Don Ferguson | |
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Born | |
Occupation(s) | actor, writer, and producer |
Don Ferguson (born May 30, 1946) is a Canadian actor, writer, and producer and is one of the stars of the Royal Canadian Air Farce . He and Dave Broadfoot were the only Canadian-born original cast members of Air Farce. In 1998, Ferguson and the original Air Farce cast of Roger Abbott, Luba Goy, and John Morgan received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts. [1]
His many Air Farce roles included parodies of Paul Martin, Pierre Trudeau, Ron MacLean, Jack Layton, Joe Clark, Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, Rex Murphy, Lucien Bouchard, Bill Clinton, Brian Mulroney, Vladimir Putin, Bob Dylan, and Keith Richards. Many of these portrayals involve Ferguson as the 'straight man' to the more eccentric personalities played by Roger Abbott.
Don Ferguson is a graduate from Loyola High School, Loyola College, (now Concordia University), in Montreal, with an Honours English degree, and afterward worked in radio and as an audio-visual producer and photographer until he discovered that he preferred comedy writing and performing. He has written and directed documentary programs for CBC, a science-fantasy series for radio (″Johnny Chase″), a political farce for the stage, ("Skin Deep"), and a stage drama about the World War II raid of Dieppe. [2]
Ferguson starred in the 2004 situation comedy pilot XPM . Ferguson is the owner and executive producer of Don Ferguson Productions. In 2012 he produced Comedy Bar, a sketch comedy series for Bite TV. He previously produced a similar series, SketchCom, in the late 1990s. Ferguson was also a producer on the various Air Farce television series since 2004 and has been the executive producer of the annual Air Farce New Year's Eve specials since 2010. [3]
Royal Canadian Air Farce, and often credited simply as Air Farce, was a Canadian sketch comedy series starring the comedy troupe Royal Canadian Air Farce, that previously starred in an eponymous show on CBC Radio, from 1973 to 1997. The top-rated television show was broadcast on CBC Television, beginning in 1993 and ending in December 2008. The Air Farce Live name was adopted in October 2007. For the show's final season which began October 3, 2008, the series was renamed Air Farce—Final Flight!
Wayne and Shuster were a Canadian comedy duo formed by Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster. They were active professionally from the early 1940s until the late 1980s, first as a live act, then on radio, then as part of The Army Show that entertained troops in Europe during World War II, and then on both Canadian and American television.
XPM was a short-lived Canadian television sitcom broadcast in 2004 on CBC Television. It was centred on shamed former Prime Minister Bennett Macdonald, played by Don Ferguson, who was trying to adjust to a life where the best job he could find was at a small law firm in a shopping mall. The series also starred Dave Broadfoot as Macdonald's law partner, Kathy Greenwood as his wife, and Jessica Holmes as his secretary Jasmine.
Roger Abbott was an English-born Canadian sketch comedian who was a founding member of the long-lived Canadian comedy troupe Royal Canadian Air Farce, and remained one of its stars and writers until his death.
John Morgan was a Welsh-born Canadian comedian.
Dave Broadfoot was a Canadian comedian and satirist. He is best known for his performances as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Farce.
Humour is an integral part of the Canadian identity. There are several traditions in Canadian humour in both English and French. While these traditions are distinct and at times very different, there are common themes that relate to Canadians' shared history and geopolitical situation in North America and the world. Though neither universally kind nor moderate, humorous Canadian literature has often been branded by author Dick Bourgeois-Doyle as "gentle satire," evoking the notion embedded in humorist Stephen Leacock's definition of humour as "the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic expression thereof."
The Air Farce Comedy Album is a comedy album performed by the Royal Canadian Air Farce comedy troupe, released in 1979. The sketches were performed in CBC's Studio 4 over a two-day period on August 23 and 24, 1978. The never-before-performed sketches were performed in front of a live audience, allowing for spontaneous reaction.
The Frantics is a Canadian comedy troupe consisting of Paul Chato, Rick Green, Dan Redican and Peter Wildman.
Max Ferguson, OC was a Canadian radio personality and satirist, best known for his long-running radio programs Rawhide and The Max Ferguson Show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
The Royal Canadian Air Farce was a comedy troupe that was active from 1973 to 2019. It is best known for their various Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series, first on CBC Radio and later on CBC Television. Although their weekly radio series ended in 1997 and their television series ended in 2008, the troupe produced annual New Year's Eve specials on CBC Television until 2019. CBC announced that, due to budgetary constraints, the special scheduled to air on December 30, 2019, would be the final in the series.
SketchCom was a 1998 Canadian television comedy series, created by Roger Abbott and Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce. The series aired on Monday evenings, 7:30 pm in most time zones.
Bob Bainborough is a Canadian actor and comedian. He is known for playing the role of Dalton Humphrey in the Canadian comedy series The Red Green Show, and appearances on History Bites. Bainborough was nominated for a Gemini Award in both series.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's 9th Gemini Awards were held on March 5, 1995 to honour achievements in Canadian television. The awards show, which was hosted by Paul Gross and Tina Keeper, took place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and was broadcast on CBC Television.
Perry Rosemond, CM is a Canadian television writer, producer and director.
There have been numerous depictions of prime ministers of Canada in popular culture.
Renee Percy is a Canadian actress, writer, and comedian. Percy is best known for her work on the sketch comedy shows Air Farce Live and CTV/Comedy Network's Comedy Inc, and for her Comedy Now! Special "Women of the Night II". Appearing in numerous national television commercials her most notable role is her Canadian Comedy Awards winning viral video "Sure Lock: A True Poo Story".
Krazy House is a Canadian comedy television miniseries which aired on CBC Television in 1977. It was an anthology series of several different sketch programmes independently written, performed and produced by different performers in different cities. Members of the Royal Canadian Air Farce were involved in writing and performing in Toronto-shot episodes 1, 2 and 5, while episodes 3 and 4 were shot in Vancouver and featured the cast of CBC Radio's Dr. Bundolo's Pandemonium Medicine Show. Episode 6 featured a cast of unknowns, and was not connected to either the Air Farce or Bundolo troupes.
Paul Kenneth Willis was a Canadian sketch comedian, most noted as one half of the comedy duo La Troupe Grotesque with Michael Boncoeur in the 1970s and 1980s.
Gay Claitman is a Canadian sketch comedian and writer, who won two ACTRA Awards for Radio Variety Performance and Radio Variety Writing at the 8th ACTRA Awards in 1979 for her work with Nancy White and Robert Cameron on the radio play Lies My Mother Told Me.