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Marke Driesschen TV personality sat down with “Our City Tonight” to discuss his journey in media.

Photo courtesy Marke Driesschen

Local TV personality started in radio

By Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins

Published 11:51 PDT, Fri March 31, 2023

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Our City Tonight (OCT) sat down with Marke Driesschen, local TV personality and CTV Morning Live’s weather presenter.

OCT: I’ve know this gentleman for many years, he delivers the weather every morning. Weather is a very hot topic in this city because it’s sun glasses or umbrellas and everything in between. Marke how many times do you get stopped on the street and they want to blame you for the weather?

Marke Driessche (MD): The best one of all, I was on my bicycle on the Burrard street bridge and a guy in a pick-up truck recognized me, slammed on the brakes and yelled “where’s the sunshine?”

OCT: You graduated from Seneca Radio College and worked at a radio station in Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario. Let’s talk about radio, I grew up in that era and radio was really something back then.

MD: I got turned onto radio in high school, first it was AM radio, of course, and later because I got a little older, it was FM rock radio, which was just starting out. I use to listen to it as a teenager while doing homework and thought I could do that: play records for four hours and talk. Later, I got to be proficient in theatre arts and performing, but my passion was to do radio, that’s what I wanted to do. I never even thought about doing television.

OCT: I, like you, have been doing television for a long time and love it, but I still get a charge when I step into a radio studio. You went from Sault Ste. Marie to Saskatoon, and you also worked in Winnipeg. At what point did TV come calling.

MD: Television came calling when I was in Saskatoon. I worked at this FM rock station which got sold to a different company, who turned it into the “Best of yesterday, today, and last week” … I lasted another couple years with them, but it was like a marriage that wasn’t working out.

I bounced around, out of work for a while, when a new television station opened, which is now Global Saskatoon. They asked me to work for them and one of the things they wanted me to do was the weather because I was filling in for the weather person who was going on maternity leave. So, I thought David Letterman started this way, let’s see what happens and I never looked back.

OCT: It’s interesting when I think about reporting weather on the prairies, cold, snow and then hot. Did you come to Vancouver to specifically do weather?

MD: I was in Winnipeg at the time and the news director at UTV saw my weather show in Winnipeg and offered me the job out in Vancouver.

OCT: You’ve done stand up comedy for almost as long as you’ve done radio. Is that something you still like to do?

MD: I do love it, but I don’t do it anymore mostly due to my schedule. I can’t wait around at a comedy club to get up on stage to perform at 11:15 at night when I have to get up at 3:30 a.m. to go to the studio. I really love doing stand up and I really love doing improv. If you can make a whole room full of strangers laugh, not at you but at what you’re saying, that feels incredible.

OCT: You have interviewed a lot of celebrities over the years, you interviewed someone that I envy, John Cleese a bunch of times. Please talk about what it was like to interview a sharp, sarcastic comedic guy like him.

MD: The first time, it was extremely intimidating. He was on tour to do the Unique Lives and Experiences series, and it was supposed to be his daughter doing the question-and-answer segment. But then it turned out last minute to be me. I was completely surprised and didn’t know what to expect.

I knew he was very sharp and could be a little bit acerbic as well. I met him at the sound check and the stage manager came over and introduced us. John said to me, “Marke one thing to remember is there’s no such thing as making a mistake. We’re just going to have a lot of fun and we’ll see whatever happens and we’ll just enjoy ourselves.” That just put me at ease right away, and after that, it was so much fun.

OCT: I think too when they sense you know what you are talking about in terms of their career it is much better. Is there anyone left that you’d like to interview?

MD: I’d love to talk to Jerry Seinfeld, and in the music world, I would love to talk to Dave Grohl.

OCT: He gets up early in the morning folks, I commend you Marke for doing it all these years, delivering to us the weather every morning.

For the interview in full go to richmondsentinel.ca/videos