The second season of Canada's Greatest Know-It-All will feature a man who calls Madeira Park home, but whether the Coast can boast about his home-grown brilliance remains to be seen.
Bill Robinson, 65, of Madeira Park spends most of his time on his sailboat, a pastime he refers to as a life's dream fulfilled in his audition tape for the show set to air Monday, Jan. 14, on Discovery Channel.
Robinson is currently out of the country visiting family; however, executive producer of Canada's Greatest Know-It-All, Brad Brough, was able to provide some insight on the intellectual sailor who will join nine other self-proclaimed scholars on the show this year.
"Bill is a big character, a big personality, which is important for shows like this," Brough said. "He's more than happy to tell you what he knows, how he gathered the information, the history of the knowledge that he has, the scope and the breadth of his knowledge, and he happens to have an amazing amount of life experience and skill sets and knowledge. He was one of Canada's first computer programmers and computer analysts and business analysts, and he's very well versed in business, technology, engineering, and he's also kind of an open spirit, let's put it that way."
Brough said Robinson made an impression on the other competitors from the first day of filming, which took place last summer in Ontario.
"He showed up day one with his Red Green ensemble complete with fishing cap and suspenders and plaid shirt, and he actually walked and talked a lot like Red Green. He did that to kind of mess with the brains of the other nine competitors and he kind of did, because he came across as a good old boy, but he's very sort of urban in his thinking and very worldly," Brough said.
The television competition, Canada's Greatest Know-It-All, pits self-proclaimed know-it-alls against each other to solve a series of hands-on problems each week.
This season, know-it-alls will compete in some spectacular scenarios. Contestants will be thrown out of an airplane, and during a 40-second free fall, must memorize the giant letters scattered in the landing field, then create as many words as possible from them.
They must also learn to scuba dive and develop a non-verbal language to decode and defuse an underwater bomb, and destroy a truck almost a kilometre away with a bowling ball cannon.
Tune into Discovery Channel this Monday at 10 p.m. for the opening show and see how far our local contestant makes it. Find out more at www.discovery.ca/know-it-all.
