A Plethora Of Pranks

BOSTON (TNA) – So you want to be a jokester and pull off monumental pranks like Sir John Hargrave? Good luck trying to top some of the stunts he has pulled on various celebrities, corporations and government officials. Here are a few highlights of his hornswoggling chronicled in his book, “Prank the Monkey.”

The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller: Hargrave staged a public appearance by the King of Pop in Boston. After anonymously tipping off fan sites and the media that Michael Jackson would be arriving in Beantown, Hargrave printed business cards that “made” him the pop star’s media coordinator, then hired several actors, including Hugo, a 23-year-old midget who would pose as Jacko’s young son.

The crew created a media frenzy and ended up making it in as VIPs to a black-tie fundraiser where Gladys Knight was performing. Hargrave and his actors narrowly escaped when people started questioning their authenticity. By the next morning, every news station in Boston reported that a fake Michael Jackson had made his way in and out of the city.

Andrew Miller

One of Hargrave's favorite pranks was the time he called up a notorious spammer at 4:30 a.m. and read him the entire anti-spam message he had received 43,000 times and then asked how he could cut down on his spam. The irritated spammer promised to personally unsubscribe Hargrave from his e-mail list and then hung up on him.

Congress Is a Joke: Wondering whether politicians had a sense of humor, Hargrave decided it would be fun to prank 100 members of the U.S. Senate. Posing as a 10-year-old boy working on a social studies assignment, he wrote them each a letter asking for their favorite joke.

Altogether, Hargrave received jokes and funny anecdotes from 15 senators – some of which actually made him laugh, including this knee-slapper from fellow Naughty American, former Sen. Larry Craig: “Why did the farmer plow his field with a steamroller? Because he planned to grow mashed potatoes!”

Good Morning, Vietspam: Hargrave grew tired of receiving get-rich-quick e-mail spam from New Zealand real estate entrepreneur Dolf de Roos (he estimated the number of e-mails to be around 43,000) so he decided to get even. After calling de Roos’ firm and discovering he was out of town speaking at seminars, Hargrave did some Googling and found that his victim was giving a speech at a hotel in La Jolla, Calif.

He tricked the hotel into telling him that de Roos was in fact staying there as well, and then phoned him at 4 a.m. the next morning. In a five-minute phone message Hargrave read de Roos the entire spam message he had received 43,000 times and then asked him how he can cut down on his spam.

Tired of the predawn annoyance, de Roos promised to personally unsubscribe Hargrave from his e-mail list, then eventually hung up on him.

Starbucking the System: With Starbucks practically running out of land to add to its 10,000-plus locations across the globe, Hargrave thought it would be interesting to see whether the coffee chain would respond positively to his written proposal for an express-serve franchise within existing Starbucks franchises.

Well, it didn’t. But that didn’t deter him; he decided Starbucks needed to actually see how well it would work. He brought a cameraman, a coffeemaker and a cappuccino maker into a Starbucks, bought a bag of coffee, then sat down in plushy chairs and made some java. He then asked customers whether they wanted a “top-off” until two manager-types ordered them to stop filming and brewing, and then called the cops.