thestar.com

This is not the kind of travel show that tells you where to stay and where to eat. It's more like a comedy-adventure series with our zany heroine on the lam in a series of exotic locationsTHREE WEEKS ago, [Valerie Pringle] observed an anniversary. It was precisely one year earlier that she had tearfully bailed out of Canada AM, the hugely successful CTV morning show on which she had been a fixture since 1992. Counting her seven-year stint on CBC's Midday, Pringle had been doing daily television journalism for 16 consecutive years. "July 6, 2001 was an overwhelmingly emotional day," Pringle recalls, "but afterward there was such a sense of relief."

According to [Bruce Yaccato], the show was developed almost by accident. He had heard from [Michael Levine] that Paul Lewis, vice-president of the Discovery Channel, was on the lookout for projects that could involve Pringle. And Lewis was responsible for getting the Travel Channel up and running. "We made it up as we went along," says Yaccato. Given the lean operation, only three people went on the trips: Pringle, Yaccato and cameraman Michael Savoie.

PRINGLE'S TRAVELS: Valerie Pringle meets the pigeons in Venice's St. Marks Square, one of 10 exotic destinations in her new travel show, Valerie Pringle Has Left The Building.