Trailer Park Boys fans in Lethbridge have a chance to have a cheeseburger with Randy this weekend. Pat Roach (Randy Bobandy) will be at The Place on Oct. 14 and says (in character, no less), nobody can mess with him having a good time and offering laughs in a world he says can be chaotic.
“It’s never ever too late in the year to have a Randy’s Cheeseburger Picnic party and you know I have had a few cheeseburger picnics of course in Sunnyvale and some of the people that live in Sunnyvale, the residents they mess with me and they try to make my cheeseburger picnics unsuccessful but when I am out on the road, they are successful good times,” he says, adding the show has jokes, games, songs and contests. “It’s a lot of fun and people seem to like to get away from some of the stresses in life and just have a little party with Randingo.”
The Cheeseburger Picnic show started after the death John Dunsworth, the man behind the Jim Lahey character, and Roach’s acting partner for more than a decade.
“We did a lot of plays and did a lot of show, Mr. Lahey and I, live performances across North America and then well he passed away and you know what, some people were saying ‘gee we miss you Randers and we would like to see you again’ and that’s when I came up with the idea to do cheeseburger picnic shows across North America,” Randy says. “We used to do a lot of plays at the Blandford Recreation Centre and that’s where he taught me to be a thespian because he even liked Shakespeare — to be or not to be and I tell him if there is a bee, let it out of the car because I don’t want to get stung — I don’t wear shirts.”
The cheeseburger tour has made its way to nearly every Canadian province and American state, with exceptions including the territories, Alaska and Hawaii. More than two decades since the show first aired, Trailer Park Boys Fans can be found around the world.
“They put it on different, what do you call it, streaming sites — it goes around the world so there’s people in like Iceland and Norway and places like far far away and they come up to me and they say ‘hey Randy, frig off’ but they are just joking,” Randy says. “I never thought it was going to go around the world so they could at least give me a few extra burgers.”
He says the fans have one thing in common when they come to his shows, they are happy to share a few “drinkeypoos” and have a good time.
“It’s hard to believe you know, you can come from any walk of life or have any job or whatnot and we just get people together and they may not normally get together but once you are at a trailer park Randy cheeseburger picnic, everyone just gets along and has fun. You could be a policeman, a handsome boy in blue, or you could be a convict and yet when you come to a show, everyone still seems to be happy.”
