For years, Rick Mercer would smirk gleefuly into the camera as his popular vox pop segment on This Hour Has 22 Minutes would take to the streets, lampooning everyday Americans, university professors, U.S. senators and even George W. Bush into endorsing or opposing ridiculous and fictitious Canadian laws, current events and figureheads such as "Prime Minister Jean Poutine," the bombing of West Edmonton, or the barbaric practice of euthanizing senior citizens by abandoning them on an ice floe.
When the cameras panned away from him, Mercer managed to keep his personal life out of the public eye, but in his new memoir, Talking to Canadians, the comedian exposes his own pitfalls and pratfalls - among the many triumphs of his life and career.
"I know that on paper I'm notoriously private, but I guess I always felt like I was getting enough attention anyway. I had a weekly TV show for 25 years, I was touring, I was getting lots of attention. So I never ever felt the need to go out of my way to draw attention to myself," says Mercer.
"Normally I'd be happy to do interviews with people, and I did professionally for decades and decades, but it was always about whatever project I was doing, or what was happening in Ottawa, or politics in general. So when interviews veered into the personal - even something as simple as, 'What kind of car do you drive?' or, 'What's your favourite room in your house?' I would run for the hills."
Mercer says relinquishing some of that privacy while writing the memoir wasn't necessarily uncomfortable for him, "but it was choosing a different lane."
The project had been in the back of his mind for a while, but the timing never quite panned out.
Then, just as he was about to embark upon his biggest Canadian comedy tour yet with Just For Laughs, the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt.
"For a lot of people in show business, myself included, everything just disappeared, and some people found that very difficult for lots of different reasons, but I had this project which I was able to do from home. Normally, in show business, you can't work from home. You can be unemployed from home, but you can't work from home."
So, from a "shed" at his home in Newfoundland, Mercer began the process of reaching out to friends, neighbours, teachers and colleagues "to have what would ostensibly be a quick conversation about something we did together 30 years earlier, that would turn into five one-hour conversations.
"People I never knew as adults at all, I'd track down and have conversations, and that was a ball of fun."
Meanwhile, some exchanges were admittedly more unnerving than others.
"In the book there's a story about a crime, an act of vandalism that my brother and I comparted when we were children, and I wrote about it. But I had to call the people on my parents' street and confess that it was me. 'I was the eight-year-old who did that dastardly thing!'
"I just spoke really fast and told them, 'Oh, by the way, I'm just calling because I did this thing and now it's in the book, and it's gonna be in Reader's Digest in December so you might see it. I hope to see you over Christmas. Bye'!"
Though he never specifically intended Talking to Canadians to be a chronological story of his life, the book ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger: culminating just before he begins his 15-year tenure on Rick Mercer Report.
"When I was writing the book, I didn't know how to write a book. I literally sat down and Googled 'How to write a memoir,' and everyone said the same thing: 'Don't worry about writing it in chronological order because your book may not end up that way.'
"But I really, for the life of me, couldn't start, so I just started chronologically on the day I was born, and that's how I continued. I just kept going chronologically. And then when I got to the point where The Mercer Report was about to launch, my editor said, 'OK, you're done now. Put your pen down. You've written a book'."
"It was a natural place to end, because the next 15 or 16 years of The Mercer Report would make for very different storytelling. It's a very different chapter."
Mercer says the world itself is a very different place now - and more divisive than when he shot to fame with his Talking to Americans special. Despite that particular comedic formula having since been successfully employed by the likes of Jay Leno, Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Seth Meyers - unlike Jon Stewart, who is arguably Mercer's American counterpart, Mercer has no desire to stage a comeback of that particular segment.
"I really enjoyed doing them, but the main reason I enjoyed doing them was because the job afforded me the luxury of travelling around the United States almost on a weekly basis with people I like, and exploring capitol buildings, and national monuments, and historic sites.
"Now I don't have any interest in running around the United States with a camera causing trouble, because I swear to God, I think you'd be taking your life in your hands. So just out of self-preservation alone I don't think I'll go back to that."
And what of his signature "rants?" Will Canadians ever bear witness to those again?
"I'm not saying I wouldn't go back to the opinions business again, because I still have lots of rants, I just do them to my father on the telephone. But I'm happy not doing that right now."
Despite this declaration, perhaps out of habit, or perhaps out of opportunity, Mercer still manages to let slip a few well-honed rants about the recent Federal election, during which he was uncharacteristically quiet - admitting this was the first time he'd ever been "pissed off with the timing of an election. I thought this was particularly egregious."
He also holds forth on the divisiveness and win/lose mentality that has increasingly crept into Canadian politics.
"In the 25 years or so that I was covering this type of thing, at almost every point I'd think, 'Oh, well now we've hit a new low.' And I do think we've hit a new low, and one of the things that frustrates me entirely is the notion that a minority government means someone lost. When in our system, it doesn't mean someone's lost, it means we sent you to work, and we told you to compromise and work with the people on the other side of the aisle. People don't seem to accept that anymore and it's infuriating. We're so lucky in Canada. And the notion that Liberals and Conservatives can't work together? Absolutely absurd."
Mercer has had other projects on his plate throughout the last 18 months, including an appearance in the music video for The Tragically Hip song "Ouch," from their May release Saskadelphia.
And though his comedy tour has been postponed several times already, he's eager to head out on the road when the timing is right, settling instead for live-streaming events, such as his upcoming conversation with Jann Arden, presented by Wordfest's Imagine On Air on Tuesday, Dec. 7th.
"(Jann and I) always have far too good a time," he says, which complements the theme of Talking to Canadians perfectly.
"I wanted it to be a funny read; an enjoyable read. I wasn't going into this to settle any scores or talk about a triumph over adversity or any of those things. And I think we're in a period where you go to a bookstore, and you look at the table, and there's a lot of books that are very important, but they're sometimes kind of dire. And I'm hoping there's a little corner of the table for those people who are just looking for a fun read. So that was my number one goal."