Anchorboy (19 page)

After returning to the room following the meeting, I found a letter waiting for me under the door:

Looks like I
really
did not leave a big enough tip.

Now I was in trouble. They thought I had removed the cover off the smoke detector because I was smoking in my room. I quickly realized that my only real defence in this case was pure stupidity.

Would the duty manager really believe that the reason I had torn the cover off his smoke detector in the middle of the night was
because I thought the loud piercing sound of the hotel fire alarm was actually my smoke detector? Even though it was the truth, it sounded completely ridiculous even to me. Surely, however, they wouldn’t charge me for the soiled sheets. How hard is it to get vomit out of sheets? Think of all the bodily fluids that are soaked into the sheet fibres of every hotel you’ve ever been to. This was downtown London for God’s sake! There was no way in
hell
I was the first person to fill my own hotel room bed with the contents of my stomach. I was confident that after apologizing in person I would be charged a very small fee, and life at the hotel would continue unabated.

Two days later I received another letter under my door:

Well, this was a problem. One hundred twenty pounds? There was
no way
I was paying that much for soiled sheets. I also knew there was
no way
the hotel was going to replace that mattress. It was clear from the incident that I was a dumb, dumb man, but I was no pushover. I vowed to fight it.

The next day I was awakened by the sounds of construction workers outside my window. Turns out they were doing work on the roof of the hotel, and they had decided to start at the ungodly hour of 8:00 a.m.
Unacceptable!
I thought to myself. I also saw it as an opportunity. This was my way of getting out of paying that bill.

I called down to the duty manager and apologized for trashing his room like Charlie Sheen, and then I promptly launched into a complaint about the construction noise. I told him I was working late throughout the Games (true, but not
that
late). I then informed him that the construction had in fact ruined my entire workday, and as such, I should not be held accountable for the damage I had done to the room on the 21st of July. This seemed like a stretch but also a plausible way to get out of paying the hotel almost 300 Canadian dollars. He apologized for the noise and promised to take it into consideration.

Two days later, another letter under my door:

I was screwed.

I decided to drop the fight, for now at least. Maybe they would forget about it.

T
HE FIRST THREE SHOWS WE
did from Trafalgar Square went incredibly well. No major delays in the feed from Toronto, so there weren’t any new awkwardly long pauses while we chatted via satellite, just the normal awkwardly long pauses that we usually have on the show.

Since Dan wasn’t at the Games, I had come up with a “game show” idea to feature him as prominently as possible. I had our marketing manager, Tiffany De Groote, create a couple of T-shirts for me to wear with a giant picture of Dan’s face. The plan was to corner Olympic athletes and broadcasters from countries other than Canada and have them play the breakout hit game show of the London Olympics, “Have You Seen This Dan?” Guests would try to identity the Dan on the front of my T-shirt in a multiple choice question.

We made our way down to the NBC Olympic cafeteria at the International Broadcast Centre to try to round up some popular NBC personalities for the segment. Imagine my surprise when the
first NBC star I ran into was none other than
American Idol
host Ryan Seacrest! He was so tiny I wanted to put him in my pocket! Not just short, but skinny. He honestly had the body of a thirteen-year-old girl whose boobs hadn’t developed. But what a nice gentleman he was when I approached him out of nowhere.

“Ryan, Jay Onrait from
SportsCentre
in Canada. Want to do a quick interview with us and guess who the famous Canadian is on this T-shirt?” I asked him as he tried to make his way into the NBC cafeteria, probably to eat a single grape.

“Sure!” said Seacrest. Even I was surprised by how gung-ho he seemed. What a great guy! My camera guy, Dean Willers, was about to turn on his camera when suddenly two thirty-something women dressed in identical cardigans with identical necklaces closed Seacrest off like a castle shutting its gates.

“No! He can’t do it, sorry. He’s too busy.” It was his duo of publicists. They were in charge of booking interviews for him, and obviously I hadn’t gone through the proper channels. In our business these days that’s a no-no. It’s certainly understandable. We have great publicists at TSN who book our interviews and separate the legit interviewers from the guys who are just trying to make us look dumber than we already are and waste our time. I am certainly happy that we have publicists do that for us. But in this case I thought Seacrest’s publicists were going a bit too far. Seacrest was clearly ready to do the interview, I had full Olympic credentials hanging around my neck, and the entire thing would have taken approximately one minute. Instead, Seacrest walked away with shrugged shoulders and a sheepish look that said, “Sorry, dude, you know how this works.” I’ll never forget how nice he was, though, and I’ll never forget how mean his two publicists were.

We ended up getting Craig Sager from
NBA on TNT
to join us for a “Have You Seen This Dan?” segment, as well as Jim Gray from NBC Sports and one of my personal favourite sportscasters ever and
a huge influence on my career, Dan Patrick. It was Dan who memorably teamed up with Keith Olbermann in the mid-1990s to form what is universally regarded as the greatest highlight show anchor duo in the history of sports broadcasting. Dan left ESPN and was now hosting a syndicated radio show that we carried on TSN Radio across the country. He was in London covering the Olympics for NBC because he was also the host of the
Football Night in America
highlight show that aired just before the Sunday night NFL game on NBC. The Sunday nighter and
Football Night in America
also aired on TSN. I joked with him at the start of the segment that he was on TSN more than I was. He laughed and then made fun of my haircut. At that very moment I really loved my job.

