Count Floyd

Count Floyd is a fictional character featured in television and played by comic actor Joe Flaherty. He is a fictional horror host in the tradition of TV hosts on local television in the United States and Canada.

The Count Floyd character originated on the Canadian sketch show SCTV, but also later appeared on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (clips of which were used on Cartoon Planet), as well as Rush’s Grace Under Pressure tour.

As originally conceived, Count Floyd was the alter-ego of another SCTV character: Floyd Robertson, co-anchor of the SCTV News. (The name was a joke based on that of Canadian news anchor Lloyd Robertson, but other than the name and occupation Floyd Robertson bears no real resemblance to his real-life counterpart.)

The premise was that employees at this very low-budget TV station had to double up on jobs, so news anchor Floyd Robertson was also the host of SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theater, wearing a cheap vampire costume and speaking in a bad stereotypical Transylvanian vampire accent. Oddly, although Floyd was supposed to be a vampire, he would also open each show howling like a werewolf, presumably indicating that Floyd Robertson had only the vaguest of idea what a vampire was. Near the end of a howl, he would break off disarmingly into a weak chuckle.

Although a parody of the typical 1950s and 1960s local TV horror hosts, the real-life hosts were already employees at the television stations and their horror host personas were often so silly and “over the top” that Count Floyd was not really too far off the mark.

The name Monster Chiller Horror Theater was taken from the Chiller Theater, a longtime local horror film show on WIIC (now WPXI) television in Pittsburgh, Joe Flaherty's hometown. While host Bill Cardille also known as "Chilly Billy" was nothing like Count Floyd, his Dracula-like persona may have been based on another Pittsburgh TV horror show host. The 1958-59 Friday night program "The Thirteenth Hour," broadcast over KDKA-TV Channel 2 featured the vampire-like "Igor," actually KDKA staff announcer George Eisenhauer whose costume bore no small resemblance to Count Floyd's. Much as Robertson's co-anchor, Earl Camembert, was partially inspired by American newsman Irv Weinstein (as well as by CBC news reader Earl Cameron, who anchored CBC TV's "The National" newscast from 1959 until 1965), Robertson too appears to have been at least partially inspired by Weinstein's weather anchor, Tom Jolls, who likewise doubled as the astronaut children's show host Commander Tom.

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