Original reflects on 22 years of 22 Minutes
This Hour Has 22 Minutes may be celebrating its 22nd anniversary, but there’s only one person who’s been with it from the very beginning. Cathy Jones first got talked into a spot behind the anchor desk by CODCO castmate Mary Walsh and has spent the last two-plus decades bringing to life correspondents from unflappable flapper Mrs. Enid to space cadet entertainment correspondent Sandy Campbell.
Ahead of the CBC’s gala celebration of the show, Postmedia caught up with Jones to talk about her comic longevity.
“Mary (Walsh) wanted to do a political satire. I wanted to do ... a funny soap.”
— Cathy Jones
On her long run in Canadian comedy: “In 1973, when we went to Toronto and did our first stage show, I was 18. We started doing our television show when I was 30. So I’ve been doing television for 28, 29 years, which is unprecedented in Canada. Nobody else has been on a comedy show for 28 years running.”
On 22 Minutes’ origins: “Famously, Mary (Walsh) wanted to do a political satire. I wanted to do a soap, a funny soap. Mary actually wanted me because I didn’t pay attention to the news and had kind of a fresh, crazy brain. Right from the beginning, we made a decision to make the show move and move well. Coming off CODCO, we wanted to keep the sketches under two minutes. That was good: The attention span of people, the way the world was going, I think that helped with the pacing of the show.”
On how the political landscape has changed: “The show is about people going up to politicians and at that point we had Chretien and stuff and the world was less brittle and serious. They were more open. Harper has kind of decided that he isn’t going to talk to anybody. He doesn’t even talk to the normal press. Like Mary said, when he was trying to get somewhere, he wanted to be on 22 Minutes every chance he got. He was all over it. Now that he’s got somewhere, he shut it down. He’s changing the way it’s run. He’s got people holding to the party line — people who are elected don’t have their own vote, they have to vote along party lines. There’s no fun to it. Everything is humourless. They just shut ’er down.”