Who: Allana Reoch and Filip Jeremic

What: Merciless character-driven sketches poking fun at every walk of life: “We take no prisoners.”

Where: Catch them at The Jokebox the second Monday of every month at Comedy Bar (945 Bloor St.), plus other shows at various venues.

Website: britishteethcomedy.com

How would you describe your sense of humour?

AR: I want to say highbrow, but it’s also pretty lowbrow. A lot of our references our very specific, but they’re specific to the character.

FJ: We have this one sketch where we’re a really raunchy biker couple from Hamilton and the couple themselves are really disgusting and vulgar and have a filthy sense of humour, but the references they make are pretty clever.

What’s your favourite place to perform?

AR: We’ve performed in some really sketchy scenarios and I think those are my favourite just because they’re the best stories. We performed at a birthday party at the Old Mill Inn and Spa, just in one of their rooms, and we had to perform next to the buffet.

FJ: Right before we went up, I whispered to her, “Okay, I’m going to walk in next to the beef, and you walk in next to the cake.” Because that’s what we had to work with.

AR: When we perform at Comedy Bar, a lot of the people who are there to see us are people we’ve invited. But when we perform at places like that, it’s always for people who A.) haven’t seen us and B.) have zero interest in comedy, which I think makes us up our game.

What’s the one joke you’ll leave out of a set if your parents are in the audience?

AR: None.

FJ: It just so happens that a lot of our fans are middle-aged people. They’re friends of ours and people in the comedy community, but then it’s a lot of like, our friends’ parents. We have a group of middle-aged ladies who see our shows regularly. Whenever we have people opening for us, like stand-ups or hosts, they’ll come backstage and they’ll be like, “Um, I see that your audience is a lot of older people, should I keep it clean?” And we’re like, absolutely not. They may not look it, but they love the raunchy shit.

Fart jokes: Yay or nay?

AR: It’s complicated. We do have a sketch that is all fart jokes. It’s about a girl from Finland and her name is Faart Hoole. And the whole sketch is farts. Obviously. It has to do with the language barrier. We don’t really do it in our sets, but I have seen comedy where it’s simply people farting and I’m loving it. Sometimes if you’re in the right mood…

FJ: Go big or go home.

How dark is too dark? Where do you draw the line?

FJ: I really like it when things are dark. We have this sketch where we’re a British brother and sister and we just killed and ate our parents. And we’re like, now what do we do? Because we realized we can’t live our lives without them, because we’re just children. There’s this general rule in theatre that a comedy has to end happily. So I love it when we have a sketch that’s really funny and the last line is horrific. Then the lights go down.

Whose style of comedy do you most emulate?

FJ: We always go back to Catherine Tate. She’s a genius.

AR: It’s simply her ability to be every character she plays, fully. You believe that she is that person, every single time.

FJ: She’ll go from playing an old gay man to a British schoolgirl to everything in between. Her comedy is what we strive to do—she really runs the gamut of all kinds of characters. They’re very specific. They’ve got all sorts of details and idiosyncrasies that real people would have. You can tell they come from an intelligent place and they’re well thought-out.

What’s the one joke that always kills?

AR: In one sketch I say, “You’re all a bunch of suckcockers.”

FJ: ’Cause we’re these French-Canadian school children. Instead of saying “cocksuckers,” they say “suckcockers.”

British Teeth perform at The Jokebox at Comedy Bar (945 Bloor St. W.) on Monday, May 20. $5 at the door. 8 p.m.

As our senior editor Edward Keenan wrote after Rob Ford’s famed 911 call incident in October 2011: “Incivility and unbecoming behaviour are his whole brand.”

In light of the news you might have heard about Toronto’s mayor this morning, we’d just like to present for you again a few memorable incidents in the bizarre, troubled history of the ongoing Rob Ford clown show.

1999: Rob Ford is arrested for failing to take a breathalyzer test after being pulled over, and also charged with possession of marijuana.

2002: Ford refers to Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti as “gino boy.”

