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VIDEO: Canadian comic Derek Edwards is back with his Alls I’m Saying show

His humour is like an old shoe: comfortably familiar until you feel the bite of a hidden tack.

“How are ya!” asks a genial voice.

Derek Edwards, Canadian funny man extraordinaire, is back on the comedy trail, bringing his Alls I’m Saying tour to Vancouver Island.

He’ll be in Campbell River at the Tidemark Theatre on Sunday, Oct. 22, with the show starting at 7:30 p.m.

The name of his show this year is strictly Canajun.

“It’s a phrase from northern Ontario. If you have a theory, but no facts to back it up, that’s how you qualify it, right off the get go. Alls I’m sayin’ blah, blah, blah, blah. It describes me to a T.”

We asked what he’s been up to, getting ready for his tour here.

“Well, I’ve been doing the regular, regular, don’t you know. It’s me, don’t worry about your thinkin’ cap. It goes from rants to situational, to cartoon, to one liners. When I think back to my last swing through the Maritimes, I went in with a full show, but by the end of it, I had 20-30 minutes all about the friggin’ East Coast. It kind of morphs as it goes along, as I get more and more attuned to that part of the world.

“Right now, I’m sitting in front of six inches of notes all over my desk, trying to cut and paste and parse things and make this go into that. Sometimes, it’s almost a flip of the coin but I’ve been lucky so far. As much as you’d like to be more organized, you’ve got to live in the moment up there on stage.”

While Edwards ususally sticks to Canadian content, just because there’s plenty of it, he is a comedian, and the lure of U.S. president Donald Trump is almost irresistible.

“Just about every comic in America is on him, and it’s hard not to use him as a target, really it’s tough. I don’t know who his base are. They keep saying he’s appealing to his base. That must be a nasty family. Base really keys me off on them though. I’ve had all these wasps in my backyard and I got a big can of wasp and hornet killer. The big print on it says: Do not spray directly into your eyes! I thought: of course this is made in America. Only a society that elects that guy would need that reminder!”

The comic has just finished a tour of the Maritimes and prior to that he was up in Inuvik, “just a stone’s throw from a whole ‘nother ocean.”

As Edwards of the North, he found life interesting.

“I felt very, very relaxed. It’s very friendly in a kind of everybody-knows-everybody way. Of course the permafrost doesn’t allow them to have underground sewers so there’s all these pipes all over town to get the stuff from Point A to Point B. And the trees are all kind of crooked because the ground freezes and thaws; they look like a huge pile of drunk trees. It’s the oddest thing to see.

“I went for a walk down one of the Hydro cuts to stretch the legs and take in the country of the country. I saw what looked like big baby prints crushed into the mud. Then I realized it was from a grizzly. Their prints look just like a baby’s foot. Anyway, I made much better time headed back down the hill than I did hauling my arse up there.”

You get the feeling, chatting with Edwards, that you’ve known him forever. That’s part of his charm. The Just For Laughs veteran is universally considered to be among the comic elite, though.

Certainly his peers think so. He’s a four-time nominee, and winner of Best Standup Comic at the Canadian Comedy Awards, as well as a multiple Gemini nominee for Best Performance in a Comedy.

Tickets for Derek Edwards are $45 each. Get them online at tidemarktheatre.com or call the Tidemark box office at 250-287-PINK.

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Funny man extraordinaire Derek Edwards is coming to the Island for a tour. (Submitted)