Mocking the Maverick
'The masked avengers' and the great Sarah Palin prank
How two Montreal radio DJs were able to persuade vice-presidential candidate's staff that 'French President' wanted to wish her well
MICHAEL POSNER
With a file from Associated Press
November 3, 2008
Talk about good timing.
On the eve of the historic U.S. presidential election, two Montreal radio DJs are the toast of the comedy world today for their weekend telephone prank on U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Sébastien Trudel and Marc-Antoine Audette, co-hosts of Les Cerveaux de l'info, the drive-home show on Montreal's CKOI-FM, spent five days last week persuading Ms. Palin's Republican Party staff that French President Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to speak with her by phone and wish her well in tomorrow's election.
"When we started to work on the idea last Tuesday," Mr. Audette said in an interview yesterday, "we thought it would be mission impossible. But after about a dozen calls, we started to realize it might work, because her staff didn't know the name of the French President. They asked us to spell it."
Mr. Audette said there are two important tricks in making these kinds of pranks succeed. "First, you have to be extremely convincing in the preliminary calls to aides, and second, you never leave a callback number. You always arrange to place the call at a designated time."
With Ms. Palin, Mr. Audette and Mr. Trudel, known to their Quebec fans as les justiciers masqués (the masked avengers), pretended to be aides to Mr. Sarkozy and worked their way up over the week from relatively low-level staff in the Alaska Governor's office to more senior campaign organizers.
Only on Saturday did they learn that Ms. Palin had agreed to take the call. "We were in paradise," said Mr. Audette.
"Of course we always say at the end it's a prank. For us, it's only a joke. We're not trying to make political statements."
Tracey Schmitt, Ms. Palin's spokeswoman, said in a statement that "Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy, and other celebrities in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie."
The Élysée Palace in Paris had no comment yesterday on the incident. Barack Obama's campaign spokesman, Robert Gibbs, commenting on the prank, said: "I'm glad we check out our calls before we hand the phone to Barack Obama."
The full telephone interview lasted about six minutes and was edited only to remove dead air.
In it, Mr. Audette - as President Sarkozy - alluded to his "special American adviser Johnny Hallyday" (better known as a French rock 'n' roll singer), "the prime minister of Canada Stef Carse," (better known as a Québécois country and western singer who recorded Achy Breaky Heart) and the "prime minister of Quebec, Mr. Richard Z. Sirois," (better known as a popular Québécois comedian). Ms. Palin never seemed to know the difference.
Mr. Trudel said in an interview Saturday that he couldn't believe how long Ms. Palin seemed to be taken in by the prank. "She never, never suspected anything," Mr. Trudel said. "It was a little bit frightening."
The DJ duo, who met as classmates at the city's Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf and have been on-air jokesters for a decade, are masters of the prank call. They've previously used the telephone to mock the likes of Britney Spears, Jacques Chirac, Bill Gates, Ozzy Osbourne, Tiger Woods and Mick Jagger.
In August of 2005, pretending to be Celine Dion, they managed to get Britney Spears to take a call. "Ms. Dion" told Ms. Spears that Tiger Woods had agreed to sing a duet with her called Let's Make a Hole in One.
In January of 2006, they conned then French president Jacques Chirac into taking a call from a man he believed was new Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The BBC apparently rated this prank one of the 30 best moments in radio history.
Last year, they fooled Mr. Sarkozy himself, again by impersonating Mr. Harper.
In 1995, another Quebec DJ, Pierre Brassard, posed as then Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien and succeeded in getting the Queen on the phone. He then asked her to record a speech in support of Canadian unity before the Quebec referendum.
Earlier, also posing as Mr. Chrétien, Mr. Brassard got through to then Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
Mr. Audette said Mr. Brassard was the duo's chief inspiration. "I have a great admiration for him. Now, he's a very successful comedian and actor. Maybe that will happen to us too."
Yesterday afternoon, the two DJs, with manager Mike Belleau, flew to New York for a scheduled appearance today on the CBS morning show.
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