| Christine McGlade | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 25, 1963 Canada |
| Other names | Moose |
Christine "Moose" McGlade (born August 25, 1963) is a Canadian actress and producer, who was the longtime host of the internationally popular kids' sketch comedy TV program You Can't Do That On Television (YCDTOTV). She was with the show from its very beginning as a local attraction on Ottawa, Ontario, television station CJOH in 1979 until partway through the 1986 season. (In 1985 and 1986 Alasdair Gillis was her co-host.) She also served as host for Whatever Turns You On, the short-lived spinoff of YCDTOTV which aired on Canada's CTV network in the fall of 1979.
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McGlade became a cast member on You Can't Do That On Television by "accident," according to fansite YCDTOTV.com. When show creator Roger Price held auditions for the show in the fall of 1978, McGlade went to the auditions only to support a friend. She had no ambitions in acting or show business, but Price insisted that she either audition or leave. McGlade auditioned and was chosen for the show, although her friend was not.
McGlade was much older than most of the other kids on the show. She was fifteen when she started on YCDTOTV, and by the time she left the show in 1986, she was 23. What allowed her to stay on the show for as long as she did, besides her natural TV talents (even more remarkable given the fact that she had no acting experience beforehand), was the fact that she looked much younger than she actually was, and could believably play 14 or 15 when she was 21.
On YCDTOTV, McGlade was most frequently seen on the familiar blue link set, talking directly to the audience and lecturing on the theme of each program. She did not appear in as many of the comedy sketches taped off the link set as her younger fellow cast members. During the live, local, hour-long episodes of YCDTOTV aired on CJOH in 1979 and 1981, she often introduced the live contest segments and music videos.
As hostess, McGlade played the role of straight man, frequently dealing with annoyances and interruptions from chatty sidekick Lisa Ruddy and stage director Ross Ewich (Les Lye). Ross enjoyed putting the hapless McGlade in unfortunate situations, which often resulted in her being slimed (after being tricked into saying the trigger phrase, "I don't know"), pied, or watered.
McGlade's nickname on YCDTOTV, "Moose," was also her nickname in real life. According to McGlade's blog, she was given the name by a sixth-grade classmate "based on the fact that I was always the smallest kid in the class. I think [the classmate] may have been referring to the character in the Archie comics, the giant blonde one, called "Moose" [1]) After she mentioned this to Roger Price, he decided to write it into the show, and thus McGlade was known as "Moose" not only to her schoolmates, but to thousands of young viewers in the U.S., Canada and around the world.
Throughout all of the 1982 season of "YCDTOTV," McGlade wore a wig. After the 1981 season was over, she cut her trademark curly dark hair short and dyed it in a punk style. In most of her scenes in 1982, she wore a wig of human hair that looked a lot like the hairdo she'd worn in 1981. However, since she couldn't get that human hair wig slimed or watered, for scenes involving messy or wet slapstick (including some scenes in which she was not the one to be slimed or watered), McGlade had to wear a curly synthetic wig. By 1983 McGlade's natural hair had grown back, and there was no longer a need for a wig.
While McGlade usually played herself on the show, there were instances in which she played other characters. In the 1981 season she played the old lady at the movie theater, a role that had been originated by Ruth Buzzi on Whatever Turns You On. In the "Fairy Tales" episode in 1986 she played one of Cinderella's wicked stepsisters. In 1989 she did make a brief cameo in a classroom sketch at the end of the "Age" episode.
While never "official" cast members, some members of McGlade's family also made cameo appearances on the show - for example, her father in "Work, Work, Work" (1981), and her younger sister and brother in "Cosmetics" (1982). Her younger sister Lisa actually played a younger version of McGlade herself in a detention sketch, and her younger brother, Michael, was written into a sketch in the doctor's office in which he was brought into there with a stomachache after eating all of her makeup. Lisa McGlade did make a few more cameo appearances in the classroom sketches during the 1985 season.
After leaving YCDTOTV, McGlade starred on Turkey Television, a comedy/variety show aired on Nickelodeon which was also created by Price. In recent years she has worked as a director at TVOntario and its sister station TFO, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto as a director and producer of the CBC Playground children's programming block and most recently as a writer and producer at YTV.[2]
Christine McGlade has three children.