Home News Viral seagull prank most likely an old Aussie joke

Viral seagull prank most likely an old Aussie joke

Image Credit Pedestrian

Yesterday, a now legendary, seagull story surfaced on the internet, and it quickly went viral because well, it was the tale of such an epic, epic prank.

Here’s the post:

Image Credit Facebook
Image Credit Facebook

We honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry, both I guess.

As any good story, it came with its sceptics, many picked apart its details to determine if it carried any sense of truth to it. The results of that experiment being inconclusive at best.

Yesterday the plot thickened 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 claims to have witnessed the prank which according to him actually occurred in 2007 and he can’t prove it because “we didn’t have smartphones or anything back then,” but we argue that the iPhone was released in July of 2007.

The caller then also claimed to have a friend who can corroborate the story but he conveniently is “off in South America doing god knows what.”

Okay mate.

And today, the plot thickens even further into what we think is a very anticlimactic revelation.

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 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.”
And of course, no footage of Maurie delivering the joke can be found.
There you go, do what you will with the evidence, but we’re calling this one false. What a shame.