After promoting Patrick Brown's appearance on the Jerry Agar show for the past 24 hours, the would-be-re-leader of the P.C. Party suddenly and mysteriously dropped out on CFRB with less than 2 minutes notice. The station has been hyping this endlessly and there's no doubt Agar would have been at least a somewhat sympathetic ear.

At first, they said he'd be live. Then he would be appearing by phone only. And then he didn't bother to come on at all. It doesn't look good for Brown to do this without any apparent reason and knowing how much they've been building up to it for the past day. I wonder if the fact that 'RB is owned by Bell (which also controls CTV, the organization Brown is threatening to sue) has anything to do with it. 

But talk about throwing a hand grenade into a show. He set aside an entire half hour of airtime for this. It's hard to recover from that, and listening to Agar's reaction, it's clear he's not happy. When Brown's press secretary came on and said it was a "scheduling problem" and "human error," he publicly said he didn't believe her, given all the hype that surrounded his appearance. Despite her apology, it degenerated into a confrontation between Agar and Brown's press flak, who accused him of spreading "fake news" and being "unprofessional" as he openly mused that maybe the former leader had already been rejected from running and tried to arrange for a rescheduling.  

At several points, Agar's producer also came on air, noting they had his promise of showing up in writing. It was not a pretty confrontation, but boy, was it entertaining radio, with a peek behind the scenes you rarely get to hear. (Maybe almost as good as if Brown had actually shown up.) 

When I was doing a talk show a long time ago, there was only one last minute cancellation I ever had, a person I couldn't reach by phone despite significant promises he'd be there. Believe it or not, it was Henny Youngman. 

Take my guest - please.