Comedian’s timing right on

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This article was published 17/08/2011 (5393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the high-pressure world of standup comedy, timing is the difference between delivering a killer joke and dying on stage.

In the high-pressure world of everyday life, it can be the difference between delivering a lifetime of punchlines and dying of a massive heart attack.

Just ask my good buddy Big Daddy Tazz, a loving father of two young boys, one of Canada’s hottest standup comedians and a guy with a heart so huge his hairy chest barely has room for any other medically valuable organs.

It was Tazz’s big, generous heart that almost did him in on the afternoon of July 26. In a tragic coincidence, it was the same afternoon that another big-hearted hero, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ beloved defensive line coach Richard Harris, succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

A few days after getting out of St. Boniface General Hospital and a couple of days before his 44th birthday, my buddy Tazz shared his terrifying adventure — and a few laughs — with me over lunch on the patio of the Winnipeg Free Press News Café.

You didn’t ask, but for the record, we both had salads. Munching iceberg lettuce, Tazz said he was walking up his basement stairs, talking to a friend on the phone, when he realized something was seriously wrong.

“I just said, ‘I gotta go,’ ” he recalled of that confusing moment. “I was feeling weird. I’d been feeling numbness in my neck, numbness in my teeth. I’d been feeling that way, on and off, for a few weeks. It just felt worse than it had ever felt before.”

When he hung up, the pain hit hard.

“It felt like someone was holding onto my heart and just squeezing it,” Tazz said. “It went from zero to almost intolerable right away. I went from zero to panic instantly.”

That’s when my funny buddy called another dear friend, the mother of his youngest son, three-year-old Khyler.

“As soon as I started talking, I couldn’t figure out how to say what I wanted to say. I just said, ‘Something is wrong!’

“And she just said: ‘You need to hang up and call the ambulance NOW!’ “

Thankfully, that’s just what Tazz did. Even though he figured there was no way he could be having a heart attack, he called. Even though he didn’t want to bother busy paramedics, he called.

“Something just kept saying: ‘Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!’ “

Minutes later, paramedics arrived, fired off a barrage of questions, tested his vital signs and loaded Tazz into an ambulance. Among the rescuers, Tazz recalls, was a cool-headed supervisor named Jason.

“They put the EKG on me and sent the readings off to the doctor on his BlackBerry,” Tazz said. “They got the results back and Jason told me ‘You’re having a heart attack. It’s a fairly major one, but we need you to remain calm.’

“I was, like, if you want me to remain calm, DON’T tell me I’m having a heart attack! Tell me we’re going for dim sum and then going to Petland to pet puppies.”

At the hospital, the Canadian comedy legend was rushed straight into an operating room, where a nurse promptly prepared him for emergency surgery by shaving what we refer to in a family newspaper as the “lower portion of his anatomy.”

Tazz couldn’t resist the obvious. “You know what I’m in for, right?” he helpfully said to the nurse. “You’re at the wrong end!”

“Honey,” the nurse calmly fired back, “if I see something I haven’t seen before, I’ll hit it with a stick!”

It turns out Tazz’s right coronary artery was 99 per cent blocked. Going in through the wrist, a surgeon inserted a life-saving stent in my buddy’s big but wonky heart.

The next day, ambulance supervisor Jason dropped in to see how Tazz was recovering and to advise him that if he’d called the ambulance even 30 minutes later, the outcome would have been grim.

“Jason said everything worked out OK because I called right away,” Tazz explained, smiling at the memory. “He said heart attacks are deadly, but it’s the delay that kills more often than not.

“He asked me, when I’m up on stage, to let people know not to delay. That timing is everything. I had my heart attack, I called, the ambulance showed up and got me into surgery and, as a result, I’ve only got .003 per cent damage to my heart, which is nothing.”

Now, feeling better than he has in years, Tazz is already back at work, making people laugh and sharing a hard lesson.

“It’s better to look like a fool than be buried a fool,” he chortled, savouring the afternoon sun. “I’m glad I didn’t go into the light. Normally, as a comedian, when I see the light, I’ll do another 15 minutes.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca