Kyle Lucey, a Toronto comedian performing at venues like Yuck Yuck’s and the Bovine, reveals how lockdowns devastated live comedy—clubs shut down, audiences vanished, and creative starvation set in. No comedian backed restrictions; Bill C-10 and C-36 passed during this chaos, while Ben Bankus defied mandates with park shows drawing near 1,000 fans via Instagram. Lucey dismisses "native genocide" narratives as a distraction, arguing comedians’ truth-sensing instinct exposed deeper lies about internet censorship. The episode underscores how comedy’s survival hinged on resistance and skepticism amid systemic deception. [Automatically generated summary]
How many reps could I do with this hand sanitizer?
Woo!
Both people are so cute.
I just want to say I love the top.
Both of them, all three!
Pretty good too.
You guys know how to milk this old cow.
Can I have some sushi?
you.
Welcome back to another episode of Andrew Says My My guest this week was the hilarious and constantly moving and fidgeting comedian Kyle Lucy.
You've seen him doing stand-ups in Toronto at Yuck Yuck's, the Bovine, and other places like the first post-lockdown shows with comedian Ben Bankus.
Kyle and I got right into it.
He's such a nice guy.
He was happy just to be given a French vanilla to drink.
Let's jump into it.
I'm feeling delicious and also nutritious, if I'm going to be completely honest with you, Andrew.
Thank you so much for having me on tonight.
And thank you for also giving me a delicious cup of French vanilla to start off my day.
Boy, oh boy.
This has really excited you to an unknown degree.
Dude, if it wasn't for Rebel News, I'd be in my apartment right now, in my bed, moaning and screaming at the stucco ceiling like I do.
I usually do that as a comedian.
You do that until about 5 p.m.
Then you roll over, write a few things on the old iPhone, get a call from your landlord saying the rent's due.
You mute it and then you get going and do your shows, baby girl.
Get it.
But now we're here.
I feel I'm with around a bunch of lights.
I'm looking at a TV right now with me on it.
You guys are going to CGI better muscles on me, I hope.
Yeah, we're going to do that synthol stuff where you inject oil into your arms.
Hell yeah, man.
Make me like Vin Diesel Groot or whatever.
Make me jacked in like a huge eight-foot tree.
We'll see what we can do.
Just superimpose a tree over him right now.
Gang gang.
I'll try to be serious a little bit.
You cannot be serious and I'm okay with it.
Okay.
I want to talk about first thing is the lockdowns.
You're from Toronto, yes?
I mean, I sort of grew up, I say Ontario.
I've lived like all over Ontario, southern Ontario, moved around a lot.
But yeah, like I've been living in Toronto for the past seven years now.
Lockdown, obviously.
I mean.
So when this all started, were you just like, were you like everybody, you and your peers, like, oh, this is going to be a few weeks.
We can't do shows.
Everything will be back to normal soon.
How did that, what did that first look like for somebody in your position?
And as time went on, what did that look like?
I mean, for me, like, I remember like, so I produced like my renegade show or whatever, right?
And before it was at the Bovine, it was at the Corner Comedy Club.
And I remember a comment coming in going like, oh, yeah, like, we're going to have to stop doing stand-up.
This COVID thing's coming from China.
And it's like, it's really fucked up.
I actually just got back from a Western Canada tour.
So I was flying a week before the lockdown.
I looked at this guy.
I was like, bro, this guy doesn't love stand-up.
He's a wuss.
You know, he wants to, he's got quit already in him.
And then literally the day after, lockdown.
And I didn't believe it.
You know, I still don't really believe it.
I was in denial for a bit.
But, you know, I was lucky enough to live with some really red pill cool people that just were like, you know what?
You know, this is all BS.
This is crazy.
And then I just started seeing the writing on the wall.
I mean, like, something that really bugged me too is like, I don't know if this is like messed up to say, but like, you know, Bill C-10 was passing, Bill C-36 was passing, and then everything that was in the news was native genocide, which I know is an atrocious thing, but we've known about the native genocide.
I've known about it for decades.
We've known about it for such a long time.
Why is that the only thing in the news?
Conveniently at the same time, we're about to lose our internet.
It's just so, I know when I'm being lied to.
It disrupts my frequency.
We all feel it.
Comedians are like truth, truth, truth, right?
So anytime the absence of truth is present, we could, I don't know, it's weird.
I could feel it.
And so it was terrible.
It was terrible, the lockdowns.
You know, a lot of my, you know, my comedian family, they lost their businesses.
You know, clubs went down, which are comedy clubs are like our homes.
They went under.
And then we lost our art.
And live comedy, you know, it's not like art, like painting where we could doodle at home.
It's not like music where I could play, I could jam in my garage with my homies or like you could produce an album, you know, like a DJ would or like a rap artist would.
Like we artistically starved for months.
So, you know, I don't know any comedian, left, right, whatever you are politically, that was pro-lockdown.
Live entertainment, especially stand-up comedy, we were decimated during this, which is why like we have to figure some stuff out, right?
Yeah, that was my next question.
Once all this stuff started to seem at least semi-permanent or it was lasting for six, eight, twelve months, what was the next move for you guys?
Did you get together with some people and say we have to start doing shows again or else we're going to go under?
Was there support for many people who ran big clubs?
What was it like when you guys started to say we need to start putting on shows again?
Ben Bankus was the first guy.
Ben Bankus, and he will never get the credit he deserves.
He started comedy again.
I think not just in Canada.
He inspired like people in America were sharing his show.
Big comics in New York and LA.
And they were like, oh my God, there's this guy who's doing this show in a park.