
brioux.tv: the podcast
Hosted by veteran TV columnist Bill Brioux. Each week, join in on an outspoken conversation with the actors, executives, and insiders that make the television industry pop. In each edition, Bill invites his guests to talk business, give up some great stories, and make it personal. Plus laughs.
brioux.tv: the podcast
Publicity legend Bill Vigars
As a newspaper boy, Bill Vigars once almost set a school on fire -- which, in a bizarre way, eventually led to him running half-way across Canada with Terry Fox.
That's just one of the amazing true tales you'll hear from a master storyteller who truly has a million of 'em.
When I first met Bill, in the late '80s, he was the publicist for Night Heat, a CTV cop show that shot on an overnight schedule. It starred Scott Hylands and Jeff Wincott and was a rare, early example of a Canada-US cross border success, airing in both late night and prime time on the CBS schedule.
That series was co-produced by Sonny Grosso, one of the legendary NYPD cops whose multi-million dollar heroin bust inspired the movie "The French Connection." Vigars once pulled a toy gun on Grosso and lived to tell about it.
He tells other stories, too, about Donald Sutherland, Peter O'Toole, Kyra Sedgwick, David Foster and many others -- including Robert Duval, who played Vigars in a movie!
We also talk about a fundraising effort currently underway on behalf of Hylands, an actor's actor in need after a challenging diagnosis. Vigars, still very involved in the Terry Fox Foundation, has always been ready and eager to help spread the word for a friend or a cause.