The Red Green character and show were actually based upon a real show on the CBC, The Red Fisher Show.

Red Fisher would invite special guests--usually baseball player Ted Williams, but also hockey players Eddie Shack and Gordie Howe and others--on fishing and hunting trips and would film the proceedings with an old hand-held Super 8 camera. They were short films with no sound. The concept was that they would sit in the mythical "Scuttlebutt Lodge" and recount their adventure and joke and laugh with each other as the films played and they would get drunker and drunker as the show went on. Spent many a Saturday morning watching the show as a kid. Old Red was one of the first TV fishermen to promote catch-and-release on his show.

John Candy also did a send-up of Red Fisher with his Gil Fisher character, on "The Fishin' Musician" bits on SCTV. Same sort of concept except he would take the musical guests on the show out on "silent film" hunting and fishing trips which involved little of either. Remember he took Joe Walsh & band on a "snipe hunt" and The Ramones on a fishing trip with a shore lunch, where Gil Fisher barbecued a steak because he hated the taste of fish.