Gerry Dee coming to Vanier Hall

Gerry Dee, better known to CBC viewers as Mr. D, will be at Vanier Hall on Jan. 30 with a stand-up comedy show.

As life changes, so does Gerry Dee’s comedy routine.

“When I started doing stand-up,” Dee says over the phone from Ontario, “teaching took front and centre. Now, there’s a lot about parenting.”

Dee will be at Vanier Hall on Jan. 30, bringing his act to Prince George for the first time.

“It’s always fun going to a place for the first time,” says Dee, whose CBC show, Mr. D, starts its fourth season on Jan. 20. “This show might be more of an introduction to Gerry Dee, whereas if I’m playing a city I’ve played before, I might change things up a bit.”

Dee says he had always been an entertainer and a story-teller growing up, but his first career was as a teacher.

“I was teaching for about five years before I did my first stand-up routine. It was something I wanted to try, and this was just the next step from what I had been doing for years.”

For those early routines, he stuck to what he knew best.

“Teaching was an easy source of stories. There might be something that had happened the day before in class that I could make a story out of.”

He started to attract notice across Canada for his comedy, and after another five years, he gave up teaching and turned to comedy full-time.

He took part in a season of Last Comic Standing on NBC, where he finished the third, the highest finish ever by a Canadian. That was when Canadian TV came calling.

“A guy at The Score knew my sports background, so he asked if I’d be interested in doing a segment. That lasted about six or seven years.”

The segments featured Dee interviewing sports personalities, and he really enjoyed it.

“I was getting the chance to meet some of my sports heroes. I still look at them as heroes.”

When he got the chance to do Mr. D, a series about a high-school teacher who tries to stay one step ahead of his students, the sports angle ended up tagging along.

“We’ve had some sports people guest star on the show, like Nathan McKinnon, Daniel Negreanu and Roberto Alomar. It’s always a lot of fun.”

And he says, even though he’s been out of teaching for a while, there is no shortage of story lines.

The tour he’s on now started with a few dates in December, than has a few in B.C., then picks up again about a month later.

“It’s nice to be at the point now in my career where I can dictate what events I go to. I get the chance to get back to Toronto and have some time with my family, then go out on the road again.”

Tickets for the Gerry Dee show on Jan. 30 at Vanier Hall are available at all Ticketmaster locations.