SCTV vs. Saturday Night Live. For fans of TV sketch comedy, it's a debate on par with the Beatles vs. The Stones.

For what it's worth, two of the three people who've been in both shows' casts -- Tony Rosato and Robin Duke -- will be onstage tonight, as Second City caps off Alumni Week with an all-star fund-raiser for Gilda's Place. They join Colin Mochie, Albert Howell, Andrew Currie and many more starting at 10 p.m.

(The third member of that SCTV/SNL troika, Martin Short, dropped in to perform improv at Second City Monday.)

Rosato gives the historical edge to SNL over SCTV. "I was so overwhelmed with the work on SNL, acting and writing. I dug everybody. I did that sketch with Bruce Dern (a Wild One spoof where the bikers got existential instead of violent); I got to hang with William Burroughs.

"I was proud to be part of both camps (SCTV and SNL). Wow, what an education! But SNL was deeper on the pulse of American culture," says the guy who was the Italian Chef and Chick Monk: Roadie For The Defence on SCTV and co-starred with Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo on SNL. "SNL had this mandate of speaking the truth about the bulls--t going on. They had a mission, a sword of truth in one hand and a list in the other, which made the satire deeper to me. SCTV was more comedic, they went for the laugh, particularly when they changed format and became primarily a television parody."

Or as Saturday Night Live original Michael O'Donoghue says, "Making people laugh is the lowest form of humour."

Ironically, Rosato played John Belushi in an SCTV spoof of Saturday Night Live, in which his big punchline is, "I'm so stoned!"

"Gene Levy came up with that one," says Rosato, laughing at the reminder of an early bit.

Rosato never stayed at any of the shows long enough to become famous. (Interviewed on The Edge, the afternoon deejay kept referring to him as 'Tony Risotto'.)

"I always wanted to grow up to be an actor," he says, "and I still do. The thing is I didn't want to get typecast as a sketch comedian."

After his SNL stint, Rosato went to L.A. and co-starred on the sitcom Amanda's with Bea Arthur. Then he came home as a regular on CTV's Night Heat, and on Diamonds with Nicholas Campbell. "I took Night Heat immediately, because they allowed me to improvise all my shtick in the context of the show."

And then? "I'd done five TV series, and I still wanted to be a better actor, so I took every bit role in every Canadian movie I saw. You know what a rich path to stardom that is," he laughs.

He's looking forward to playing the classic sketches tonight. "It's like any family all grown up: You run into each other and it's great, you hang out as long as you can, because opportunities are few. Y'know, Marty (Short) comes in, and he's gone."

Rosato won't exactly be rusty onstage. He's gone back into improv in the past year and is taking TV roles again (including the recurring character Stewie Harper in Relic Hunter, and the historical character Casanova in the kids' series Mentor).

And he's reapplied for his green-card. "I'm going to go down to L.A. just to see what's going on down there.

"I'm bored and restless now, and I hear there's very interesting improv going on down there. Improv to me is like verbal jazz. I like to bring in some different colours, but very few people want to go the Miles Davis route. It's scary to get serious. There's this fear of, 'Wow, we might not get laughs.'

"As long as I find people who are trying to get to different levels of performance and not just riding a joke, I'll be happy."


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