Steve Smith (comedian)
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Steve Smith (born 1946, Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian comedy writer and actor.
Before turning to comedy, Smith studied engineering at the University of Waterloo, and then worked a variety of jobs. In 1979, he began to produce, write and star in Smith & Smith, a sketch comedy series with a cast of two: Smith and his wife, Morag Smith. The show was produced for Hamilton, Ontario's CHCH, and syndicated to other television stations in Canada.
In 1985, Smith decided to try a different format, and created the family sitcom Me & Max. After just one season, however, Steve and Morag went back to sketch comedy, creating the new series The Comedy Mill, which ran for four years.
In 1991, Smith made one of his recurring characters, who had appeared on all three previous shows, into the star of a new series, The Red Green Show. Red Green, an inept handyman whose answer to almost everything -- including, in one episode, Quebec separatism -- is duct tape, proved to be not only one of the most enduring characters in Canadian television history, but one of the most lucrative and durable Canadian television exports as well.
The Red Green Show is still producing and airing new episodes in 2004, but Smith indicated in a September 2004 interview that he will probably only continue the series for one more season.
He also writes a syndicated newspaper column as Red Green, distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association.