On the Fringe w/ Paul Bellini & Scott Thompson

SCOTT THOMPSON:

A member of The Kids in the Hall a sketch comedy series that aired starting in 1989 on the CBC in Canada and on HBO in the United States, but moved to CBS for the fourth and fifth seasons. Scott Thompson became best-known on the show for his monologues as the "alpha queen" socialite Buddy Cole, as well as his appearances as Queen Elizabeth II, secretary Cathy, businessman Danny Husk, actress Francesca Fiore, and as the demented old man in the popular "Love and Sausages" sketch.

Concurrently with The Kids in the Hall, Thompson and his writing colleague Paul Bellini also collaborated in a queercore punk band called Mouth Congress.

He also appeared regularly on The Larry Sanders Show as Hank Kingsley's personal assistant Brian, and made numerous guest appearances on other television series, including Politically Incorrect, The Late Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Train 48. 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 of Reno 911! He had a recurring role in the NBC series Hannibal, playing Jimmy Price, an FBI crime-scene investigator specializing in latent fingerprints.

In 2015, Bellini and Thompson uploaded all of their Mouth Congress recordings to Bandcamp, and they reunited the following year for several live shows to promote the release. 

In 2018, Thompson launched Après le Déluge – The Buddy Cole Monologues, a one-man show in character as Buddy Cole.

PAUL BELLINI:

Paul Bellini was briefly a member of the sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall in 1984, during its first year of existence. He was replaced by Scott Thompson. For the troupe's eponymous TV series, which ran from 1988 to 1995, Bellini served as Thompson's writing partner. He received several Gemini Award, Emmy Award and CableACE Award nominations as part of the show's writing team. 

Bellini's on-screen presence in The Kids in the Hall began when CBC Television suggested that the troupe conduct some form of sweepstakes in order to determine the makeup of the show's fanbase. Turning down such conventional ideas as a free show taping or a cash prize, the members of KITH decided that the "prize" would be Paul Bellini in a towel. Thus the "Touch Paul Bellini" contest was born, wherein the winner was granted the chance to gently poke the betoweled Bellini with a stick. During the fourth season, Mike Szabo won a breakfast with him at the Ottawa airport. During these and other appearances on the show, Bellini would wander into a sketch wearing nothing but a towel and never speaking, thus himself becoming an absurd character in the show. At the end of the final episode, however, after the cast is buried alive during the end credits, Bellini approaches their grave, turns to the camera, and intones, "Thank God that's finally over." He then picks up a flower and proceeds to dance on their grave.

He was subsequently a writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes, winning two Gemini Awards and a Writers Guild of Canada award for his work with that show's writing team.

In 1998, Bellini made an autobiographical documentary, Bellini's Drive, which among other things explained his thoughts on being the second-most famous person from Timmins — the first being Shania Twain. In the same year, he and Thompson coauthored Buddy Babylon, the comedic autobiography of Thompson's Kids in the Hall character Buddy Cole.

In the same era, he was also a radio host on Toronto's Proud FM.

In October 2019, Bellini was admitted to intensive care after suffering complications from hernia surgery. A crowdfunding campaign was launched to assist with his medical costs, which reached the $30,000 goal in just two days after it was promoted on Twitter by all of the Kids in the Hall. He has since been released from the ICU.

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