2005: Ford calls Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby a “waste of skin.”

2005: Ford says the following: “No. 1, I don’t understand a transgender, I don’t understand, is it a guy dressed up like a girl or a girl dressed up like a guy? And we’re funding this for, I don’t know, what does it say here?”

2006: Ford says, “If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably, that’s bottom line.”

2006: After being thrown out of a hockey game in which Ford berated those sitting nearby, he apologized, claiming he had been drinking and was under a lot of stress.

2008: That time he said “orientals” who “work like dogs” were “taking over.”

2008: Ford is charged with assault and uttering a death threat after a domestic dispute with his wife Renata. Weeks later, the charges were withdrawn.

2010: That time he offered to score a stranger drugs on tape.

2010: Ford endorses anti-gay-marriage pastor Wendell Brereton.

2011: A mother claims Rob Ford gave the finger to her and her six-year-old daughter after they scolded him for talking on his mobile phone while driving. Ford claimed this was “not accurate,” and responded to a television reporter’s question about it with a fit of sustained laughter, ending the interview. Later he clarified that he had been on his mobile phone, but denied making a rude hand gesture.

2011: Ford goes to the cottage instead of the Pride Parade.

2011: The unforgettable 911 call controversy.

2011: The Star reports that the Youth and Family Violence Unit was investigating two domestic disputes at the mayor’s house in two months, including one after his in-laws phoned the police.

2011: Ford draws a complaint from a women’s group after suggesting into a live microphone that he could think of a word that starts with “B” to call a woman speaking before his Executive Committee.

2012: Ford charges at a Star reporter on a parcel of property behind his house.

2012: Ford skips the Pride Parade again.

2012: Rob Ford, “party animal.”

2012: That whole conflict-of-interest thing.

2013: The Star reports Ford was “asked to leave a gala event celebrating the Canadian armed forces last month, because organizers were concerned he was impaired.”

2013: Sarah Thomson alleges Ford grabbed her ass at a party. The night before International Women’s Day.

2013: Ford goes on a “magnet blitz” in a parking lot.

Have we forgotten any of Rob Ford’s many unbecoming incidents? Please let us know in the comments section below.

My three-year-old son Emile had surgery a little over a week ago and, as I wrote in my previous column, the recovery from the removal of his adenoids and tonsils was far worse than the operation itself. But since I filed that story last Friday morning, it got considerably worse afterwards—in fact, almost immediately.

If this one reads less panicky than last week, it’s because though he’s not yet back at daycare, Emile is finally acting—and, more importantly, eating—like himself again following a frightening week during which he was regularly shrieking in agony or lying in stupor and lost 4 of his 30 pounds of body weight.

It’s been easily our most intense and scary week of parenting, with this past Monday and Tuesday being the worst, as his pain spiked well above his normal pain threshold, which is so high that he doesn’t blink when getting a vaccination shot.

But last Friday, my main concern was that he hadn’t eaten since the previous Tuesday, and had only just started drinking water in any real amount. In the early afternoon, just before nap, he started clutching his stomach and saying it hurt. I assumed it was because it was so empty, when all of a sudden he threw up all over me and his Homer Simpson stuffie. It was just water, with a few flecks of food, but I’d never actually seen Emile vomit before. I called my wife Carrie, and since his surgeon’s office voicemail said he’d respond in 2-3 days, she suggested I call Telehealth Ontario and ask their advice.

Except, as it turns out, they don’t really provide advice, at least not for any pressing issue. They just recommend you go to the emergency room, which, ironically, is a place Telehealth is supposed to make less crowded, not more.

After answering a half-hour’s worth of all-patient checklist questions from the registered nurse on the phone—including, absurdly, if he’d had any alcoholic beverages today—and waking Emile up repeatedly from his nap to answer questions and walk across the room, I was advised to take him to emergency.

My initial questions—about whether vomiting might be a side-effect of morphine or drinking water too fast, or if throwing up one time was something to be concerned about several days after the operation as we’d been told it might happen in the short-term—went unanswered.

