Straight Goods: What do you think of the Web, Mary?

MARY WALSH: My son's on it all the time, but whey I tried it was like you couldn't see anything… All this shit about e-commerce and e-Bay and ebola, all the e-stuff… you know, you couldn't see anything... you couldn't go shopping… it would be great for buying books, I suppose, or records or something, but if you're buying a sweater…
  You can't touch it or really see it, like the pictures are really rotten…
  My character Dakey Dunn was trying to get a site, you know, Dakey.com, and there was so much bullshit to it that I was thinking I'd just get cups with string and it would be easier if I got a cup for me and a cup for every viewer in Canada then I could actually do that faster than I could get online…
 

I'm thinking of not having surgery and then everybody else will be having surgery they'll need somebody to play the old bags, and I've been playing the old bags since I was about 18 so I'll be really good at it

SG: Is 22 Minutes going to run forever like we hope?

MARY WALSH: Oh, I suppose… Salter Street has signed an agreement with the CBC for another 2 years, I think, not that they ever discuss that sort of thing with us… but I think that I read in the paper or something. Now we've gotten to that point, we've gotten to an odd point, all of us, creative people, have all gotten to that odd point where we stop threatening to quit every year?
  It's like five years ago, I definitely was thinking, oh my, this is too much, now we've already gone on. Four years ago I was definitely quitting, and you know, Rick did quit for awhile and then he came back, unheard of, I think. Did you ever hear of anybody doing that before?

SG: Lucky thing you didn't kill him off the series

MARY WALSH: So now we're all at that point where we're all enjoying it in some bizarre way so there must be something really wrong - you know that, there's something really wrong because we're all having a good time and enjoying it and feeling lucky that we're in the series.
 

Mary Walsh of the CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes surrounded by two of her biggest fans: Straight Goods editor Susan Sperling and publisher Ish Theilheimer

SG: Two competing visions of Canadian comedy icons - Martin Short strikes it big in Hollywood and Andrea Martin ends up hawking Bounty paper towels on TV after the retirement of Rhoda's mother - what do you see for yourself after 22 Minutes… any paper towels in your future?

MARY WALSH: Gosh, yeah, Andrea Martin is so good, and what about… all those guys were so good and what about? At least Martin Short is actually getting to do stuff, but like Dave Thomas who's so good and then he's down there being somebody's sidekick, you know what I mean… all those enormously talented people never got to do anything, Catherine O'Hara in Home Alone…
  Catherine O'Hara, who's my hero, heroine, why do you say that, hero will do… and then you know, she does those straight things and stuff and I know that she's a star but it just sort of seems like she can do so much and she gets so little opportunities and the band is so narrow.
  I don't know what I'll be doing. I'm getting sort of old… unless, I'm thinking of not having surgery and then everybody else will be having surgery they'll need somebody to play the old bags, and I've been playing the old bags since I was about 18 so I'll be really good at it, plus I'll look, you know what I mean, there has to be somebody who ages in some kind of reasonably… unless everybody stops getting surgery and then they don't need anybody. But I might have a sort of Hollywood career when I'm about 75, I could play all the old bags… other than that, I don't' see any American career for myself.
  I'm sort of thinking about, just, uh, I don't know, I've got a number of things on the go. I want more, I want world domination, of course, not Bounty towels, nothing short of world domination will settle me.

SG: Since we're a consumer watchdog, we have to ask, what's your favourite appliance?

MARY WALSH: My favourite appliance? Well, one thing that I didn't think that I'd ever like, that I really thought was a stupid appliance, was a dishwasher. Until I got one, and then I, because it seemed to me, why not just wash them? You've got to rinse them, and then you've got to stack them in this stupid thing, and take them out - it seemed like a lot of work but it was the most under-rated - by me - appliance. I love my dishwasher now.
  But I don't love it on a daily basis.

Now see what Mary has to say about politicians and our health care system.