Early on in the Games, we received an e-mail from a publicity agency representing German tennis legend Boris Becker. Would we be interested in interviewing Mr. Becker about his new role as an ambassador for English tourism? Turns out the three-time Wimbledon winner had moved to London years ago and had now been hired for a Travel Britain advertisement campaign. Normally, we would stay far, far away from this so-called press conference, which would really be nothing more than an extended in-person commercial. Unfortunately, we were having no luck booking broadcasters through NBC’s publicity department; in fact, NBC’s publicity department was completely ignoring our e-mails, denying us access to their talent. Becker was someone all Canadian sports fans would recognize, and this seemed like a good opportunity to play another rousing game of “Have You Seen This Dan?” with a participant who would genuinely have no idea who the man on the front of my T-shirt was. Becker was also one of my all-time favourite athletes, and the opportunity to interview him one-on-one, regardless of the reason, was simply too good to pass up. I was always a Becker guy and couldn’t understand why anyone would be an Edberg guy.

Dean and I made our way to a posh hotel about ten minutes
from Trafalgar Square, where a surprisingly large group of local and international media had gathered to talk to Becker about his new endeavour. Becker walked into the room wearing a not-too-trendy suit and button-up shirt, no tie, but it was his face that really caught my eye. His fair skin was bright red, and he looked
extremely
puffy, with big bags under his eyes. He was unshaven. His was the face of a man who had been drinking heavily the night before and probably wanted to be anywhere but this hotel right now. I suddenly realized he might not be in the mood to guess the identity of some random Canadian on some random Canadian’s T-shirt.

After Becker was introduced, we were all subjected to his new commercial, which was surprisingly tasteful and well done, followed by a pre-selected interviewer asking him a series of standard questions about his new Travel Britain role. After another half-hour or so, the interviewer turned to us seated in front of him and opened things up to the floor for questions. The first two were innocent enough, pretty much verbatim from what the one-on-one interviewer had already asked him, but the third interviewer was different. She had travelled to the event all the way from Germany and asked her question first in German and then in English:

“Mr. Becker, I’m wondering if you have considered how German people might feel about you, being one of the world’s most famous German people, endorsing a campaign to travel to Britain. Do you think that the German people will be disappointed that you didn’t elect to do a similar campaign in your home country instead?”

On the surface, Becker didn’t seem fazed by the question. Instead, he answered in a measured and thoughtful way in German and then English so we could all understand. He then carried on to the next question. Maybe Boris wasn’t in such a bad mood after all.
Maybe this whole day would work out okay
, I thought to myself.

After the press questions had been exhausted, those of us who wanted to go one-on-one with the tennis star were corralled
into a corner just outside of the conference room. As I found my place in line, I saw the German reporter and two of her colleagues gather just outside the room, speaking quietly among themselves. Suddenly, Boris came flying out of the room toward them, followed by his own press agent, who seemed to be trying to calm him down. Boris approached the German reporter and her colleagues and began berating them in their native tongue. Speaking quickly and sternly but not shouting, never raising his voice, it was clear to me and
everyone
in the room he was unhappy with the question she had asked and was going to let her know about it. You didn’t even need to understand a speck of
Deutsch
to understand that the former Olympic gold medallist was upset. His rant toward the reporter lasted about thirty seconds, after which she turned toward us. The German reporter’s face was white. I thought she might start to cry.

At that point it was almost my turn to interview him, and quite frankly, I was now shitting myself.

I was up after a stunning English girl who was strictly told by Becker’s PR agent that she was allowed a total of two questions and then she had to move on. Five questions later it was my turn. I walked up to Boris, who smiled amiably and shook my hand. His was the pungent smell of stale booze, cigarettes, and regret.

I quickly explained the situation “This is a famous Canadian named Dan on my T-shirt. Can you guess which Canadian Dan it is?”

Often, when you go to a press conference like this, whether it’s for a film or a television show or a new condo some celebrity is endorsing, the celebrity has been asked the same question over and over and over. This situation was no different. Pretty much everyone here was asking the same first question: Why did you decide to endorse Travel Britain? For some the name of the game is politely answering these same questions over and over as quickly as possible, fulfilling their obligation, and getting the fuck out of there. So when you throw a curveball into the mix like I was doing with my “game
show,” you are entering into a serious risk/reward situation. There will be no middle ground. Either the subject will be delighted to not have to answer the same questions he or she has just answered a million times and will participate with unbridled enthusiasm,
or
the subject will be annoyed that you tried to go “off script,” telling you to get on with it and stop wasting valuable time, and you’ll slink away full of shame. Basically I was in the same conundrum I faced when presenting Will Ferrell with that piece of hotel stationery. Based on Boris’s reaction to the inquiry from the German woman, I was fearing the worst.

But Boris was delighted.

His face lit up like a tannenbaum. “What is this?” he asked with genuine curiosity and delight.

“Oh, just a fun little game from Canada!” I replied with genuine relief in my voice. Becker was
in
. I started to lay out the multiple choice questions for him.

“Boris Becker … Is this [gesturing to my T-shirt] … the father of Canadian tennis star Milos Raonic,
Dan
Raonic?”

Boris smiled, he was enjoying this. He had forgotten all about the woman who dared question his loyalty to his own country.

“Is it … the brother of Canadian superstar vocalist Celine Dion,
Dan
Dion?”

Boris looked into the camera with a goofy face that said “I don’t know what’s happening but I like it!”

“Is it … famous Canadian sports anchor Dan O’Toole?
Or
… is it famous Canadian radio personality Tarzan Dan? Boris … HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DAN?”

Boris studied the face on my T-shirt again. He concluded that it was not “the father of Raonic” and ultimately decided it must be Tarzan Dan. I shook my head. “Well, who
is
it?” he demanded. He wanted the answer to this age-old question as much as anyone. I informed him that the man on my shirt was, in fact, a “famous”
Canadian sportscaster, and he seemed satisfied. Boris thanked me for my time, made sure to let me know there was a catered lunch available to me, shook my hand, and bid me
Auf Wiedersehen
.

My next venture out and about in London would not end with such good vibes.