For a guy who claimed never to have seen the Junos before, Russell Peters proved a very accomplished host at the annual televised Canadian music awards last night.
You could tell things were going to be a lot different right out of the box when Peters opened by saying "I've never actually seen the Juno Awards, to be honest with which I guess, makes me Canadian."
It apparently wasn't just posing either, according to a preview story on canoe.ca wherein Peters said he shared equal ignorance of the nominees in all categories, be they rap, country, roots, classical, pop or whatever.
"Nope, not a one," Peters said. "Anne Murray, I would say I'm a fan of her. But that's about it. None of that other (bleep) impresses me at all. So that's why it's fun for me to do this, because I'm not going to be in awe of anybody."
He proved a man of his unimpressed word.
Whether leering at Avril Lavigne, dirty dancing with Jully Black or country cross-dressing in buckskin and Stetson with Jann Arden, Peters was a satisfyingly irreverent host.
He pulled down his fly on national TV, ridiculed the empty oil drum décor ("What, the price of oil has gone that high?") and dissed local hero Chad Kroeger by joking that the lead singer of Nickelback, recently convicted of drinking and driving, was his designated driver.
Peters is the next-best thing to an honourary Mississaugan since he was born and raised in Brampton. Every time he performs at LAC, the venue has to add more shows.
Most of Peters' humour is based on a cultural clash course (or is that coarse) on the brown experience in Canada. His head-wagging impression of his father on the phone dealing with a service representative who doesn't speak very good English, ("damn immigrants" he says in his sing-song accent) is priceless.
I think Peters was trying to tell us how much he admired Anne Murray when he called her "a living legend" in his opening monologue. Then comes the pause and the zinger for the singer: "I think I may have been conceived to her music."
And so it went all night.
The show itself was the usual unsatisfactory snatches of different styles of music, which is inevitable under the circumstances. There was nothing as sublime as k.d. lang's 2005 love letter of Helpless to Neil Young, who was recovering in a New York hospital at the time instead of hosting the Junos in Winnipeg as he was scheduled to do.
One strange thing that did happen last night was that I found myself watching the show right to the bitter end.
Only one possible explanation for that — the what-will-he-say-next Russell Peters' factor.
Here's hoping everyone was offended enough, and entertained enough, to let him host again.