MONTREAL - A group of Montreal radio pranksters picked up the phone and got through to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon Thursday.
The Masked Avengers, or the Justiciers Masquees as Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel, are known in their native French, pretended to be Prime Minister Stephen Harper and successfully bluffed six levels of UN staffers to get through to Ban Ki-Moon.
The jokers proceeded to talk nonsense, apologizing for missing the 67th UN General Assembly this week, “talking fetus,” and “combing hair with crazy glue.”
“But I sent you my pet John Baird,” said the prankster, referring to his Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The jokers then suggested that the United Nations support the return of the Quebec Nordiques.
Ban Ki-Moon replied, “I don’t understand, are you the Premier of Quebec?”
“No this is Pauline, don’t worry,” he said, mixing English with French.
Ban Ki-Moon then recognized that it was a prank call, so he finished the call politely but swiftly.
Prime Minister Harper’s Director of Communications Andrew MacDougall proved to be a good sport after hearing that his boss had been imitated by the pranksters.
“Well done,” he wrote on Twitter “The PM always enjoys taking time to talk to people about QC, but we still prefer to know in advance.”
The Audette-Trudel team has tricked about 50 famous people, including businessman Bill Gates, former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. politician Sarah Palin..
“Some politicians are less protected than performers,” explained prankster Marc-Antoine Audette.
“As we spoke with people from various departments of the UN, we were asked for our phone number. I gave the number for our CHOI radio station,” said Audette.
“They obviously didn’t check the number,” he said.
