“You can slide into my DMs any time, Fatman” might look like a line from a fake show in the background of 30 Rock, but these are actual words our prime minister said yesterday.
On Melbourne breakfast radio show Fifi, Fev and Nick — which adheres to the format required of breakfast radio by featuring two men who look like the first guy your ex goes out with after you (they are 80% T-shirt) and a woman to react to their wackiness — Anthony Albanese was joined by Fatman Scoop, who, as per his official website, is an “American rapper, promoter and radio personality famed for his on-stage rough, raw loud voice”.
“Ah, Fatman again,” the prime minister said — actually out loud in real life.
Fatman Scoop: “Sir, I love you. I respect you. But I need you to DJ with me, sir … This is not a threat, sir, but if you do not do this, I’m getting my Australian citizenship and I’m running against you.”
Prime Minister: “I hate to give you the big tip, but I think I can possibly stop that happening.”
This is only the latest in Fatman Scoop’s inexplicable history of interactions with the highest office in Australian parliamentary politics.
In August, Scoop initially bailed up Albanese on another breakfast radio show, this one called Stav, Abby and Matt (these are generated via AI now, I believe), to demand he join him on stage, having heard from The Project that the PM DJs.
And of course, most consequentially, back in September 2018, we all got our first indication that then new PM Scott Morrison might not be the master communicator we’d all taken him to be when he tweeted out “QT was fire. Good work team”. This was accompanied by a video of his MPs (except Julia Banks, for reasons we no longer need to speculate about) raising their hands in unison, looped so that it synced up with the call-and-response chorus of Scoop’s eccentric early-2000s masterpiece “Be Faithful”: “If you got a 100-dollar bill, get your hands up / you got a 50-dollar bill, get your hands up”, and so on.
Unfortunately for Morrison, like many songs encouraging one to throw their hands up, it has a little more on its mind. The song is replete with references to “chickenheads” and “hitting it from the back” and asks “Who fuckin’ tonight?” about six times. Morrison deleted the tweet and apologised, and we never did get clarification from the late Kimberley Kitching as to whether she followed Scoop on Twitter because of the controversy or whether she was just a fan. Scoop, for his part, said he was “humbled” to see his music used this way.
We await the affable hype man’s next impact on Australian politics.
