by Dan Russell
May 21, 2022
In Pleasant Good Evening — A Memoir: My 30 Wild and Turbulent Years of Sportstalk, host Dan Russell recounts the highs and lows of hosting a call-in radio sports program in Vancouver for three decades. Here is an excerpt:
Others will say: “I listen to your show every night, but have never called.”
Still others ask: “How do you put up with some of the callers?”
Like an orchestra conductor, I’d like to think that handling calls, dancing through our phone board, changing the pace, assessing how much time a caller should be afforded and how much rope others should get, offering point-counterpoint, sometimes debating, on occasion offering empathy, and sometimes laughing were Sportstalk strengths.
This brings us to “The Pauser” (Paul Lafleur), a Sportstalk creation who, without debate, is the most popular caller in the history of Vancouver talk radio. He and I made great radio together, both instinctively knowing our roles. The Pauser was the shit disturber and I was the pawn master. He was so popular that even Don Taylor, who had briefly taken over my CKNW time slot, once invited The Pauser as a guest and asked him how he got his nickname.
Others will say: “I listen to your show every night, but have never called.”
Still others ask: “How do you put up with some of the callers?”
Like an orchestra conductor, I’d like to think that handling calls, dancing through our phone board, changing the pace, assessing how much time a caller should be afforded and how much rope others should get, offering point-counterpoint, sometimes debating, on occasion offering empathy, and sometimes laughing were Sportstalk strengths.
This brings us to “The Pauser” (Paul Lafleur), a Sportstalk creation who, without debate, is the most popular caller in the history of Vancouver talk radio. He and I made great radio together, both instinctively knowing our roles. The Pauser was the shit disturber and I was the pawn master. He was so popular that even Don Taylor, who had briefly taken over my CKNW time slot, once invited The Pauser as a guest and asked him how he got his nickname.
Read More HERE
I’ve read the excerpts. Dan desperately needed an editor with a firm hand. He’s never been able to keep his ego in check.
I go back with Sportstalk right to 1984 when Dan was on CJOR. I listened quite routinely right up to him signing off the air back in 2013. I recall ‘The Pauser’ right back from like day one he started calling Dan. It was quite entertaining.
That said, Dan has gone off the mental rocker with wokeness and Trump Derangement Syndrome. I mean he has it BAAAAD! One of the most deranged and thus foolish persons I have followed in media concerning Trump Derangement Syndrome. In fact I’m not a Twitter fan, but I followed Dan back in the day, but he got so woke, almost retarded and deranged over Trump I had to stop following him on Twitter.