To prank or not ?
View(s):With April Fool’s Day falling tomorrow Duvindi Illankoon speaks to the master of Morning Show prank calls – E FM’s Gem on some tips on pranking …
Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. April Fool’s Day is tomorrow and you’re more than likely to find yourself locked into a washroom or on the receiving end of a ‘you’ve won a million rupees’ call. Unless you’re Gem from E FM, that is. In which case you’ll be polishing up your Indian accent and perfecting your Optimus Prime voice, because this is what keeps Gem going. In fact, this is what he does for a living!
Pic by Indika Handuwela
Contrary to expectations, The Morning Showgram host hasn’t been pulling pranks for as long as he can remember. In fact he thought pranking people on air was ‘a cheap laugh’ till co-host Mark bullied him into doing it. Like most, Gem fell into radio quite unexpectedly. He’ll tell you that his life’s dream was to be an economist or a lawyer, however, when it seemed like a slim chance of actually working out, he decided to do the cool thing and become a music producer.
A stint in Singapore’s School of Audio Engineering followed. He flew back to Sri Lanka and came back to earth with a bump when he realized that music producing, in keeping with popular myth, was a rather expensive industry to be in. “Probably should’ve looked into that one before,” he grins. Luckily for him, Mark was an old friend who didn’t shudder at the thought of having Gem co-host his morning show.
No one was more surprised than Gem when it became apparent that his was a personality cut out for radio. That was when Mark began nagging him to start pranking their callers and their friends. “I hated it at first!” he says. “I thought it was a cheap laugh, probably because whatever I was exposed to had always been.
But yeah, Mark just kept at it and finally I gave in. Now it’s quite fun, actually.” The two would either pull numbers randomly out of that week’s advertising supplements or more often, their listeners would nominate ‘prankees’ for them. The nominations can end up being a little unpredictable though! “I once pranked this guy, and then at the end when I told him it was a joke he just sighs and goes ‘this is the THIRD time, Gem!’. Then there was this other time, when I prank called this lady pretending to be a soothsayer and she started spilling out all her marriage troubles to me. Needless to say that never got aired.”
Remember the Transformers prank? “I called this electrical company up and pretended to be Optimus Prime,” he laughs with glee. “Except the guy who answered didn’t know who that was. There’s a bummer. Then he puts me through to this other guy who adopts an accent halfway through and then we’re both rambling on in crazy accents and aiyo, it was madness!”
The accents are probably his favourite sort of prank to pull. Irish, Indian, Optimus Prime’s Cybertron (-ese?)…you name it, Gem’s probably done it. They haven’t always been successful, but thankfully the pranks are not pulled live. “The worst thing is not really a prank backfiring, but when you keep the phone and think ‘man, I should’ve said that’,” says Gem.
It’s important to know where to draw the line when it comes to their line of work, he says. “We don’t put a person down. We don’t humiliate them. And if it reaches the point where they’re getting uncomfortable then we end the prank and hopefully they laugh!”
As for plans for this April Fool’s Day-well let’s just leave it to Gem, who rubs his hands together in glee and winks “oh, but darling, everyday is an April Fool’s Day!”
Write to the Morning Showgram duo on gem@efm.lk if you want them to do your dirty work for you this April Fool’s Day!
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