{"id":575994,"date":"2026-04-01T21:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/575994\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:48:11","slug":"mary-walsh-looks-back-at-ambushing-canadian-politicians-including-the-time-she-screwed-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/575994\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Walsh looks back at ambushing Canadian politicians, including the time she ‘screwed up’"},"content":{"rendered":"

LISTEN | Mary Walsh’s full interview with Matt Galloway:<\/p>\n

The Current24:0622 Minutes\u2019 Mary Walsh on life\u2019s highs and lows<\/p>\n

As her alter ego Marg Delahunty, comedian Mary Walsh spent years fearlessly ambushing Canadian politicians, skewering them with barbs and insults phrased as friendly advice.<\/p>\n

But for Walsh, every ambush was always \u201cdeeply, deeply terrifying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou only had one shot. It wasn’t like you could do it again,\u201d said Walsh, who played the fictional Delahunty on CBC satirical news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes.<\/p>\n

Walsh would turn up to press briefings sporting large glasses and often violent shades of blush and eye shadow. She wore a breastplate and mini skirt \u2014 inspired by the hit 90s TV show Xena: Warrior Princess \u2014 and waited to pounce as politicians took questions from journalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody else was dressed appropriately. And I was there in a few bits of red felt with gold glue around my breasts, brandishing a plastic sword from Toys \u201cR\u201d Us,” she told The Current\u2019s Matt Galloway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would just feel so embarrassed and ashamed. I would think, ‘Well, shag it. I’ve got nothing to lose, certainly not any shred of human dignity.\u2019 And you know, I’d just go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH | The best of Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior:\"\"<\/p>\n

Web Exclusive: Marg Delahunty’s Greatest Hits<\/p>\n

Greatest hits of the fearless Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior (Mary Walsh) for 22 Minutes.<\/p>\n

Walsh looks back at her life and career in a new collection of essays, Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet: A Memoir in Pieces. The book explores her highs and lows, from how poor health affected her childhood in St. John\u2019s, N.L., to the happiness she\u2019s found as she\u2019s gotten older.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She helped put Newfoundland humour on the map with the comedy troupe Codco<\/a>, before creating 22 Minutes in the early \u201890s. The long-running series featured Walsh as beloved characters like masculinity correspondent Dakey Dunn and advice-dispensing octogenarian Mrs. Eulalia.<\/p>\n

Walsh wanted 22 Minutes to be a show that could \u201cspeak truth to power,\u201d and created Delahunty as a way to \u201clet the people in charge know what the people thought.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that we could do that by speaking directly to politicians,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Like ‘kissing a fence post’<\/p>\n

One of Walsh\u2019s most famous ambushes was when she ended up kissing Stephen Harper, when he was running to become leader of the newly formed Conservative Party of Canada in 2004.<\/p>\n

\"AWalsh kisses Stephen Harper in Ottawa in 2004. (Chris Wattie\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

Walsh stopped Harper at an event in Ottawa and told him he\u2019d never become prime minister if he insisted on being \u201cagainst everything,\u201d and he should find something to support, to embrace.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmbrace me!\u201d she cried \u2014 and promptly kissed Harper on the lips when he obliged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking back now, she said it was like \u201ckissing a fence post.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cVery, very bad kisser \u2026 whatever you think of Stephen Harper, he’s definitely not a good kisser,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There were ambushes where she admits she \u201cscrewed up,\u201d in particular when she approached Ralph Klein, then-premier of Alberta, inside the legislature in Edmonton. Walsh was dressed as a cowgirl, complete with toy cap guns that bang when fired. She joked to Klein’s face that his fiscal policy and budget cutting made him worse than Scrooge or any of “the greatest villains in literature.”<\/p>\n

She said Klein responded with a remark that \u201cwasn’t very nice,\u201d and in a moment of panic, she froze and couldn\u2019t think of what to say next.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just in a desperate state and didn’t think and took out the cap guns and started banging them off in the middle of the legislature,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cConservative papers went mad and they were right; I should never have done that. But it did prove to me that you must not have a gun at hand, because if things go wrong, you will use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AWalsh looks back at her life and career in a new collection of essays, Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet: A Memoir in Pieces. (Dave Howells; HarperCollins Canada)<\/p>\n

In the book, she writes that there was one politician she was always happy to accost: former prime minister Jean Chr\u00e9tien.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe seemed to be so comfortable in his own skin, and he was so funny,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt reassured that, even if I did mess up, we\u2019d still end up taking a great piece back to Halifax with us. Prime Minister Chr\u00e9tien would save the day no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH | Drawing inspiration from a warrior princess:\"\"<\/p>\n

How Xena inspired Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior<\/p>\n

Lucy Lawless inspired people around the world as Xena, Warrior Princess. The cult \u201890s TV show also prompted comedian Mary Walsh to accost politicians as her own creation: Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior.Would Delahunty get so close today?<\/p>\n

Walsh doesn\u2019t know if Delahunty would have the same success today as she did in her heyday in the \u201890s and 2000s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Edmonton, when we came to the legislature, all the security said was, \u2018Close the door, we’re not heating Edmonton,\u2019\u201d she remembers.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut things changed radically with 9\/11 \u2026 and the world has moved to politicians simply saying what it is that they are rehearsed to say, and nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n

She sometimes wonders if poking fun at politicians didn\u2019t have the effect she intended.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you think, did we contribute to the dark side where politics is just a joke?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDid we make things too funny?\u201d she wondered, before laughing and adding, \u201cNo, Mary, you definitely did not make things too funny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LISTEN | Mary Walsh’s full interview with Matt Galloway: The Current24:0622 Minutes\u2019 Mary Walsh on life\u2019s highs and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-575994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}