The Masked Singer got a taste of Canadiana this week when Skeleton turned out to be Paul Shaffer.
The 69-year-old Ontario native, who spent three decades as David Letterman’s bandleader, was unmasked after he received the least number of studio audience votes at the end of the episode that aired on Wednesday.
Celebrity panelist Robin Thicke – whose Canadian father, the late Alan Thicke, worked with Shaffer – correctly guessed Skeleton’s identity, as did Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg. Ken Jeong thought it was another Canadian, Martin Short, under the mask and Nicole Scherzinger guessed it was Raymond Teller from magic duo Penn & Teller.
Shaffer, as Skeleton, performed Jet’s 2003 hit “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” during the episode.
In this season’s first episode, he performed a mashup of The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and Chic’s “Good Times” and ended up fighting for survival (with a performance of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle”) against Egg, who turned out to be figure skater Johnny Weir.
Skeleton’s clues this week included: “I was once inducted into the National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame.”
Shaffer told EW that among those who figured out he was in the Skeleton costume was Letterman. “He called me a couple of weeks ago! He knows about these nondisclosure agreements. So he says to me on the phone, ‘You don’t have to say anything, but I know it’s you. I know how you walk.’ That’s how he recognized me, from my walk.
"We were together every day for 33 years, after all.”
The Masked Singer airs Wednesday nights on CTV, part of this website's parent company Bell Media.