How did the duck issue come about?Patrick: I was approached by the Grey's...oh yes, there's even a rumour going around the station and around some other circles that I was paid a small fortune by the advertising agency. Of course the real sad thing is that I can't stop them from saying such things.
So, you say that it's just a rumour?
Patrick: Ya. They offered to buy me a beer. Anyway, the advertising agency approached me a few weeks before. They said, April Fools' day is coming, and we got our anniversary coming up; we thought of this prank, would you like to be involved with it? And I looked at them, and I said, it sounds like a good joke.
So we planned for it. But a few days later, I panicked, because I thought that the prank would never work. My apprehension was that they chose ducks. I said to them, "Ducks? We eat the damn things, so who's going to give a shit?" And they said, "No, don't worry, it will work, it will work." As the days wore on, they became pretty sceptical themselves. Anyway, they said, "We have already done all the press ad, we will have to go with the ducks. What else do you want fixed?" So I said, instead of keeping it till Wednesday (March 27), I will try a little preamble on Tuesday (March 26).
So on Tuesday, on the programme, I made reference to the ad that Grey placed for the ducks. I asked people to call and talk about the ducks in the ad (According to The Star, Patrick Teoh wondered aloud over the air as to what the ducks would be required to do and casually mentioned that in Australia, he was told, an advertising company had put ducks on a barbecue hotplate to make them dance.) Nobody called.
I
promo the thing for about two hours, trying to get people to speak up against animal
cruelty. After that programme, we sat around and said, "Oh, dear." We wrung
our hands, we were worried about it. We said, "Well, what to do, everything
is set. May as well go ahead and do it-lah."I was prepared to allocate 30 minutes into it to generate any interest. So, we decided that we will do it for 30 minutes and kill it. We started with a call from the girl, and the pandemonium broke loose-lah.
As originally planned, we had a lady call up and talk about the ad agency where she worked at, and said that they were using hot plates to make ducks dance. You know, to see if anybody would react. This girl called up to reveal this cruelty to animal---the ducks act. She was saying, "I work for this agency, and I am doing this (calling the radio) because I can't stand it anymore. I may loose my job if they discover who I am." We were quite upset with her actually. There was a script for her to read, and she did it very badly. Coupled with things that happened the previous day, or in this case, what did not happen the previous day, we were saying to ourselves, "Oh, dear, shit, we are in deep shit now."
On 29 March (Wednesday), that was when things got out of hand.
To think about it now, I suppose, a lot of people were upset not because of ducks, but because of people. Because the previous day, when we talk about cruelty to ducks, nobody reacted. But when a girl, supposedly, calling up at the risk of her job and everything---about the so called dastardly act, people began to react.
What did the Grey people say after the strong response after that?
Patrick: I think they were, just as everybody else, quite surprise with the amount of reaction that we got.
So, all the people involved were there in the studio?
Patrick: Ya.
So the goodwill to animal donation was also part of the plan?
Patrick: Yes, although, I did say to them that the sum (RM2000) could have been bigger.
Shall we let the duck issue rest?
Patrick: (Laugh). Did you read Marina Mahathir's article on how Malaysians don't have a sense of humour, entitled "No joke, we can't laugh at ourselves." And apparently, she got a lot of flak for that too.
Tell us something about Patrick Teoh, the person.
Patrick: Hmm, good question. (Pause)
Patrick Teoh is a 49-year-old out-of-work DJ, wishing and hoping that things would be a little different before he gets too old to really enjoy what he does, to do what he enjoys best.
What would he enjoy best?
Patrick: Being on the radio. Radio has always been the medium I like very much, although I didn't start off wanting to become a radio DJ. I fell into it by accident. Once I got into it, I thought it was a wonderful medium.
How did you fall into it?
Patrick: After school, I was looking for a job. I heard this advertisement on Redifussion that said they had a vacancy for an announcer. At the time, announcer, salesman, whatever, I didn't care. I wrote in for it, and got the job. That was how it all started.
When was this?
Patrick: This was in August of '64. I took the job as just a job. I had no previous ambitions to be a radio DJ. I never listened to the radio, I never wrote a request. Never even bought a record. I was 19 then.
What was the first programme you did?
Patrick: Can't remember-lah. Some silly programme that involved announcing the time and pressing a button: "You're listening to Redifussion, the time is nine o'clock." The kind of things that we used to do before.
What about Kee Huat's Fantastic Facts and Fancies?
Patrick: That came much later. I suppose because I have been in the business for so long, people and I myself get it chronologically all mixed up. The first show that gained me national prominence was called Cool and Swinging Show, which was a half-hour radio programme sponsored by Coca-Cola. This was on the Blue Network, and it was also syndicated to Singapore; also at that time, broadcast in Sabah and Sarawak which was considered a big deal then because they didn't have live programmes those days. That programme ran for almost 11 years. And that was the programme that sort of made me popular with the radio listeners, but that programme was recorded. It wasn't a live programme.
While doing that also, I participated in a Fanfare magazine poll. Fanfare ran a most popular DJ poll by its readers, and I won the first one.
What year was that?
Patrick: Can't remember already-ah. After that show, then, I did many other sponsored shows, but the most well known one was the Kee Huat's Fantastic Facts and Fancies which I did for six or seven years by the time they took it off the air.
That show, I think, is to date the longest running commercially sponsored programme on Malaysian radio. It must have ran for 25 years or something like that. Everybody in radio broadcasting had done the programme before. It was anchored by people like Faridah Merican, Constance Haslam, Leslie Dawson, everybody had done it before-lah. I was the last guy who did it.
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