By Mallory Clarkson/London Community News

Fanshawe College’s lofty car shop in C Building was humming with excitement when close to 500 people filed into the venue to hear a broadcast student interview one of Canada’s iconic personalities. George Stroumboulopoulos (Strombo) wasn’t only there to talk about his television show on CBC, but also to share his story of how he rose through the ranks and became a household name.

Where most people would crack that kind of success up to hard work and dedication, Strombo said it was luck.

“I never want to approach this like I’ve earned this because I worked with a lot of people who worked really hard, were way more talented than I am and they didn’t get a break,” he told the room filled with fans. “You need like 50 breaks to get to where you are in any position.”

But as his interviewer, Fanshawe’s Rebecca Fryer, pulled out of him, Strombo sharpened his teeth on his upward climb.

While he’s currently the host of CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, which is formerly known as The Hour, the Canadian icon struggled through high school before getting into a radio broadcast program at Humber College in Toronto. Something, Strombo said he stumbled onto after picking up the school’s course calendar when he was 17 years old.

“One night I was bored, seriously flipping through the calendar and I saw radio broadcasting and I went, ‘I’ll do that.’ That was it,” he said, adding he didn’t ‘buckle down’ until his second semester. “I think I got lucky in that at the forklift job I got at the airport, I worked with guys who were 40, 50, 60 years old — Guys who hated their lives.

“I looked at it and went … ‘I don’t want this’.”

After completing the program, Strombo ventured to British Columbia for an internship. Although he said he loves Toronto, Strombo said he wanted a different experience.

“I knew I had to leave the city because I knew that if I wanted to really understand radio, I needed to move to a different market,” he said.

From there, Strombo then took a job for a Toronto-based radio station, the Fan, where he got his first big break.

“I would work 30 hours a week, but I would go in on every single one of my days off and I would go into a studio and I would fake (or practice) a radio show,” he said.

By luck, Strombo was in the newsroom one night when his boss needed someone to do live sports updates across the network and he jumped at it. The next day, Strombo was asked to continue with that job.

In the end, that is the station that taught him the ropes.

“That’s where I really fell in love with what I thought a strong broadcaster should be because I bumped into great mentors — guys who didn’t even know they were being my mentors,” he said.

After a while at that gig, Strombo moved onto another Toronto-based radio station (The Edge) and then to Much Music as a ‘VJ.’

But, the push into his current role as a CBC television and radio broadcaster came around in 2005 when Strombo was approached by the corporation to start his own show, which he initially turned down.

“Guys like me generally aren’t on TV and guys like me are certainly not on CBC, at least not the way I want to be,” he said. “I thought what everybody thinks about CBC that it’s stodgy, old and conservative.

“They’re so different — I had no idea.”

Eight seasons later and with guests and subjects ranging from Kermit the Frog to the affects of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Strombo’s show balances coverage of the arts and politics. But, it’s nothing to be proud of, Strombo noted.

“My mother is this glorious human being in my life because she taught me very early as a kid never to be proud of anything because proud is pride, pride is wrong and pride will screw you every time,” he said to the attentive audience. “She said don’t be proud of the things you do — be thankful that you had the opportunity to do them.”

For more information on the George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight show, check out the website at www.cbc.ca/strombo.