Fonejacker

Q&A with Kayvan Novak

An interview with the creator of Fonejacker.

Not being 18 with an unhealthy interest in MySpace and Facebook, E4's Fonejacker was never going to sit comfortably at the top of my list of programmes to watch. Yet it surreptitiously made it onto my viewing list thanks to a very bloody viral.

Normally I either press 'delete' or simply move on, but something compelled me to click. There followed 30 minutes (an awfully long time to be spending in a virtual world) of eye-opening creativity and amusement. It is a very funny show, despite the sometimes rather cliched jokes, and Fonejacker's real magic is its ability to cleverly hack into people's ultimate desire for humour. It ticked all the right boxes without realising that it was doing so.

Telephone Terrorist

The Fonejacker answers some odd questions.

The only real laugh I got from this terrible programme was when Terry Tibbs, when haggling over a freezer, was met with one rascal quipping 'you can have it for £1250 if you talk to me in a woman's voice.' The laugh soon wore off because The Fonejacker carried on talking.

The most annoying thing about this show is that it could be good. Prank phone calls, as purile as they are, are sometimes great. However, the person doing it needs to be a funny fucker. This show isn't funny at all. It really isn't. It isn't worth giving a chance it's that poor.

Most people with a sense of humour have prank called someone in the past, but they have been well and truly trounced by the wind-up calls dished out on Fonejacker, which aired for the first time last night on E4.

Fonejacker a show built entirely from recordings of real prank calls, all performed by the same actor. If you have ever prank called a friend, you'll know that it's often difficult to hoodwink them for long, as they invariably pick your voice out from the fake one you're trying to do. However, The Fonejacker is unlikely ever to have had that problem as he's capable of a wide variety of convincing voices for his array of characters.

Each prank call is accompanied visually by a mix of cartoons, a hilarious way of flashing images up to give different meaning to random words, and video recordings taken through the window of wherever shop The Fonejacker is calling. It is these ways of jazzing up the conversations between The Fonejacker and the infuriated/bemused victim that will probably give the show a bit of longevity. It was bloody hilarious, so let's hope that happens.