A South African disc jockey has pulled off one of the all-time great practical jokes this morning after tricking a top-rating breakfast radio duo into taking a fake call from Tom Cruise.
2Day FM spent $150,000 promoting an exclusive Cruise interview over the Australia Day long weekend and encouraged listeners to text questions to be asked of the superstar.
An elaborate audio segment preceded the much-hyped call but, instead of Cruise's trademark growl, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O were met with a South African-accented voice that told them they had been pranked.
Darren "Whackhead" Simpson enacted the elaborate hoax after hearing that Kyle had mocked him during a broadcast in November.
"I got a whole bunch of emails from South Africans who live in Sydney these days and they said that Kyle played one of my pranks on the radio and then made fun of me," Simpson told ninemsn from Johannesburg.
"I don't know what was actually said but I knew that he didn't say very nice things, so I decided to slowly plot a plan to get back at him."
Simpson began a two-month program of research and planning by checking who the 2Day FM duo had and hadn't interviewed over the years, eventually determining that Cruise was the most attractive celebrity not yet in their resume.
He then used Cruise's new film Valkyrie as an excuse to offer a promotional interview.
"I've got a few friends who are very good with computers so they set up an authentic looking United Artists email in the name of the guy who is actually the film studio's marketing executive," he said.
"E-mails went back and forth setting the interview up: they asked for a pre-record and I said no, Tom only does live interviews.
"Then they asked if they could interview him face-to-face when they got to LA because apparently they're heading over there soon, so we said no but offered to get them into a party he was hosting instead.
"They threw me a few curveballs and it was tough reeling them in, but I got them in the end."
After the show, Sandilands – who is also one of the judges on Australian Idol - admitted Simpson had gotten them good.
"We ran some stuff about s***** gotcha calls and he was amongst them, so I guess he was a bit upset about that," he said.
"He did really well to get on air but we were a bit disappointed that he didn't do anything once he was on there: we would have had an impersonator lined up and everything.
"But he was very clever to get that far … only a radio person could do that.
"Jackie really wants to get back at him – I reckon she'll chip away at it for months – but I'm trying to organise a trip to the Oscars."
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