Kyle And Jackie O Have A South African Nemesis

Even though Kyle Sandilands sort of won me over a tiny bit last year during Australian Idol (I still feel dirty about it, trust me), I was nevertheless delighted to read about a South African radio DJ who successfully pranked him and his radio co-host Jackie O recently.

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.

Hmmm. Some slight hyperbole there, but okay. Let’s pretend that this story is about one of the all-time great practical jokes being executed successfully against Kyle and Jackie O during their hit breakfast show.

Go on…

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.

Zing! $150,000 is big money in radio. I think it’s safe to say that someone is getting spanked over at Austereo over this. But what inspired a South African DJ to come up with such an elaborate and expensive act of prankery? Here’s what the man himself – Darren “Whackhead” Simpson – had to say.

“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.”

And what a plan it was!

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.”

Well played, sir. And Kyle was rather gracious in defeat too, saying “he was very clever to get that far … only a radio person could do that.”

But look out, Whackhead! Apparently Jackie O really wants to get back at you, and given her brain power, you’re in for a world of hurt… if you find the sound of a vacuous woman giggling because she has nothing hurtful, that is.

MORE: Kyle and Jackie O pranked live on air