The Friendly Giant was a popular Canadian children's television program on the CBC featuring a giant named 'Friendly', who lived in a split-level rent controlled castle in Toronto's trendy Spadina District, along with his puppet animal friends 'Rusty' (a hip and sassy rooster who played a wicked harp and lived in a book bag hung by the castle window) and 'Jerome' (a giraffe of some type). There were some jazz cats that really cooked up some airtime as well. The series was cancelled after Rusty`s 1984 arrested for attacking his wife with a butter knife after a night of heavy drinking at a downtown Toronto strip joint. Today, Rusty sleeps around for loose change. After the show ended, Jerome appeared on a variety of Canadian game shows before ending up working the Muskoka petting zoo circuit. Jerome died in 1998 after falling from a ladder while putting up Christmas tree lights. No one knows what happened to the jazz cats or the Giant.
Posts
