JOHN WING - COMEDIAN

	I started doing standup comedy at Yuk Yuks Komedy Kabaret in Toronto on June 30th, 1980. The club was in the basement of a small three story plaza at Bay and Yorkville. It’s now a hotel. Success was slow. It took almost two years to get promoted to regular nights and another six months after that to get weekend spots at the club. (All spots done for free). But I learned. I went out on the road in late 1982 and have been there ever since. Started to get some buzz in the mid eighties, starting with the first of my Montreal Comedy Festivals in 1985. Since performed there in 1989, 1993, 1998, 2005, 2009, & 2012. I have done the Just For Laughs National Comedy tour twice. I have performed at every Winnipeg Comedy Festival since it started in 2000. I have done the Halifax Comedy Festival four times and the Edmonton Festival twice. As well as Vancouver, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Milwaukee (Milwaukee?) and Thunder Bay comedy fests. I still dream of doing St John’s, Owen Sound, and Muskoka. They’re on my bucket list.

	I moved to Los Angeles in the spring of 1988, feeling that if I didn’t go I never would. I was hot from five solid years on the road. In each of the previous two years I had done more than 300 shows. I got to L.A. and was hot immediately, getting into the Improv and being seen by the man who booked The Tonight Show. I did the Tonight Show the first time on September 18th, 1990, a little over ten years after I’d started. I went on to do it six times. Once a year from 1990 to 1995. As well I did two Evening At The Improv’s, two Improv Tonite’s, three Comic Strip 
Live’s, Stand-Up Spotlite, MTV’s Half Hour Comedy Hour, Caroline’s Comedy Hour, Friday Night with Ralph Bennmergui, three Mike Bullard Shows, Comics! on CBC, two hour-long specials on Comedy Now - John Wing, Fly Me, and John Wing, The Elvis Years. I’ve been a regular contributor to CBC Radio’s Definitely Not The Opera and The Debaters for close to ten years, and in 2006/07 had my own show on CBC Radio called Man, Woman, & Child.

	In 1998 I started working for cruise ships. Many people call this the most lucrative dead-end job in show business, but I liked it and still do. It took several ships to get the hang of it, but I got there in the end. All the way I have endeavoured to get better, get funnier. I auditioned for a lot of acting gigs, but I’m not a very good actor. I’m good enough to play myself...on the radio. That’s about it. I’m just a comedian.

	In 1998 I published my first book of poems, A Cup Of Nevermind. It sold well in Canada. More than 18 copies, not including family members. I have since published ...And The Fear Makes Us Special, (2000), None Of This Is Probably True, (2002), Excuses, (2005), The Winter Palace, (2007), So Recently Ancient, (2009), Almost Somewhere Else, (2012), and this year will publish my eighth collection, The Armless Trombonist. I also wrote and published a memoir about my first ten years as a comedian, entitled When You See The Red Light, Get Off (2002)