Mike Bullard, right, laughs with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien during an episode of Open Mike with Mike Bullard in Toronto in 2001.FRANK GUNN/The Canadian Press
One of the late comedian Mike Bullard’s first jobs was an installer with Bell Canada. The thing about comics and telephone linemen is that they both work their way up one rung at a time, and when they fall, they fall hard.
News of Bullard’s death was made public on Sunday. A coroner is investigating the exact cause of death. The comedian, 67, lived alone and did have health problems.
He was best known as the host of the Gemini Award-winning Open Mike with Mike Bullard on CTV from 1997 to 2003. The six-season national late-night run represented a major achievement in a country whose viewers historically tuned into U.S. talks shows after dark.
Following Bullard’s death, more than one social-media commentator referred to him as Canada’s Johnny Carson. He wasn’t that. Carson was droll, dapper and puckish; Bullard had a rough-cut charisma and a chummy beer-hall amiability. More importantly, where Carson held immense power at NBC, Bullard had no network leverage at all.
After a dispute with CTV management over programming and with his network contract expired, he took the show to Global Television. The rebranded The Mike Bullard Show was cancelled after a three-month run. CTV had replaced Bullard with the nightly U.S. news satire The Daily Show, which trounced The Mike Bullard Show in the ratings.
“I think Mike made some really, really bad decisions in his career,” said Mark Breslin, co-founder of the Yuk Yuk’s comedy chain. “Leaving CTV was one of them – in fact, the key one.”
In a 2003 article in the Toronto Star, Bullard publicly ranted against CTV as a “dysfunctional” network. In the same story, his producer, John Brunton, said that Bullard’s “bitterness is consistent with his bitterness over life in general. … I don’t understand how he thinks his position of bitterness, in any way, is going to help him in his career.”
At both CTV and Global, Bullard promoted and booked Canadian talent to a fault. His guests ran the gamut, from former prime minister Jean Chrétien to comedian Tom Green, who once infamously brought in a raccoon carcass.
Announcing the show’s cancellation in 2004, Global senior vice-president Doug Hoover sent out a press statement that wished Bullard “much-deserved success in the future.” Further TV fame did not happen, and likely never stood a chance. He had burned bridges at CTV, was fired by Global, and in no way was the obstinate Bullard built for the CBC.
He did go on to revive his stand-up career. And from 2010 to 2016, he hosted Beyond the Mic with Mike Bullard on Newstalk 1010 in Toronto.
In 2016, however, Bullard was charged with criminal harassment, obstruction of justice and breaching conditions to stay away from a former girlfriend, broadcaster Cynthia Mulligan.
In 2018, he pleaded guilty to making harassing phone calls to Mulligan after their relationship had ended and breaching his bail. That same year, Mulligan told Chatelaine magazine that Bullard “was like two different people.”
As a stand-up comedian, he was renowned for his off-the-cuff interactions with audience members. That flair for being quick on his feet on stage translated well to his radio work. Newstalk 1010 host Jim Richards recalled sharing a booth with Bullard each day as their shifts crossed over.
“For nine minutes I would blindly walk into the craziest aimless scattered brilliant genius seat of the pants segment on the dial,” Richards posted on X. “His flare for colouring outside the lines and wreaking havoc was what made him so remarkably unique.”
Reactions to his death are polarized. The nice guy to some struck others as difficult, troubled and not one to take accountability for his actions. Bullard was his own worst enemy; his feuds were typically one-sided.
In a 2023 Toronto Star profile that noted Bullard’s charity work in Ukraine, writer Jeremy Nuttall wrote that the comedian did not cut a repentant figure when talking about the criminal harassment case: “His tone becomes tense and stern, sometimes drifting into anger. He says he was treated unfairly by the media, public and the prosecutors. The criminal convictions and the attendant scandal took a toll on his career, he says.”
CBC Television talk show host George Stroumboulopoulos once told the comedian that Open Mike with Mike Bullard had “blazed a trail.” Bullard told him to save the praise and, instead, take a week off and give him the guest host job.
It was a joke, but not really.