Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Louie and Me, or Learning to Be Gracious


I'm on my way to do a cooking segment on one of my favorite shows, Twin Cities Live, and I get the call that I'll be cooking with Louie Anderson instead of the normal host.  My first thought is that I could have made something with onions (John, the normal host, doesn't like onions) but my second thought was, "How fun."  Little did I know I was about to learn so much.


Louie would be the third celebrity I would cook with in 3 months.  Cooking with Kathie Lee and Steve Schrippa had it's moments (here's my experience on the Today Show) so I didn't know what to expect from Louie.  He's won Emmy's, performed all over the world, had numerous shows, and been doing this a long, long time.


First thing I notice about Louie is that he hangs around back stage while we're setting up and he's friendly.  I like that.  While we cook, he's funny but doesn't insult my food the way previous celebs have.  He adds a lot to the segment while still letting me show my recipe. He's also the same off camera as he was on.  I like that a lot.


But the lessons came afterwards.  Once we were done he came up to me and told me I did a good job and that he enjoyed the segment.  I, at best, was only OK so he was nice to approach me and say that. He certainly didn't need to, he could have just headed back to his dressing room and left. But he made the effort to find me and compliment me.


Back stage there were some of the crew that were taking pictures with him, something I was hoping I could do.  I was hanging around like a 3rd grader who wants to get in to the kick ball game but is too shy to ask. Rather than wait for me, HE calls me over and says he'd like a picture with ME.  This was just a way to save me the embarrassment of asking him.  What a total class act thing to do.  I was so impressed.


For someone who's had such success in the industry and to still be so nice to a guy from Eden Prairie, I'm just sayin'. Wow.


Here's the link to our segment.


http://twincitieslive.com/article/stories/S1145918.shtml?cat=10741


Rob Barrett

Cooking for Dads

No comments:

Post a Comment