Snowed In’s Craig Campbell feels the pain

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      As the Snowed In Comedy Tour winds its way through its month-long jaunt to the top ski hills in Western Canada, the aches and pains are starting to take their toll.

      Craig Campbell, the U.K.–based standup who helped conceive the tour with Dan Quinn, has been on all seven of the annual events. He and three fellow comedians spend their days screaming down mountains and their nights telling jokes. It’s the ultimate working vacation, but it’s exhausting—even if the veteran knows how to get some rest without losing face with his fellow performers.

      “I very sneakily and strategically set this [interview] up for 11 o’clock on a Tuesday, knowing that I couldn’t go out for the morning shift of snowboarding,” he said on the phone from Whistler. “You kind of look for little islands of respite in the tour just because it is hard.”

      Living in England for the past 15 years, Campbell has become an international act. He was at a gig in the French Alps when the idea was formed for Snowed In.

      “We just thought, ‘This is utterly insane that we’re in a ski resort in France, entertaining what to us is a foreign audience, when Whistler exists and Sun Peaks exists and Big White exists,’ ” he says. “We were just like, ‘Why does this not happen in our land?’ This is God’s country. We’re spoiled with space, with environment, with beauty of scenery, with taste of beer. Why wouldn’t the friendliest—reputedly—people on the planet also be some of the best comedy audiences on the planet?”

      As much as he looks forward to his yearly trip back home (the Calgary native spent about five years in Vancouver off and on, from the late ’80s through late ’90s), the hirsute mountain man also dreads it just a bit.

      “I feel anxiety prior to it,” he says. “In December I know the lack of sleep I’m going to be dealing with. There are a lot of early mornings and late nights back to back to back to back to back. Any comic would tell you if you were just doing shows, it would take the energy out of you.”

      And then there’s the transportation. The fearless four soldier on through horrendous conditions in their SUV. “You can’t make good time, you’re on full alert the entire time, really on edge to not put the vehicle in the ditch,” he says. “And that, of course, is stressful. It takes a lot out of you.”

      But it’s the kind of stress he wants to handle himself. No newbie drivers need apply. “I’m very comfortable with my driving skills and I have trouble acquiescing in a snowstorm to anybody other than myself,” he says. “As soon as the weather goes bad, it’s like, ‘You’re not going to learn to drive on the Crowsnest [Pass], I’m afraid, in a whiteout. Pull over and get out your crossword puzzles or whatever you’re going to do. No offence, but I’m not going to be part of your last lesson of life just because you’d really like to see how it works.’ ”

      Campbell has no idea how long his body will be able to withstand the rigours. In October, he was diagnosed with early-onset osteoarthritis.

      “I’m fighting against reality and inflammation and pain,” he says. “How long can you do something that is making you wince and walk funny?”

      But it’s not going to stop him from a two-week hike to the base of Mount Everest this October. There, he’ll be part of a charity show with Stewart Francis, Tommy Tiernan, Rhys Darby, Ardal O’Hanlon, and Vancouver’s Glenn Wool.

      “I’m almost tears-in-my-eyes telling you about it because it’s going to be the most intense thing I can imagine doing,” he says. “The reason I was even asked to be a part of this bill to Everest is because my reputation on the circuit is that of an adventure comedian. So you’re speaking to an adventure comedian who has a pretty horrific diagnosis of nonadventure ahead of him. What does an adventure comedian do when he can’t adventure anymore? This is my predicament. But I’ve got a big bag of painkillers and anti-inflammatories and I’m going to do it.”

      The Snowed In Comedy Tour, featuring Craig Campbell, Paul Myrehaug, Pete Zedlacher, and Dan Quinn, winds down at the Vogue Theatre on Saturday (February 7).

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