Talking to Canadians
A Memoir
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Rick Mercer chronicles, satirizes, and ultimately celebrates all that is great and irreverent about this country. A national #1 bestselling author and the Governor General’s Award-winner for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Mercer is our most popular comic: a political satirist who knows exactly what matters to regular Canadians and what makes them laugh. The beloved comic won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his new memoir Talking to Canadians, in which he charts his meteoric rise to TV fame in a series of riveting, hilarious, and unforgettable anecdotes and behind-the-scenes revelations from his decades-long career.
Rick Mercer’s top-rated, award-winning CBC show, The Rick Mercer Report, routinely trampled even its American competitors in the ratings. The show featured Mercer’s trademark rants, satirical newscasts, commercial parodies, and comic encounters with famous Canadians. More than any other comedian (or journalist for that matter), he talks to Canadian newsmakers with a refreshing candour, and is uniquely able to spin topical hilarity from the people and things deeply embedded in the national consciousness. Mercer has won over 25 Gemini Awards for The Rick Mercer Report, Made in Canada, and This Hour has 22 Minutes. He also starred in Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans, which attracted attention across North America, was watched by millions, and remains the highest-rated comedy special in Canadian history.
Mercer won the 2022 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his memoir Talking to Canadians, in which he tells his own story for the first time—with the same biting wit that endeared him to the nation. It has been described by legendary author Margaret Atwood as a “funny, pitfall-strewn, no-holds-barred memoir from the ranting TV uproarist, edge-walker, envelope-pusher, and pot-stirrer.”
His earlier book, Rick Mercer Final Report, a #1 Toronto Star and Globe and Mail bestseller, brought together never-before-published rants from the last five seasons of his show, plus a selection of the very best rants from earlier years. Throughout the book, in a series of brilliant essays, Mercer shares his hilarious, moving, and at times hair-raising memories from the course of the show. Mercer is also the author of four national bestsellers, Rick Mercer Final Report, Streeters, The Rick Mercer Report: The Book, and A Nation Worth Ranting About.
In 2019, Mercer won the Governor General’s Award for lifetime achievement, which recognizes artists who have made an indelible contribution to Canada and the world’s cultural life. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.