She then asked if I was going to take him to emergency, to which I replied not yet. After all, spending six hours in the ER hardly seemed like the best thing for a three-year-old recovering from surgery, especially if there was no real concern.

Instead, we went to our pediatrician and she let us in even after they’d stopped seeing patients. She was not concerned by him throwing up once, or even by his lack of food so long as we kept him hydrated, but checked him out otherwise, reassured us that he was okay and then gave us a script for antibiotics in case a strep throat test came back positive over the weekend. (It did not.)

She also expressed exasperation when I explained what Telehealth told us, informing me that it was a private company (which I was unaware of) and that it seems they always tell people to go to emerg for fear of being sued. In fact, she said that ER visits have increased, rather than decreased, since Telehealth came online.

A few days later, her nurse, calling into check on how E was doing, further elaborated, noting that nurses are not allowed to diagnose patients, which is a doctor’s job. So the registered nurses manning Telehealth’s phone lines are simply not licensed to do much more than that for fear of being liable. “At the end of the day,” she said, “they just send everyone to emerg.”

I should add that I have a very positive Telehealth story, too. When Emile had a fever-induced febrile seizure in my arms at 18 months, my wife was out of town and I was actually on the phone with Telehealth asking advice because his temperature had spiked during his nap. When he started convulsing and I dropped the phone, the nurse called 911 and then called me back, talking me down while I waited for the paramedics to arrive. I could not have been more grateful.

But that was an extreme case where an emergency visit was obviously vital. If they’re telling everyone to do the same because they can’t diagnose or really provide any useful advice without seeing the patient in person—or, y’know, being a doctor—how is it even helpful? And does the fact that it’s privately run decrease its effectiveness due to fear of lawsuits?

Certainly, it’s not easy to find out that Telehealth is run by Sykes Assistance Services Corporation, which also provides roadside assistance, identity theft services and call centre outsourcing. In fact, Ontario’s healthcare site says it simply “is provided to residents of Ontario by the Government of Ontario and is free to all users.”

Ironically, the two press releases I dug up about Telehealth Ontario both boasted that service can help “Ontarians can save time, [and] trips to hospital emergency department.” Yet, at least anecdotally, that appears to not be the case.

The idea behind Telehealth is a great one—free, confidential 24-hour access to a healthcare professional who can provide more reliable advice than a Google search. Though the handful of other times my wife called about specific health concerns she was told to go to emergency, when she called last week to ask about giving Advil instead of the recommended Tylenol post-op—without mentioning Emile, thereby kicking off the checklist questions—she was connected to a pharmacist who explained why she should not. (It could cause internal bleeding and upset an empty stomach.)

But as ER doctor and blogger Dr. Alan Drummond put it earlier this year, generally the Telehealth system seems to be “fundamentally broken, ineffective and expensive.” (Oh yeah, it also costs taxpayers $39 a call, a figure that’s almost double that of other provinces.)

“Most emergency physicians that I know perceive no value to Telehealth lines for there seems to be a steady stream of patients referred to the ER with non-urgent problems that could have been addressed with a dose of common sense,” he wrote. “The more cynical of us perceive that Telehealth programs are yet one more way that government can pretend to be doing something about health care without actually doing anything of significance.”

This is a particular issue for new parents, who need something of significance because we simply don’t know what to expect from our children’s health issues and we’re not getting the help we need from Telehealth.

Perhaps there needs to be specific phone lines for pediatric help, or perhaps they could use Skype to give the nurses more confidence in their assessments. All I know is that bringing a sick-but-not-in-danger kid into emergency is the last thing the hospital needs, and the next time I need healthcare help, I won’t bother wasting my time on the phone.

Thursday: “Rattle & Roll,” a foosball tournament

2nd Floor, 461 King St. W. $5 at the door. Doors at 9 p.m.

