McGlade became a cast member on You Can't Do That On Television by "accident", according to fansite YCDTOTV.com. When show creator Roger Price held auditions for the show in the fall of 1978, McGlade went to the auditions only to support a friend. She had no ambitions in acting or show Business, but Price insisted that she either audition or leave. McGlade auditioned and was chosen for the show, although her friend was not.
In all, McGlade appeared in ninety-one episodes of YCDTOTV, hosting eighty-nine. (She made only a brief appearance in 1979's Episode Five, and her ninety-first appearance was the cameo in "Age".) Among cast members, only Lye (all 144 episodes) and Abby Hagyard (113) appeared in more.
While never "official" cast members, some members of McGlade's family also made cameo appearances on the show - for Example, her father in "Work, Work, Work" (1981), and her younger sister and brother in "Cosmetics" (1982). Her younger sister Lisa actually played a younger version of McGlade herself in a detention Sketch, and her younger brother, Michael, was written into a Sketch in the doctor's office in which he was brought in with a stomachache after eating all of her makeup. Lisa McGlade made a few more cameo appearances in the classroom sketches during the 1985 season.
Throughout all of the 1982 season of YCDTOTV, McGlade wore a wig. After the 1981 season was over, she cut her trademark curly dark hair short and dyed it in a punk style. (McGlade later wrote that she had cut her hair at the behest of Roger Price, who wanted her to "look different" for a pilot he was producing for Disney called Bear Rapids - which Disney ultimately declined to purchase - and that the dye job was undertaken only after she had already been asked to wear a wig on the set of YCDTOTV for the sake of continuity.) In most of her scenes in 1982, she wore a wig of human hair that somewhat resembled the hairdo she had worn in 1981. However, since she could not get that human hair wig slimed or watered, for scenes involving messy or wet slapstick (including some scenes in which she was not the one to be slimed or watered), McGlade had to wear a curly synthetic wig. McGlade later referred to the period as "the much-hated (by me) wig years", and, while noting that she did not personally remember the incident, related a story told to her by others which involved her attempting to run over one of the wigs in the studio parking lot with her motorcycle. Interestingly, McGlade was allowed to host Something Else, a Price-created game/variety show which also aired on CJOH in 1982, without the wig; for this reason, there are a number of videos and photographs in circulation from this period which show her with short, dyed hair. By 1983 McGlade's natural hair had grown back, and there was no longer a need for a wig.
As hostess, McGlade played the role of straight man, frequently dealing with annoyances and interruptions from chatty sidekick Lisa Ruddy, affectionately nicknamed "Motormouth" and stage Director Ross Ewich (Les Lye). Ross enjoyed putting the hapless McGlade in unfortunate situations, which often resulted in her being green-slimed (after being tricked into saying the trigger phrase, "I don't know"), pied, or watered. However, she was known to turn the tables on him every so often. In her interactions with Ross, she was often depicted as a sort of ombudsman or representative for her fellow cast members, articulating their concerns and speaking eloquently on the unfairness of studio policy; often the episode in question would turn, at least in part, on her efforts to persuade him to change that policy in the cast's favor - as in "Holidays" (1984), in which she takes the lead in attempting to convince him that there ought to be a "holiday for actors" (and furthermore that the cast members do indeed fall into that category), and "Marketing" (1984), in which she spearheads an effort to find something to "merchandise" so that the show can remain on the air. Ruddy's on-screen relationship with McGlade veered back and forth between antagonism and cooperation, quite often within the same episode; however, McGlade later wrote that the two "were definitely friends off cam[era], even though she was quite a bit younger than me."
McGlade's tenure as hostess continued through "Garbage", the fifth episode of the 1986 season, by which time she was the last of the original cast members, other than Lye. (Ruddy had left at the end of 1985.) Though, in keeping with YCDTOTV custom, her departure was not overtly acknowledged on camera, some viewers have suggested that her final scene – in which she and her fellow cast members were carted off the set in garbage bags – may be a tongue-in-cheek reference to it. After McGlade's departure, Alasdair Gillis served as the show's primary host through the end of the 1986 season, at which time he left the cast as well.
For nine years, McGlade was the Director of Interactive at Ontario’s public educational television network, TVOntario. During her tenure there, she was the executive in charge of production for TVO on successful and well-known Transmedia Projects such as Inside Disaster, Chocolocate, and Green Heroes. Her work has focused on social issues and she is currently Director of Interactive for Canada’s largest volunteer network, getinvolved.ca and a Senior Partner at communications firm Q Media Solutions.
