Product Description

His outrageous monologues made him a legend on tv's The Kids in the Hall.  Now he's back--with the life story only he could tell.

"My goal is not to shock and horrify, but to tell the truth.  And if that truth shocks and horrifies, well .  .  .  maybe you should get out more."

Spinning martini-fueled tales from his stool in his favorite gay bar, acid-tongued raconteur Buddy Cole became one of The Kids in the Hall's most beloved and enduring characters.  Now, brought to you by Kids star Scott Thompson with series writer Paul Bellini, Buddy Babylon takes you on a jaw-dropping tour of Buddy's flashy, trashy life, filled with tales of poignant, heart-wrenching romance, lurid sexual debauchery, the birth of synchronized swimming, and the ugly, never-before-revealed truth behind the Prettiest Feet in Quebec contest.

Join Marco (Buddy's cosmetically challenged sidekick), Cornygirl (the loyal corncob doll who rarely leaves his side), and a cast of unforgettably offbeat characters as Buddy blazes a trail across the deep Canadian forest, through the darkest corners of the big city, and back to his signature barstool.  From his humble beginnings as the twenty-third child of poor pig farmers, to his moment in the spotlight in the tabloids, Buddy Babylon lays bare a lifetime of madness, chaos, and things your mother warned you about--the essential Buddy Cole.


After Kids' six-year run on CBS, HBO, Comedy Central, and the CBC in Canada, Scott Thompson joined the cast of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Larry Sanders Show.  He is also a frequent guest on Politically Incorrect and The Late Show, and continues to do stand-up comedy, which includes performances in the character of Buddy Cole.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #324705 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-11
• Released on: 1998-05-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Kirkus Reviews
The purported autobiography of a favorite character of the influential (and now defunct) Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, by the actor who portrayed him and the troupes head writer. Charles Butterick ``Buddy'' Cole is a half-Scottish, half-Quebecois gay man raised in northern Quebec, who discovers his sexual identity and how to use it to his advantage at a very young age. His ability to seduce men at will, plus his innate theatrical talents, take him first to Toronto, where he immerses himself in the hardcore gay lifestyle, and then to Los Angeles, where he marries a lesbian named Tandy Cole (he takes her name, thus becoming Buddy Cole-Porter) and helps launch a television show. While there is much in Buddy Babylon to make gay readers and fans of the Kids in the Hall show laugh out loud, there is just as much that will go flying over the heads of those not familiar with the character of Buddy Cole. And members of the politically correct contingent of the gay community are likely to find much of what Thompson writes to be stereotype-affirming. They will have missed the pointBuddy Cole is meant to be a stereotype of the ``extreme'' gay lifestyle and, most probably, a character that typifies a certain aspect of the personality of the author, who is openly gay. Thompson does cross the line between funny and just plain silly at times, but this, again, is in keeping with the somewhat eccentric, audacious comedy style of the Kids troupe. (Dave Foley, a member of the group, has gone on to national success with the hit TV series News Radio.) Because of his openly gay stance, Thompson may have to wait to achieve Foley's success, but Buddy Babylon should keep Kids fans smiling, and impatiently awaiting his next move. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
By way of an introduction . . .

They say that the exact circumstances of a person's birth determine the course of the rest of his or her life. In my case, this was profoundly so. Let me explain. I was born on February 29, 1960, a leap year, thereby celebrating my birthday every four years. It was inevitable I would be a homosexual. Imagine. Even when I'm eighty, in some places I'll still be too young to drink.

To look at me, you'd think that I was hatched from a FabergÚ egg, the scion of a lost branch of one of the Royal Houses of Europe. For years, this is what I actually told people. But now that I've been given money to tell my life story, I feel the truth threatening to break through. No, dear reader, I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. More like a rusty fork. Now, before I launch you on the thrill ride that is my life, I must give you some background information. Think of it as foreplay. So lay back and spread your legs because some of this stuff is pretty hard to swallow. You'll need every hole you've got.

I was born on a pig farm in northern Quebec, Canada, in a little hamlet of two thousand people called St. Hubert sur la Lac, or St. Hubert on the Lake. As far as I know, there was never actually a Saint Hubert, but there was a St. Hubert's Chicken restaurant nearby, so that must have been where the name came from. I was the last of twenty-three children. I was christened Charles Butterick Cole, the Charles was after Charles Boyer, Maman's favourite actor, the Butterick after my paternal grandfather. Everyone called me Butterick though until one day my father shortened it to Buddy by mistake and it stuck. My parents, Angus Sean Cole, a lusty Scotsman who arrived in Quebec in 1920 at the age of fifteen, and my mother, Giselle Christianne Lavigne, the only child of Quebecois pig farmers, met at a cockfight in 1930 and married soon after. My family operated in both official languages. We spoke French to our mother, and Scottish to our father. From what I saw, they loved each other very much. That's probably why I turned out so stable. Maman doted on Papa's brusque Scottish virility, and Papa adored Maman, who was no looker. But she had a jolie  spirit, a good heart, and most importantly, came with a farm. People today are almost offended that my parents had such a big family, that they were somehow enviro-terrorists, but I figure if it took that many children to produce me, then it was worth the extra burden on the planet.