You know what sport doesn’t get nearly enough hype? Foosball. Tonight, The Table, a mysterious community of foosball enthusiasts, will converge on the new 2nd Floor event space for a frantic tournament. Over the last year, The Table has been popping up at various bars across Toronto hosting doubles foosball tournaments called “Four on the Floor.” To mark the group’s first anniversary, this fresh collaboration with 2nd Floor has birthed a new series, “Rattle & Roll.” Everyone—from beginners to pros—is welcome to challenge one another to a match on one of four tables. Plus: a DJ for grooves, and snacks to keep your competitive fire burning!

Friday: A doubleheader from The Boxcar Boys & The Slocan Ramblers

Tranzac Main Hall, 292 Brunswick Ave. $12 advance online, $15 at the door. Doors at 7:30 p.m.

Long weekend, woo-hoo! You’ve officially got three days to do anything you want, but here’s a suggestion: six months ago, two bombastic bands (The Boxcar Boys and The Slocan Ramblers) released records at Tranzac. To mark both the occasion and the coming of summer, they’re coming back for an evening of music and mayhem. The Boxcar Boys are all about “wild gypsy, old-jazz, klezmer, and folk music” with a “New Orleans spirit.” The Ramblers have turned a residency at the Cloak & Dagger into a formidable weekly party, and they’ll be joined by fiddler and frequent collaborator John Showman. In other words: “Expect a double-quintet extravaganza to end the night!” Find out more here.

Friday: STAIN ft. Attrition

Nocturne, 550 Queen St. W. $10. Doors at 10 p.m.

As experimental electronic trailblazers of the post-punk era, Attrition is a 30-year-strong UK band that was instrumental in the development of industrial music.  This weekend, they are going to blow your mind on the Toronto stop of their Canadian tour. Live from the rabid fierce STAIN event at Nocturne, the band hasn’t touched down in Toronto for two solid years. Also on the bill: Montreal’s Scene Noir (described as a “gloomy retro approach to synth-based electronica”) and DJ Dolston (responsible for Ottawa’s popular Death Disco, a combination of goth, industrial and deathrock). Find out more here.

Sunday: May 2-4 Kegger: Dazed and Confused

Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 506 Bloor St. W. $20 available online or at the door. Doors at 8:30 p.m.

On a long weekend, Sunday is basically Saturday. Here’s the best way to spend it: head to Bloor Hot Docs Cinema for a crazy kegger in honour of the epic slacker/high school/stoner ode that is Dazed and Confused. So, basically: “cold beer, hot tunes and a screening of Richard Linklater’s classic coming-of-age story.” Also, feel free to party like it’s Victoria Day 1976, because the cinema is busting out lava lamps, red plastic cups and Aerosmith tunes—along with arcade classics on the big screen. Admission includes the screening and two drinks. Find out more here.

Wednesday: Arrested Development Trivia Night

The Ossington, 61 Ossington Ave. Free. Doors at 7:30 p.m.

On May 26, after much online fanfare, Netflix will unveil the new season of Arrested Development. And, lord, people will not shut up about it. After a successful run with Questions About Nothing: Seinfeld Trivia, a group of local TV fanatics is bringing you a game about “a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.” And Netflix Canada is totally backing this, offering up prizes to the cleverest kids who can lay down the 411 on AD seasons one through three. In other words: “Don’t blue yourself.”

You and a guest could win entry to the ROM’s Friday Night Live for a year!

Contest closes Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.

Toronto’s growth spurt isn’t over just yet. While we’ve built or are building more super-tall skyscrapers (200 metres or higher) over the past three years than in all previous years combined, that’s nothing compared to what could be coming: There are a grand total of 16 buildings taller than 200 metres currently planned. Here’s how they’d measure up on our skyline.

Data courtesy of the City of Toronto’s City Planning Division. For proposed projects, only those for which planning applications have been submitted to the city are included (and those could still get taller or shorter—or, possibly, not be built at all).

GOT SOMETHING THAT YOU WANT THE GRID TO FIGURE OUT? E-mail it to ask@thegridto.com, and we’ll see what we can find.

Contest closes May 22, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.

Contest closes May 22, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.

Contest closes May 22, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.