The Tart and the Hussy went purple this time!  Hello Red Carpet!

On Monday night I took to the town!  Hog Town!  Toronto! Lauren and I, colour coordinated in shiny purple(blueberry tart perhaps?) hit the red carpet at the premiere screening of the CBC television series Mr. D. and Republic of Doyle.  How we were lucky enough to get into this exclusive, by invitation only event, is a story on to itself.  Let's just say, if you want something badly enough, and expect it will happen, it will.  Some call it luck.  I think it is magic!

And boy was it a star studded event!  We hit the red carpet at approximately 7pm for our photo op which can be seen on the CBC live Face Book page.  Then we took it upon ourselves to enjoy every last moment.

Instead of going in the theatre like good little guests we made the choice to stay with the celebrities and CBC executives, casts and crews and this afforded us the opportunity to stand at the edge of the red carpet and photograph all of the comings and goings of the CBC stars.  We saw and met many of the most popular Canadians from the best television shows on the air today.

Familiar faces surrounded us as the likes of Wes Williams, Anne-Marie Mediwake, Dwight Drummond, Zaib Shaikh  and Sitara Hewitt strolled around, chatting and taking photos.  It seemed that they were all fans of each other as Blackberries and iPhone flashed capturing this exclusive event for their individual twitters and face book pages!

Lauren and I were there specifically in support of and to meet all of the members of the cast of Republic of Doyle.  I had a lovely chat to the very talented Allan Hawco who looked at me and said, "I knows you!"  and I compared rings with the funny, friendly and omg gorgeous Lynda Boyd who plays Rose on the series.  We have a love of bling in common!

I met Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea for the first time.  You read that right, the FIRST time.  For those who don't know, I used to travel to Great Big Sea shows in places like Rochester, Guelph, Toronto, Ann Arbor, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Mount Pearl, well the list goes on!  But I had never met any of the band members.  I did speak to Sean McCann at his concert in Waterloo last May and now, fter nearly 40 shows where I was in the front row for all but one of them(I was in the second row), I met Alan Doyle.  He had earlier given me one of those "I knows you from somewhere but don't know where" looks, so I finally introduced myself to the him.  He was very sweet, we grabbed a picture and had a little chat about his foray into acting in the past few years (Robin Hood with Russell Crowe and Republic of Doyle).

I took over one a hundred pictures, grabbed a few videos and then we watched the shows inside the theatre. They were both, seriously laugh out loud comedy and I highly recommend the shows but only if you have a sense of humour, love to laugh and have fun and are intelligent enough to get the jokes.  The episode of Mr. D. has a decidedly silly and distinctly Canadian edge that had me in stitches and Republic of Doyle is more clever and well written than ever, with a great mystery, brilliant acting(Russell Crowe..duh) and comedic one-lines  that made me giggle hours later.  If you didn't catch it last night when it aired go to CBC today and catch the replay online.  One zinger by Mark O'Brien(Des) still makes me smile and now I'm wary of the English.

We managed to stay out of trouble, drank water, ate popcorn, did not drool(with all the gorgeous men in the room I consider that a victory) or trip on the red carpet!

I am an ordinary person but sometimes I marvel at the extraordinary opportunities that life throws my way.  There were about a dozen people at this event out of 400  not affiliated with the CBC or the shows that were screened.  I was one of them.  How does that happen?  Magic.

But that is nothing compared to my next trick.  Stay tuned.  Interesting things are brewing for this Tart!  A huge big event, the biggest and most original one yet!  Yes, I am being cryptic, yes I am a tease..what else would you expect from a tart?




The Cast of Republic of Doyle!

CBC megastar and all around silly guy..posing for me..Rick Mercer

After almost 40 Great Big Sea shows in the late nineties I finally meet Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea..he  smelled good.

He might bat for the other team but they still make a cute couple!  

What a great sport!  That's his "Take the friggin' picture" face.


Great fun!  Nice to meet the famous Rick Mercer finally.

With the beautiful Lauren Hammersley





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