In conversation with Jay Onrait

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This article was published 14/02/2015 (4068 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You can take the broadcaster out of Winnipeg, but you can’t take Winnipeg out of Jay Onrait.

The former host of the local A-Channel’s Big Breakfast show also spent a decade at TSN in Toronto as co-host of SportsCentre with Dan O’Toole, before the pair signed on with Fox Sports 1 in Los Angeles 21/2 years ago.

He is on a promotional tour of his second book, Number Two: More Short Tales from a Very Tall Man, the followup to 2013’s Anchorboy.

He makes sure to include Winnipeg among his stops, because coming here means much more than signing books and retiring to his hotel room. He reconnects with his former co-workers over a few cocktails and, indeed, the city itself.

He sat down with the Free Press after signing books at the Polo Park Chapters store this week.

 

FP: It seems like Anchorboy just came out. How did Number Two appear so quickly afterwards?

JO: I signed a contract, so I had to do it. My hero, as far as writing goes, is David Sedaris, someone who puts out a book every couple of years, and it’s humorous essays about his life and things that are happening to him. I wanted to be that kind of guy.

I was sure that I had more stories to tell. This book is a little different. The first book was very much about the career I’d managed to establish in this country. Number Two is a little bit more about my youth, growing up on the Prairies in a little farm town in Alberta and some of the whacky stuff that happened to me there. It leads into our last two years in Los Angeles and the fact we’ve had some successes, some failures and some wacky adventures in Sochi at the Olympics. The book rounds out by me coming back to speak at an event in Regina, and I go visit my grandfather. I like to think it’s heartwarming, but ultimately I just to have people laugh at me, and that’s what the whole thing is about.

 

FP: Bodily fluids were a popular topic in Anchorboy. How many of the stories in Number Two cover the same topic?

JO: I usually try to have an average of two poop stories per book. I managed to achieve that average with this particular book. Poop stories are like dessert. A little goes a long way. Don’t overdo it.

 

FP: Many people remember you from your days in Winnipeg as the co-host on the Big Breakfast. In particular, they remember the clip of you getting round-house kicked on air by a martial-arts expert, which sent you careening into a wall. Do you have fond memories of your days here?

JO: I’m staying down at the Inn at the Forks, so I got to pass by the old station and the memories came flooding back. We would always tape ‘best of’ shows over at the Forks Market. (Big Breakfast co-host Jon Ljungberg) and I would go from stall to stall and make pancakes or hang out at the Muddy Waters Smokehouse. It was such a great job because I felt like six months into it, I knew everybody in the city. Every business, the mayor, the police chief, the fire chief, they all came on the show. The best part was I realized what an amazing music scene this city has. Obviously, it has a great history of music, with the legendary musicians who have come from here. But of the 365 days we would do the show, I don’t think we had 10 bands from out of town, it was 99 per cent local bands every morning. That always astounded me. The amazing arts culture — that, to me, made Winnipeg such a fun city to live in, and a fun city to retire in, maybe.

I usually get together with my old Big Breakfast pals. Jon and I are great friends, and a bunch of my friends from behind the scenes, we hang out in Osborne Village — that’s where I lived when I lived here. I loved living there and hanging out in that part of town. I usually wander around town and remember the good times.

I also met my first wife here, which ended in a brutal divorce, so those are the bad times. I try to just remember the positive times, and then maybe I’ll stop at the Palomino if it’s a Monday.

 

FP: You’ve mentioned the Pal on TV for years. You must be sad that it’s closing down.

JO: I’m devastated about it. But at the same time, every bar has its shelf life. You can’t force it. I know they wanted to move it downtown, but I don’t know if it would have had the same atmosphere and the incredible stench of years of partying and Booty Shake Mondays. I don’t know if you can transport that to another location. Think of the relationships that were consummated there and the relationships that were ruined there, the hockey payers that met beautiful Winnipeg girls and maybe had a brief tryst. Gosh, if those walls could talk, it would be really something.

 

FP: You’ve long said you and Dan are an acquired taste. Have U.S. viewers acquired a taste for you yet?

JO: I think so. Even at TSN, two years in, I don’t know if we had reached the level that we eventually reached. I still think it’s going to take more time. We’re lucky we’re with a company that’s patient, because in this media landscape, nobody is very patient anymore. It either works right off the top or it doesn’t.

I think it’s going really well. It’s tough to launch a channel at any time, especially these days, when people are watching TV less and less. The thing that works in our favour is sports TV is still the one thing people cling to as far as cable is concerned.

 

FP: How many times have you led with hockey on the show?

JO: Never. It has never happened, and it never will. The worst part is there are many shows where we don’t show any hockey highlights at all. It’s really unfortunate. Now, with college football season ramping up and NFL, there wasn’t much hockey on our network. Hockey is a niche sport. Most of the teams do pretty well locally. They fill buildings for the most part, except for Florida, which is a disaster and probably should be in Quebec. The Kings fill the Staples Center every night. But as far as sports radio talking about the L.A. Kings, I remember two years ago when they made their last Stanley Cup run, the hosts saying, “I guess we have to learn the names of the players now.” That’s how little sports radio and sports TV talks about the Kings. That is definitely one thing I miss is talking more about hockey, like we do up here.

 

FP: Because of the Jets’ schedule, you won’t be able to see a game while you’re up here, will you?

JO: No, it’s unfortunate. I got to see a game in the first season. It was one of the most memorable games I’ve ever seen. It was the last game of the year, and Steven Stamkos was one goal away from 60 goals. The best part of the game was the crowd was booing him throughout the whole game every time he touched the puck, knowing he was on the verge of scoring 60. And then when he scored it, they gave him a standing ovation. If that doesn’t sum up the great crowd here, I don’t know what does.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca