Put an Aussie with a good yarn in front of a camera and magic happens.
Phillip McCulloch proved that back in 2009 when he was interviewed by police after running naked through a stranger’s wedding in the middle of a bender with his mates.
The story (which starts around the three-minute mark) involves being chased by “sheilas with sticks”, accusations of betrayal from good mates and hitting power poses out the sunroof of some bloke’s car.
It all started at a Bottle-O that was selling four-packs of 9% drinks for $3. He and his mates bought a “carton” of those before eventually driving past the wedding and getting the kit off.
It’s seriously a great yarn made better by the confident and joyful storytelling from Phillip taking place in the meant-to-be-serious environment of a police interview.
All hopes of a stern front from the cops go out the window at the 5.30 mark of the interview, when Phillip takes back saying “what the fuck?” and replaces it with the much more family-friendly “what the bloody devil?”. The stone-cold cop on the left can't help but crack a giggle, shattering the serious façade.
Phillip reaches legend status ten minutes into the interview. When asked if he and the fellas drank any of the 9%ers on the way to their destination, Phillip reveals they “bloody skulled heaps of them”.
"We probably had a few" - Phillip McCulloch, 2009
They didn’t just sit down and drink them either. Phillip himself stood up in the car they were hitchhiking in so his upper body was out of the sunroof. He then poured the drinks down his throat from an arm's length away while hitting poses just like the kid riding the dragon does in Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 film ‘The Never Ending Story’.
If you don’t like that, you don’t like Aussies, crack-up interviews, or bender stories. If that’s the case, you might be in the wrong place.
Last year we put together a list of all the great Aussie news clips over the years. If Phillip’s interview had gained prominence from being on the TV news, best believe it was easily making that list.
