 |
The former Sun writer and entertainment producer for the NewRO and her fiance were checking the TV Guide when the phone rang Thursday night. Her parents, calling from Florida, were on the other end.
"Quick, turn on ABC," her father said.
"Why, what's wrong?" said Hawkins, trying to make sense of her father's sense of urgency.
"Just turn it on!" he said forcefully.
It was the blockbuster prime-time game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Host Regis Philbin and his guest John Dignam, a clinical psychologist from Baltimore, were deliberating this $32,000 question -- "The 2000 book Udder Insanity is a biography of what TV personality? Dennis Miller, Tom Green, Bill Maher or Chris Rock."
Hawkins, 27, knew the answer, immediately. But then she should. Last year she wrote Udder Insanity, the ECW Press biography of Ottawa comic Tom Green.
"I was amazed that I was on the highest rated show on TV," said a flushed Hawkins. "I was ecstatic."
Hawkins now realizes just how popular the ABC show is.
"I got about a dozen calls from friends and family who had seen the show."
Part of Hawkins' little flight of serendipity has her publisher pretty excited too. Bannered on the top-rated show in the world might translate into increased demand for Hawkins' book.
"They had the title of the book up on the screen for a long time to poll the audience. Thirty-seven per cent said Tom Green. It's amazing publicity for the book."
No argument from her ECW publisher Robert Lecker, who sees the publicity spilling over into increased sales.
"Udder Insanity is one of our three top-sellers from last year," he said from his Montreal office. "But this appearance on Millionaire could potentially quadruple its sales."
Coincidentally, or not, ECW released a biography of Regis Philbin titled Regis -- The Unauthorized Biography by Kathleen Tracy last week.
"Now if we could only get Udder Insanity onto Oprah's book club, we'd be set," Lecker said.