Topic: Joe Flaherty

Joe Flaherty (born June 21, 1941) is an American-Canadian comedian. He is best known for his work on the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV, from 1976 to 1984. He is currently a judge on The Second City's Next Comedy Legend.

Flaherty was born Joseph O'Flaherty in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but moved to Chicago where he started his comedy career with the Second City Theater as Joe O'Flaherty. After seven years in Chicago, he moved to Toronto, Ontario to help establish the Toronto Second City theatre troupe. During those years, he was one of the original writer/performers on SCTV, where he spent eight years on the show, playing such characters as Big Jim McBob (of Farm Film Report fame), Count Floyd/Floyd Robertson ( A bit of SCTV trivia here: Count Floyd, who was SCTV news anchorman Floyd Robertson in a vampire costume and cheesy make-up, is based on Bill Cardille, whom Joe Flaherty watched as a kid growing up in Pittsburgh. Cardille did the weather for the local NBC station, and on weekends hosted the studio wrestling matches and as "Chilly Billy" hosted the Saturday night horror feature), and station owner/manager Guy Caballero who goes around in a wheelchair simply for the respect therein.

Other memorable Flaherty characterizations included emotional talk show host Sammy Maudlin, seedy saxophonist-private eye Vic Apeggio, aggressive elocution lecturer Norman Gorman, myopic public television host Hugh Betcha and "crazy as a snake" ex-convict Rocco.