Our farm was at the end of a long gravel road about a mile from town, on the edge of a beautiful body of water called Lac d'Eau, or Water Lake. Directly opposite the shore was a tiny island about five hundred yards away. It was called L'Isle des Memoires, or Island of Memories. According to Indian legend, some Indian princess, Canada's Pocahontas, hit her head on a branch on the island and lost her memory, and we're supposed to remember her or something. I was always vague on the details, but it was a powerful ceremony held each year when the Indians drove up in their Jeeps with cases of beer for the occasion. Most of the population worked in the nearby copper mine. Many of my brothers ended up working there, but luckily I escaped that fate or this would have been a very different book. Although we were not impoverished, there were so many mouths to feed that for all intents and purposes I grew up poor. Luckily, I was not brought up religious. I think that was because my mother was Catholic and my father was Presbyterian, so rather than fight about it, it was just easier for us to be nothing. Let's face it, dear reader, my parents were too pooped for the Pope.

As I look back over the finished manuscript, I remember so many other stories that I should have told, and so many lovers who will hate me for not being mentioned (you know who you are, Henry), but this is what came out--a series of true events arranged in such a way as to entertain, inform, illuminate, and above all, make me look good. Who knows, if this thing is big, and I don't see how it can't be, maybe there will be a sequel. I know one thing, though: it had better be a much bigger advance. I practically starved on the miserable stipend my editor gave me this time. I know it's petty, but I can't help but gloat that Whoopi Goldberg's book, Book, bombed. She should have called it Whoopi Babylon. But this is not the time for bitterness. That's for the story.

Some of my tales are not for the fainthearted. They may contain adult situations and language that may not be appropriate for younger readers. In other words, it's rated NC-17, so if you are under the age of seventeen and are reading this book, you're busted. All I ask is that you don't just race ahead to the dirty parts, like I did with The Godfather.

You will notice throughout the text that I seemingly reproduce conversations perfectly that no normal human being could possibly remember. Well, I am not a normal human being. I have what is called "selective humourous photographic memory," which means I only remember the funny conversations. But rest assured, I remember them exactly. So, here goes. The truth and nothing but the truth. I hope it's not too boring.


Je Me Souviens (I Remember)

My big entrance

On the day that I was born, it was crisp and cold. A bitchy blizzard had just deposited a foot of snow on the ground and another foot was on the way. They say it was so cold that day the rooster refused to come out to announce sunup. Later, they found him frozen in his coop.

My sisters were all gathered in the big, warm farm kitchen preparing the noon meal. As the wind howled outside, whipping the snowdrifts into piles of constantly shifting meringue, the women of my family bustled about inside, the cold a nasty rumour they'd heard of but wouldn't acknowledge. The fire burning in the stone hearth cackled like the Hag of Newfoundland. My mother had just taken a huge pork tortiere out of the woodstove and set it on the table, a massive wooden monstrosity that stretched for more than ten feet, with built-in benches like a picnic table. It was capable of seating the entire brood, except for my sister Manon, who as they said in those days "wasn't quite right." She was about nine at the time and barely spoke, just sat on a stool in the corner of the kitchen playing an accordion all day long, which really must have been irritating. Luckily, by the time I was old enough to remember such things she had succumbed to rubella, at the tender age of thirteen.

Manon's accordion sang with longing and passion that day, and I imagine Maman humming to herself as she worked, the swell of her six-and-a-half-month pregnant belly barely noticeable under her considerable farmwife bulk. Maman was happy, they tell me, for she knew that I was to be her last child. The doctor said that at her age, forty-four, another child was inadvisable. They say that when she discovered she was pregnant once again, she declared "I don't care what it is. It can be a boy and a girl, for all I care." Little did she know.

It was a special day, because one of my brothers, Pierre, was about to turn ten. There was a family tradition in the Cole household where, at that age, the male children had to slaughter a pig with a sledgehammer while my father and the other boys watched. My father said he had brought this custom over from Scotland, but I think he just made it up.

The sight in the barn that day was a strange one. If you had been a shivering barn swallow hiding out in the rafters, you would have seen nine boys from the ages of eight to twenty-nine, wearing nothing but winter boots, kilts, and tams, all standing in a circle and drumming on their bare chests with their hands. In the middle of that circle, you would have seen a large sow snorting with fear in front of two little boys, one with a large sledgehammer. You would have seen my father, fifty-five at the time but still as strong as an ox, standing on a bale of hay in the corner of the barn playing a Scottish war tune on the bagpipes. He was shirtless, too, barrel-chested, with a sprawling red-gray beard and biblically fierce dark eyes. His nostrils shot steam into the air. Then you would have seen one little boy walk slowly over to another and take the sledgehammer from his hands. The boy with the hammer was my brother Gaston, who had become a man two years earlier, and the one taking the implement was my brother Pierre. Pierre brought the sledgehammer up over his head and I'm sure my father smiled, because nothing makes a Scot happier than horrible weather and the spilling of blood. The Cole boys began to drum harder and Angus's piping built in intensity. Death and manhood were imminent.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Maman was clutching her distended belly. But it was not time!  She called out to my sisters Fleur and Caresse to come to her. The pains came again, this time harder. I was impatient. Maman climbed atop the kitchen table with the help of the girls. She spread her legs, and straining to give me to the world, let out an awesome scream.

Back in the barn, my brother Pierre was still struggling to lift the massive sledgehammer. The pig had stopped squealing and looked up at him quietly. Suddenly the men heard the wailing coming from the kitchen. My father immediately put down his pipes and raced out of the barn, the boys following, struggling to keep up with the strides of my Braveheart father. The pig breathed a sigh of relief and trotted off to a corner of the barn to lie down in the straw. Pierre just stood there alone, holding the sledgehammer, confusion written all over his face. How do I know this, even though I wasn't there?  A little bird told me. Pierre knew that this was to be his only chance; that, according to tradition, once the ritual had been interrupted, it could never be restaged. He knew he would never be a man now, which reminds me, this is my story.

Back with the womenfolk, a tiny newborn with more ego t...