The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Who Farted? ‘ Local actor has left his mark in more than 86 televison and nae) (= Ke) (=1) | have been a fan of Neil Crone since the days of CBC's ‘Wind at My Back’ in the mid-nineties. In 1997 | had the opportunity to share a stage with him during a writer's festival and when he agreed to meet me for this article | was delighted. There are very few people in Canadian entertainment who are as funny as ‘Fred Tupper’, Neil’s current charac- ter on ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’. | was sad to hear Neil no longer drove his yellow Volkswagen ‘Beetle’, with its faint smell of French fries in the air. You see, Neil had converted his car to run on vegetable oil, hence the odour.“‘l loved the concept,” Neil said.“l used to get free fuel at local restaurants and | helped the environment.” He smiled.“ did find | got hun- (05. MAY 64 FINAL FINAL.indd 21 Neil Crone S latest book will keep You +n stitches! gry a lot and constantly craved an order of fries.” Neil Crone was born at St. Mike’s hospital in Toronto and grew up in Agincourt. The second youngest of six kids, Neil had a good childhood in a family where his mother, a nurse, had met her husband when he was in a body cast as a result of an accident. Neil attended Sir John A. MacDonald Colle- giate, whose alumni boast the likes of Mike Myers, Deb McGrath and Eric McCormack, to name a few.While attending high school Neil worked as a landscaper, a busboy, a waiter and a roofer. As he put it,“*Great jobs to fall back on in case the comedy wasn’t working.” Although he was comedic in school it wasn’t until his last year of high school that he decided to attend Ryerson and enroll in the radio and television arts program. Unsure of where he was heading, Neil went to Teacher's College at Univer- sity of Toronto and became a high school teacher in King City, teaching drama and English. Like most of us at the end of our teens, we lack direction and Neil was no different. He at- tended bible school in upper New York State for two months and although he wanted to be in front of an audience, a career as a minister was not for him. His education and practical experience solidi- fied his longing to be an actor, more so a come- dian. He did a few rounds at Yuk Yuk’s and cut his teaching to half time allowing him to participate in auditions. One such effort with Second City proved successful and Neil was on the road to Please turn to page 22 FOCUS - MAY 2012 21 4-22 10:26 AM =