Let’s Make a Deal host Wayne Brady’s revelations last week in People magazine that he is pansexual brought back memories of an interview I had several years ago with the host/comedian.
This was at least 20 years ago. I was working as the TV columnist for the Toronto Sun. Brady, who was in Toronto, was a regular on the long-running, improv comedy sketch series Whose Line Is It Anyway? (still burning off episodes this summer on The CW).
Whose Line was a big hit at our house. I’d watch each week with my son Daniel and we’d laugh our heads off at the antics of Brady, improv ace Colin Mochrie (born in Scotland but grew up in Montreal and Vancouver), lanky funnyman Ryan Stiles (born in Seattle but grew up in Vancouver), and host Drew Carey. Aisha Taylor has hosted The CW version for the past decade.
One of the regular segments we laughed loudest at were the cleverly improvised song sketches. Two members, Mochrie and one of either Stiles or Brady, would receive subjects and a style of music (country, rock, soul, etc.) from Carey. Accompanied by two musicians, they’d have to make a song up on the spot.
Brady, who has the best singing voice in the cast, always nailed these segments. They seemed, however, too good to be true, to me anyway. I asked Brady if he really make these songs up right then and there or did the cast cheat a little and have things at least half-written in advance?
Brady insisted they were all made up on the spot.
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“You have a byline, right?” he asked. I nodded. “And you work at The Sun?”
Brady then stood up and demonstrated he could spin these things on a dime.
“My boy Bill,” he sang, “writes stories, what a guy/ He has a byline, this must mean he’s bi…”
Then he went on to sing “Bye bye, Bill; Bill is bi…” about a dozen times.
So there you have it. When it comes to making up songs on the spot, sing what you know.
