Scott Thompson
Thompson in 2012
Born	John Scott Thompson (1959-06-12)June 12, 1959 (age 66) North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Occupations	Actor, comedian
Years active	1980–present
Website	newscottlandland.com

John Scott Thompson (born June 12, 1959) is a Canadian actor and comedian, best known as member of the comedy troupeThe Kids in the Hall and for playing Brian onThe Larry Sanders Show.

Thompson was born inNorth Bay, Ontario, and grew up inBrampton. Named for his uncle, he later dropped the name "John" to simplify his name for the stage. He is the second oldest of the five children in his family.

He attendedBrampton Centennial Secondary School, and was a witness to the 1975Brampton Centennial Secondary School shooting.^[1] He enrolled atYork University but in his third year was asked to leave for being "disruptive". He joined the comedy troupe The Love Cats, where he metMark McKinney.

In 1984, Thompson became a member ofThe Kids in the Hall, whoseeponymous sketch comedy series aired starting 1989 on theCBC in Canada and onHBO in the United States, but moved toCBS for its fourth and fifth seasons. Openly gay,^[2] Thompson became best known on the show for his monologues as "alpha queen" socialiteBuddy Cole, and his appearances asQueen Elizabeth II, secretary Cathy, businessman Danny Husk, suburban housewife Fran, actress Francesca Fiore, and the demented old man in the popular "Love and Sausages" sketch.

Concurrently withThe Kids in the Hall, Thompson and his writing colleaguePaul Bellini collaborated in aqueercore punk band called Mouth Congress.^[3]

During the mid-1990s Thompson ran an interactive website, developed by his younger brother Craig and called ScottLand. It had a live-chat area, voting and comedy espionage and sold Buddy Cole T-shirts and video tapes of comedy sketches.^[4]

He also appeared regularly onThe Larry Sanders Show as Hank Kingsley's personal assistant Brian, and made numerous guest appearances on other television series, includingPolitically Incorrect,The Late Show,Late Night with Conan O'Brien, andTrain 48. Thompson hosted areality television program in Canada calledMy Fabulous Gay Wedding. Thompson defendedMordecai Richler's novelCocksure inCanada Reads 2006. He has continued to tour, and act in numerous movies and on TV. He joined the other Kids in the Hall to tour as recently as 2014, guest-starred in two episodes ofReno 911!, and performed in the projectDeath Comes to Town (2010) with fellow KITH membersDave Foley,Bruce McCulloch,Mark McKinney, andKevin McDonald. He had a recurring role in theNBC seriesHannibal, playing Jimmy Price, anFBI crime scene investigator.^[5]

Thompson published a humour book,Buddy Babylon: The Autobiography of Buddy Cole, and a graphic novel,The Hollow Planet, based on characters fromThe Kids in the Hall,^[6] and has written and performed two one-man shows. In 2014, Thompson, in character as Buddy Cole, did a series of reports onThe Colbert Report as the program's correspondent for the2014 Winter Olympics.^[7]

In 2015, Bellini and Thompson uploaded all of their Mouth Congress recordings toBandcamp,^[3] and they reunited the following year for several live shows to promote the release.^[8] They launched aKickstarter campaign to fund a documentary film about the band; that film,Mouth Congress, premiered at theKingston Canadian Film Festival in 2021.^[9]

Around this time, Thompson performed his Buddy Cole monologues at thePortland Queer Comedy Festival.^[10][11][12]

In 2018, Thompson launchedAprès le Déluge – The Buddy Cole Monologues, a one-man show in character as Buddy Cole.^[13]

In 2000, Thompson was living with his boyfriend, French documentarian Joel Soler, inHollywood. Soler had smuggled footage out of Iraq to make anE! News-style satiric political documentary comedy,Uncle Saddam, about the eccentricities in the home life ofSaddam Hussein and his family, which bubbled behind Hussein's dictatorial façade. Thompson wrote the narration for the movie, which was read by actorWallace Langham. Following the movie's release, Thompson and Soler'sWest Hollywood home was firebombed on November 1, 2000. Thompson has discussed the details of this incident in interviews withJesse Brown ofCanadaland and fellow Canadian comicElvira Kurt, as being inspiration for his future showThe Lowest Show on Earth. In the interview with Kurt, he says of the attack, "We were sleeping and a group came to our home. They filled our giant garbage cans with gasoline and set them on fire on our front lawn. They had buckets of red paint. They covered the house with it so it dripped off like blood. They put a note in the front hall that said, 'In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate, burn this Satanic film or you will be dead'. They underlined "dead" just in case we weren't freaked out enough".^[14]

This, along with many other incidents throughout Thompson's life, including the 1975Brampton Centennial Secondary School shooting at his Brampton high school, led him to process incidents of terror on micro- and macrocosmic levels through his one-man comedy showThe Lowest Show on Earth. Thompson went on tour with this show and secured a spot in New York, off-Broadway. The posters—featuring Thompson lyingsupine on the ground with a big wad ofsemen dripping down the side of his face—went up around the city on September 10, 2001. The following day, theterrorist attacks on the World Trade Center made the one-man show's difficult material impossible to talk about.^[15]

In March 2009, Thompson was diagnosed withB-cellnon-Hodgkin'sgastric lymphoma. He completed six rounds ofchemotherapy and one month of radiation and reached a cancer-free status.^[16][17]

• Buddy Babylon: The Autobiography of Buddy Cole (withPaul Bellini) in 1998, a humour novel;ISBN 0-440-50828-2
• The Lowest Show on Earth, a 2001 one-man show produced inToronto
• Scottastrophe, 2006 multimedia show
• The Hollow Planet, a graphic novel by Scott Thompson, Kyle Morton, and Stephan Nilson, fromIDW Publishing; featuring Thompson'sThe Kids in the Hall character Danny Husk.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toScott Thompson.

• Official website
• Scott Thompson atIMDb

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