by Dan Lalande
Back in 2002, veteran stand-up comedian and sometime character actor Angelo Tsarouchas was informed by his agent that he didn’t get a part in the hit romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding. “What?!” responded an outraged Angelo. “How the hell did I not get a part in that movie? I’m three friggin’ words in the title!”
Today, the 60-year-old, Ottawa-raised comic is but a single word in that title: Greek. He may have lost close to two hundred pounds (at one point, he weighed well over twice that) but he has no desire to shed his roots. They not only remain a big part of his comic mix, but they’ve also spawned an act in their own right.
Angelo’s take on life as a second-generation Greek Canadian continues to be performed at community events around the world. In addition, it’s scored him some impressive hosting duties: the Greek America Foundation’s “Gabby” Awards at Carnegie Hall and, in his current home base, the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival.
“The act came together when I went to see some friends from Ottawa in a Greek band called Poseidon,” he recounts. “They blew a fuse and had to replace it. There were 500 Greek Canadians there, waiting impatiently. The band told me to just go out and do a set. I started talking about our shared experiences growing up in Canada. It went over gangbusters!” What followed was a CD called It’s All Greek to Me and a series of related YouTube videos. They weren’t just loved in Canada; they were appreciated by people of Greek heritage around the world. Next thing you know, Angelo was crisscrossing the globe entertaining crowds of kindred spirits. In Greece, they treated him like the latest God in their pantheon.
Buoyed by the act’s success, Angelo founded an arts and comedy festival in Dafni, the small village outside of Sparta that was his immigrant father’s hometown. For years, the elder Tsarouchas ran the Steer Burger Drive-In diner on Bank Street, south of Highway 31. While the hardworking immigrant did a good business, he would have marveled at the size of the crowds his son pulled in: over 2,000 people, wildly exceeding expectations.
Major stages in major cities are a long way from the dingy bowels of the old Penguin restaurant on Elgin Street and the original Ottawa Yuk Yuk’s franchise beneath the Beacon Arms Hotel, the places where Angelo got his start. By day, he was making a modest living as a travel agent. When that career and a complicated first marriage crumbled like feta, Angelo relocated to Toronto to devote himself to comedy full-time—this with a mere $900 to his name.
But he had a lot, comedically, to work with: his size, his heritage, his Teddy Bear personality.
He parlayed them into a well-liked set that allowed him to settle in North America’s showbiz capital. There, he started a second family with his charming wife Alina and a sweet-faced daughter, now ten. He’s away from them a lot: Angelo spends close to 300 days of the year on the road, whether he’s performing his regular act, the Greek variation, or with his BFF of 30 years, fellow Canadian Russell Peters. Unlike other comics, though, for whom a steady home is almost impossible to maintain, Angelo remains as steady as the rocks supporting Greece’s famous Meteora Monasteries.
His health, though, has suffered. “Thin may be in,” he once liked to say, “but fat is where it’s at!” It’s a battle cry that has since been silenced. While he still enjoys his guilty pleasures—when he plays Ottawa, it’s egg rolls from the Golden Palace and pizza from Colonnade—Angelo has got himself down to a manageable size, not easy in a life of planes, trains and automobiles. He’s not looking to lose much more, though, lest he shifts the shape that regularly lands him parts in movies—his credits include Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Cinderella Man—and that serves, still, as the epicentre of his act.
That act will soon be bringing him back to the States. Then, hopefully, Ottawa, which he visits every chance he’s afforded. He tours his old ‘hood in South Keys, drops in on old friends and performs at area clubs and festivals.
“My agent in L.A. called me up once with a gig,” Angelo shares. “He said, ‘You ever heard of a place called Ottawa?’ I just had to laugh!”
Others, thanks to Angelo, often have to too.
Caption:
See Angelo live in Montreal March 23 or Toronto May 10. Find tickets and details at Funnygreek.com.
