New book dishes the dirt on Speakers’ Corner reel
Sportscaster recalls glimpse of ‘amateur pornography’ during Citytv holiday party
Remember Speakers’ Corner, that popular Citytv show where ordinary people could drop a loonie into a booth and be recorded ranting about life, commenting on news events of the day, having crazy sex and taking a bathroom break?
OK, the last two might not have been expressly encouraged, and yet it’s no secret that members of the public — surely upstanding most of the time — would venture at night into the booth on the corner of John and Queen Sts. in downtown Toronto to fornicate, urinate, and sometimes even defecate.
As one anonymous employee put it to the National Post in 1998: “The worst job at City is the poor fellow who has to clean out Speakers Corner in the morning.”
There were also rumours that those pre-YouTube-era clips were preserved and shown at City staff parties. In his new book, Number Two: More Short Tales from a Very Tall Man, sportscaster Jay Onrait recounts seeing a compilation of those clips — a filth reel, if you will — at a holiday party hosted by City founder Moses Znaimer in the mid-’90s, where Onrait was apparently volunteering as a waiter.
“A quick cut to a drunken frat boy whipping out his wang and pissing all over the seat in the booth, marking his territory if you will,” Onrait writes.
“This led to another quick cut back to the original couple. This time the woman was on top of the man and full-on penetration could be seen clear as day. We were being treated to ( very) amateur pornography for Christmas.”
Onrait goes on to write that there was plenty more where that came from, eliciting cheers from party guests. Merry Christmas, indeed. Onrait, now an anchor for Fox Sports 1 in Los Angeles, told the Star there’s not much more to add to what is already in the book.
Znaimer went on to found ZoomerMedia, which he continues to head. Of Onrait’s account, he said, “These are urban myths much inflated to enhance the writer’s story.”