The most cheering story I’ve read in weeks was the one in today’s New Zealand Herald about how a pair of lesbians turned the tables on the oicks behind a Valentine’s Day win-a-divorce stunt promoted by Auckland shock-jock radio station The Rock.
Hosts Jono Pryor and Robert Taylor (I’m starting to suspect that anyone who calls himself Jono is bound to be a moron) thought a good way of marking the traditional lovers’ day would be to find someone disaffected enough by his or her relationship that they’d be prepared to go live on air telling their partner they wanted a divorce. In return for this wizard wheeze, The Rock would pay the legal costs of the split.
But in a glorious case of poetic justice, the pranksters were out-pranked. A woman calling herself Sam phoned the station saying she wanted to end her relationship with her husband, “Andy”. But when Taylor dialled the number to give “Andy” the bad news, he was nonplussed to find himself talking to a woman and wondered if he had misdialled.
“No, this isn’t Andy. It wasn’t Andy to start with, you f***ing idiots,” said a woman who identified herself as Sam’s wife, Amber.
The Herald report went on: After a couple of seconds of silence, Pryor began to speak but Amber interrupted: “So how does it feel you two – how does it feel like, being on the other end of something?
“We sabotaged you, you dickheads.”
Amber and “Sam” then proceeded to shred the two hosts, who seemed – probably for the first time in their radio careers – lost for words. Amber said she wondered why more women weren’t in lesbian relationships “with dickheads like you around”. Quite so.
When he eventually recovered from the realisation that he’d been suckered, Taylor had the temerity to sound indignant. “You’ve been lying to us!” he whined to Sam.
Fantastic! Game, set and match. It was richly fitting that the bozos from The Rock, who clearly relish the thought of publicly humiliating others, should themselves be made to look like the prats they are. Will they learn anything from the experience? Probably not.
I’ve never listened to The Rock (just as I’ve never bought a pizza from Hell, another company that specialises in puerile publicity stunts), but I’ve read enough about the station to conclude that if you added up the IQs of all its hosts, plus those of all its thumb-sucking jockstrap male listeners, you’d be hard-pressed to reach double digits.
This was the best radio I’ve heard in years, though not for the reason Taylor and Pryor imagined. You can hear it here:
http://www.therock.net.nz/Win-A-Divorce-The-Call/tabid/381/articleID/18242/Default.aspx
Fantastic. Finally someone dishes something back to the execrable New Zealand media.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for those revelling in such alleged sweet justice the whole set-up was probably a stunt of it's very own. It certainly got chins wagging.. didn't it?
ReplyDeleteThat possibility occurred to me, but having heard the audio I think the jocks were genuinely caught out. And if it was itself a stunt, it was a very peculiar one. Radio stations aren't in the habit of inviting public ridicule.
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