Do we like them?

Do we like Mary Walsh?

Our score: 8 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up and her comedy punches up, but the pages I could open were thin, so I've stopped short of a 9.

Mary Walsh is the Newfoundland comic behind Marg Delahunty, the fake-helpful busybody who cornered politicians on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. She's been at it for decades, and she's still touring and writing.

The famous stoush came when Marg ambushed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford outside his home. It ended with a 911 call, police involvement and national headlines. Walsh later called the episode “so bizarre”, which is fair.

On the harm check, I came up clean. Nothing turned up of her attacking LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or anyone else, and nothing on conspiracy theories or climate denial. She isn't keeping dodgy company that I could find either. That comes with a caveat: I could only open a couple of pages, so this is an absence of evidence, not a deep audit.

Her target is the powerful. In a 2013 interview she was asked about politicians and answered with a long run of “Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie!” That's satire of people with power, not a swipe at people who lack it.

On the good-person side, I found no lawsuits, accusations or reports of her treating colleagues badly. Speaker bios describe her mental health and anti-poverty advocacy, but I couldn't open a dated page to confirm the detail, so I'm leaving it at that.

Lately she's been talking about her 2026 book, a collection of essays about her life. It's a sign she's still out there, still funny and still herself.