Jim Carrey and the Wayner Man. It's not a movie. It's a reality show.

The Wayner Man is Wayne Flemming, the veteran club comic who will re-induct his pal Jim Carrey tonight into Canada's Walk Of Fame (Global, 9 p.m.).

Twenty-five years ago, Flemming was the seen-it-all veteran who helped Carrey find the on-ramp to the road to superstardom.

While other local club impresarios were giving the gangly teen from Jackson's Point, Ont., the hook, Flemming nurtured Carrey, giving him a showcase shot an hour north of Toronto.

I saw it firsthand. As one half of Bullock & Brioux ("Peter Lougheed Funnier Than Comedy Pair" -- Ottawa Citizen), I shared a stage or three with Carrey and Flemming back in the day at Tickles, a comedy club/Camp Borden target range.

Flemming was that rarest of house comics: Generous. With career advice, timing tips, heck, even with his hotel room.

I reminisced with him last week in his trailer on the Toronto set of The Cinderella Man. Flemming was still in his spats (the story is set in the '30s).

After a career in the comedy trenches, Flemming is enjoying a flurry of film glory. He just wrapped a juicy part in Carrey's next feature, Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events. "I never had more fun in my life," he says of that experience. Now he's acting opposite Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger and taking direction from Ron Howard. Not bad.

Flemming says he went to film school by hanging with Carrey on every film set he's ever worked. "I learn from him and I watch every scene. The teacher has become the student," he says.

Flemming is usually Carrey's first stop when he sneaks back into town. He was there last February when Carrey crashed Conan O'Brien's party in Toronto. He's become Carrey's good luck charm, the hippie-dippie "Wayner Man" who gooses the star when things get dull.

Zellweger and Carrey were an item a few years ago when Flemming suffered a heart attack. At the time, Carrey dashed back to Toronto to be by his pal's side.

"I woke up and there she was and there he was. Strange universe. Strange how it all comes around. I remember looking at her and looking at him and saying, "Dude."

Flemming figures he'll get a little choked tonight when he's called on to pay tribute to his friend. "This is a kid who, the first night I saw him I said, 'You're going to be a star.'"

Flemming says Carrey always knew he'd be a movie star some day -- "he just didn't know how he'd get there."

In 1998, Carrey got his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Years before, when he was just another struggling comedian -- before his breakthrough on In Living Color and the Ace Ventura films -- Flemming remembers them "being in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater and putting our feet in the famous footsteps and doing all the impressions."

Now some kid can stand on Carrey's star in Toronto. "Trippy," as the Wayner Man would say.


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