| The NHL playoffs are underway! For the first time in almost two years, we’re being treated to that two-month ice war of attrition that ends with one team of delirious players hoisting high Lord Stanley’s elaborate mug. At this time of year, many Canadians feel truly grateful for their big-screen TV with surround sound and the three national specialty sports networks that keep all those hockey highlights coming.
For viewers of CBC’s playoff coverage, it means more Don Cherry, more often. Canada’s blustery, loud suit-wearing, Swedish player-bashing icon now comes into our homes several times a week – and not just on Saturday night, as is the case with the NHL regular season.
Someone who knows Mr. Cherry’s runaway popularity in this part of the country well is Clark Robertson. A stand-up comedian for more than 15 years, Robertson has been getting many gigs over the last few years as a professional Don Cherry impersonator.
He shows up at hockey banquets, trade shows and corporate events wearing a gaudy yellow and black plaid sport jacket, Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em video style sunglasses and, of course, a dress shirt with an enormous white collar. The resemblance to Cherry is often enough to get fans stampeding over to Robertson, thinking they are about to meet the right-wing, working-class hero they adore.
The impersonator recalls his experience in Cherry garb at a post-playoff Calgary Flames rally down at Olympic Plaza back in 2004. "I wasn’t scheduled to appear. I just thought it would be a fun thing to go down there."
After a brief discussion with an event organizer, it was decided that the imitation Cherry would be allowed to go up to the podium without saying anything before security attempted to drag him away as part of a staged gag. "As I walk out there," Robertson recounts, "there are 40,000 people just screaming their heads off. It was really quite amazing."
After the event wrapped and all the Flames players and dignitaries had left, the skilled Cherry impersonator was still on site – and that’s when the real chaos began. Robertson asserts, "There were four or five hundred people around me screaming, ‘Mr. Cherry! An autograph please! It’s for my sick uncle. Mr. Cherry! Mr. Cherry!’"
The performer got separated from his wife and assistant Darlene Robertson, and was mauled by the crowd to the point where he had to get a police escort to get out. Robertson found the whole mob mentality thing more than a little unnerving. It wasn’t enough, however, to keep him from continuing on with a celebrity imitation that’s usually a pleasure to perform.
Due to Cherry’s often muddled, sometimes incoherent performances for Hockey Night in Canada, Robertson says of his impersonation bookings, "I don’t have to worry about being too articulate or screwing up names. I don’t have to worry about screwing up anything, because it’s all just a part of being Don."
Learn more about Clark at www.clarkrobertson.com |
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