My first book was published in 2003. I really have no ties to Celebrity Tantrums anymore, and if you want to read it, I have a few dozen copies in my basement that I’d be happy to give away! I’m proud of the writing but my experience with this publisher wasn’t great. However, the book launch party was fantastic. …
Jamaica is beautiful. You probably don’t need proof, but here’s a photo I took off Montego Bay when I was there in the early 1990s. …
There’s no denying that I love opening presents. Hubby is always so thoughtful and he knows that I don’t need buckets of diamonds to make me smile. But he also knows that my favourite gift is time. The stuff we do together is more important than any “thing”. …
More than a couple of decades ago, before Toronto’s Virgin radio was a thing, there was MIX 99.9, that came after CKFM. Are you still with me? …
Ken and I were invited to join the official Lighting of the Lights at Victoria Park this year, as co-emcees with our colleague, CTV’s Nick Paparella. Nick has done it for so many years that we pretty much rode his coat tails through the program of live music and a couple of short speeches. …
In 1989 I put a 45 on a dusty turntable in the FM102 music library and listened to a song called Soldier of Love. It was shipped without a label, purposely, so Music Directors wouldn’t be biased before they got a chance to hear it. I declared what I heard would be a hit song, It turned out that the artist was Donny Osmond. And that’s the one and only time I predicted a song would be a hit and was right! …
It’s been eight years since I made a permanent move back to London from Toronto. Eight. I hope that by repeating it, it will sink in as real because it’s a big number for what feels like a short amount of time. …
When did bicycles get so expensive? I recently decided I wanted to cycle, and checked out the actual retail prices of ladies’ bikes. It’s crazy! I just want to get a bit of exercise, not transfer my RRSPs into a hunk of metal and rubber. …
An old friend from the Wingham/CKNX days posted an old photo of me on Facebook last weekend. Usually, I can tell by the hairstyle – or my hair’s lack of style – what year it was. I’m pretty sure this was taken early on in my four-year stint at ‘NX. But I’m not certain. …
When we named our Border Collie, we thought we were naming him after a future star. Lee Roy Parnell was an up-and-coming country singer and guitarist who had the push of Arista Records behind him and the respect of his fellow musicians. We loved his sound. Lee Roy the Border Collie was named in his honour. …
Pink was all the rage for home decor in the 80s. They called it dusty rose. So were deep grey, Caribbean blue and not wearing socks, if you were Don Johnson on Miami Vice. …
Eight years ago we refreshed our kitchen. This house was a disaster when we bought it. That’s how we got a great deal on it! And the kitchen was useless, old, and gross. We replaced just about everything including the countertop. Derek knocked out a wall and his brother, Howie, created extra storage. In other words, we made it work. …
My first radio job when I moved back to London 8 years ago was midday host on 1039-FM, a station with an identity crisis. Now it’s a country music station. Then, it was struggling to find a niche in a radio cluster that included the city’s top FM station, and another one that places in the top 5. …
It’s been a year since I started at CJBK. And we’re already launching the second morning show of my career stop there.Â
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It’s only been a year since Derek had his 20-year ponytail lopped off. …
Concussions have cut short the careers of many athletes and caused the early deaths of thousands of them; professionals, children and weekend warriors. …
A couple of weeks ago, a former star basketball player from Southern Mississippi was shot and killed not far from a high school in Chicago on a Monday afternoon as he was heading into the school’s gym to work out. The story made headlines in Canada because Jonathan Mills used to play for the London Lightning of the Canadian Basketball Leagues. As soon as I heard the story I thought, “slippers”. Â …
I  am really late to the story here, but I was reluctant to write about Muhammad Ali because, besides the obvious loss of a legend, his was another death attributable to sepsis, the disease that nearly KOd me several years ago. In his case, it was septic shock, meaning severe sepsis that doesn’t respond to treatment. Sepsis gets “severe” when it starts to affect internal organs, as it did with my liver. …