It’s been a bloody whirlwind 24 hours in the life of the now-legendary seagull story – the one that swept the internet all yesterday and told a humble story of a lone man playing a prank-to-end-all-pranks on an unsuspecting passenger train in the outer Melbourne suburb of Frankston.
The plot of the saga thickened late yesterday, when a caller phoned into Veronica & Lewis on Triple J and claimed to be able to verify the story with an eye-witness account.
The caller claimed to have personally witnessed the incident which, according to him, took place in 2007. There was no video or photo evidence taken because, as the caller claims, “we didn’t have smartphones or anything back then.” A claim that is *technically* false, given the 1st generation iPhone was released in July of 2007, and video capturing was available on the first models via 3rd party apps.
The caller also claims to have a friend who can corroborate the story, but unfortunately that unknown person is “off in South America doing god knows what.”
Sure, m8.
Today, the mystery began to unravel even further.
Tenured comedian Marty Fields claims that not only is the story not true, but it’s a decades-old joke that’s been told and re-told countless times – including on TV by his father Maurie Fields during an old episode of Hey Hey! It’s Saturday!
The late, great Maurie regularly performed comedy on the show in his segment The Great Aussie Joke, and Marty asserts that the seagull gag in question was delivered by Maurie in the late 80s. Marty Fields spoke to Mashable Australia to clear the air.
“Yep, he did. Circa 1989. Slightly different form but effectively the same joke. This current version doesn’t really have a tag (punchline).”
“It used to end, ‘…and the train took off with the birds inside. Then the bloke pulled out another pack of fish ‘n chips and started eating [and said] ‘Lucky they were only after my wife’s dinner”.”
“Not a particularly strong gag but there you go.”
No footage of Maurie delivering the joke on the air has been found, it should be stated.
Chris Harrigan, the author of the original post, also provided a comment in response to the Fields’ family’s claims.
“Never in my 30 years have I been accused of watching ‘Hey Hey It’s Saturday.’ Understandably, I take such slanderous allegations very seriously.”
Still, there’s no denying it. The story is very much in line with Maurie’s inimitable style.
True, nah, or are we driving this into the dirt?
At this stage, it’s probably a little of all three.
