturday by Ray, the surviving brother, featured many of his best on-air moments. At the end of one particularly long laugh attack, Ray yelled “Wahoo!” — the sort of beatific exclamation that emanates only from the truly joyous.
That “wahoo” was the essence of Car Talk. For the radio lover — people like Gord and me — the loss of Tom Magliozzi was like losing a longtime friend. Maybe even a girlfriend. Certainly, he was a touchstone.
After Gord went home, I thought about Ray and Ghomeshi. I don’t know Ghomeshi but suspect there is a big divide between the liberal, empathetic, culturally savvy person (i.e. every CBC listener’s dream date) he projected on radio and the real person. By contrast, I suspect Tom Magliozzi was exactly the sort of person in real life he was on the radio.
This is a correction version of an earlier story.
Still, I feel sorry for Ghomeshi, who must sigh each morning as soon as he remembers, once again, that he’s a national pariah who betrayed his talent. Not to mention betraying people like Gord, his faithful listeners. And, of course, all those women.