Tom Green on late night radio in Ottawa

In my mid teens, I'd stay up late to listen to local stations playing music that I liked because daytime- most of the time you wouldn't hear the genres I liked. Somehow or other, I came across this weird guy making fun of callers on his show. The weird guy was of course Tom Green, on local U-of-O campus FM radio station 89.1 CHUO. At first I bounced between the show and music. But Tom's radio show became a Friday night institution for me, tuning in start to finish to hear Tom and co-host Glenn berate, and just generally have a good time with callers on-air.

If you want to hear some of these Canadian radio antics, take a listen over at: https://www.youtube.com/@midnightcallerarchives113

I remember at the end of most shows, Tom and Glenn would invite listeners to come join them at a coffee/donut shop after the show. I don't know if any of these meetings actually took place, as I was too young to get myself anywhere in the middle of the night.

In 1994 Tom moved to TV, on public access cable TV Rogers channel 22- doing a non paid television show. I'd say these were generally about harassing his parents and the public in general of Ottawa. I have to say it was highly entertaining watching his 'debauchery' and seeing things play out in places I clearly recognized in the Ottawa area.

Nowadays, its not at all unusual to see YouTubers shoot video locally, and there really isn't a lot of novelty seeing regular people in regular places doing unscripted normal or weird things. But back then, with no video streaming online- you'd only really see professionals doing scripted things on TV. Tom was doing comedy unscripted out in the wild. There are so many classic videos from these early Tom Green shows, I will post a few faves:

Buying condoms - https://youtu.be/G-mK62LJ9zg?si=q4IVu-UiIH8hcQvm

Dept. store intercom - https://youtu.be/EFNrz8goEhs?si=pqdwlFhU0_SMlcQw

Tom orders Subway - https://youtu.be/bnyVE1go2vs?si=aT11yIphMnxJrEZ9

I can remember laughing till it hurt, watching some of these on TV. Again, back in the day- you couldn't replay or find a video to watch again on the internet. You couldn't share these things, so they kind of lived in your head after seeing them, and you recounted the whole scenarios to your friends who hadn't seen the show or particular episode. If you wanted to see it again, you had to hope the TV station would replay it on another date down the road.

A little known fact was that Tom (not sure if this was himself or someone acting on his behalf) had a dial-up BBS (Builtin Board System) in Ottawa. I'd normally go over to the Internet Archive and look up Monitor.ca's website to see their BBS list which dates back to 1994ish... And I did that, but didn't find the BBS in the list. I think it only had a relatively short existence. Content was Tom Green oriented, which was fine, but not what I was looking to get out of a BBS at the time!

I do believe he followed the BBS with being early to have a website as well. Also of note, I remember feeling proud that he had married Drew Barrymore, as I think a lot of guys his age felt. A good old Canadian boy marrying a big movie star. I think we also have to give him credit for being so public (perhaps a little too much?) with his testicular cancer. He was a great representative for men on the topic, and encouraged more thought to be given when you'd generally not hear much about it amongst men.

Some have related his style to Andy Kaufman, or a 'local access' Jim Carrey. Or being a precursor to Jackass and Punk'd. Someone said he was one of the first to have a podcast and inspired Joe Rogan. He was also a singer/songwriter/rapper in a group called Organized Rhyme under the alias of "MC Bones".