‘They’re holding it hostage!’ U.S. comedian Jim Gaffigan tries to buy bourbon in Vancouver

Actor and stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan was more than a little surprised at the anti-American vitriol he noticed during a recent performance in Vancouver. What’s worse, he couldn’t even drown his sorrow in a glass of Kentucky bourbon at the bar, since American booze has been pulled from most shelves amid the ongoing trade war between the two countries.

His comments came during an appearance on the We Might Be Drunk podcast, which is hosted by comedians Mark Normand and Sam Morril. Gaffigan mentioned that he had recently done four shows in Vancouver, remarking: “And by the way those audiences in Vancouver were amazing. Amazing audiences!”

He then talked about a joke in which he imagines that a dog tells him to shoot the U.S. president. “And every time I do it there’s some audiences that don’t get the fact that it’s a serial killer reference and they think it’s me proposing to shoot Trump, and they go bananas. In Canada—”

Morril finished for him: “They hand you the gun?”

Gaffigan went on to say that he’s become used to international audiences sometimes taking umbrage with U.S. foreign policy. “When we went through the Gulf War … there was a moment when we lost the Irish. And I was like ‘Oh my god I can’t believe the Irish.’ And as an Irish American I was like, ‘That’s kind of sad.’ But the Canadians were always like: Yeah, you know, it’s not you, it’s your government doing this foreign policy.”

He continued: “I would bring that up, that the Canadians were always there. And now the Canadians are like, ‘We hate you.'”

His hosts suggested that Canada has replaced Mexico as the angry neighbour. They also compared watching the Canada-U.S. trade war to children witnessing their parents’ divorce and asking: “Is it our dad’s fault?”

But Gaffigan’s Canadian troubles continued after the show, when he found a local whiskey bar. “It had an Irish name but it’s whiskeys from around the world.”

He continued: “And I don’t like scotch. You know, I’ll try Canadian whiskey if I’m in Canada. If I’m in Ireland I’ll drink Irish whiskey. But I like bourbon. And so I’m like: ‘All right, I’m going to get a bourbon.'”

He paused. “No bourbon. I go, ‘This is a world whiskey bar.’ And they’re like, ‘No, we’re not selling any American whiskey.’ And I go, ‘So did you get rid of it?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s back there. We’re just not selling it.'”

Morril chimed back in: “They’re holding it hostage!”

But Gaffigan got the last laugh, and the last drop. “So it was like OK, I get it. And then we went back to our hotel, that was owned by an American company, and I got a bourbon.”

Gaffigan’s previous trips north were a little less political. He recently posted a clip from an earlier show in which he told the audience: “I’ve been to British Columbia. It’s not very British or Columbian. Vancouver was like a rainy Seattle. I spent a week in Vancouver. Somehow it rained for two weeks.”

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