If you ask even a casual fan of The Kids In The Hall what the comedy troupe’s most well known and popular sketches are, a few immediately come to mind: Head Crusher, “Citizen Cane,” the Chicken Lady, “These Are The Daves I Know,” and, of course, “Girl Drink Drunk.” The latter paints a cautionary tale of a man who descends into the dark depths of alcoholism after his love of fruity umbrella drinks is awakened.
The Kids have always excelled when it comes to the wry way they tackle dark subjects like alcoholism, depression, and death; and no better example of this is “Girl Drink Drunk.” And as it turns out, the sketch has an equally dark backstory, as Kevin McDonald recently revealed in the The A.V. Club‘s “11 Questions” column. The question at hand involved which “embarrassing phase” McDonald had gone through, which prompted him into admitting that he didn’t have a girlfriend until he was 23 and didn’t have his first drink until he was 27, which sets the stage for the origin of the sketch.
It all started at a live show in Calgary — before the troupe landing their TV show — that bombed in part because Bruce McCulloch was having an off night, which may or may not have been attributed to his whole family being in attendance. And things only went downhill from there.
After the show, we were all sitting in the green room talking about how bad the show was. It was unspoken, but we all knew that Bruce was awful. He comes to us and says, “I’ve never been more disappointed in the troupe.” Really, Bruce? You had the worst night I’ve ever seen a comedian have. “I’ve never been more disappointed in the troupe.” Not that I suffer from depression, but that started to depress me.
Mark took me out, and for some reason, the only thing that was open that night was a gay bar by our hotel. It was Calgary, which is a cowboy town, and there was only one man in the bar, and he had a cowboy hat. Every now and then, he said, “This is my last drink, and then I’m going to go to my room and kill myself!” Which depressed me more. Mark said, “This is it. This is the night you have your first drink.” And then he said the words that became famous—minorly famous—in our sketch: “Have a margarita. You’ll like it. It tastes just like candy.”
Even if it didn’t birth a wildly popular piece of sketch comedy, that’s still a pretty great first drink story. You can read his entire interview, which is all pretty good, here, or watch “Girl Drink Drunk” for the fifth or 500th time (we promise we won’t tell) below.
(Via The A.V. Club)
