The Spoonman

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The Spoonman is the name of an Australian late night talk-back radio program and the on-air name adopted by its host Brian Carlton.

1 The Man
2 The Radio Program
3 External links

[edit] The Man

[edit] Name

The Spoonman's real name is Brian Carlton. He is also known as "Spoony", "The Spoon", "Spooner", "The Spoon Pig", "Spoonfield", "Señor Spoon", "The Spoonster" or "Le Spoon Extraodinaire". Spoonman is so named as he is a self-professed 'stirrer' and it also reflects his penchant for spooning (see "Fork Girl").

[edit] Career

Brian Carlton has worked on a number of Sydney radio stations, including 2UE and 2GB. He currently hosts a controversial, syndicated late night talk and music show on Austereo's Triple M network [1]. It's not the first time he has hosted this program, as he was also the syndicated late-night host on the Triple M network in the late 1990s.

[edit] Relationships

Divorced from his wife Knife Woman
Currently in de facto relationship with "Fork Girl".

[edit] The Radio Program

The program originates from Austereo's Sydney studios and currently broadcasts Mondays to Thursdays from 21:00 to 00:00 (midnight) Australian Eastern Time (20:30 - 23:30 in Adelaide). It is hosted by Spoony and his sidekick Garfield. Garfield is rarely heard, but sorts most of the incoming calls, e-mails and SMSs and handles a lot of the behind-the-scenes work. Garfield allegedly received his nickname because he gave a fellow staff member a copy of the movie Garfield for their kid, but was mistaken to be his demo. Garfield is also a guest of Dolphin Juice, a radio show on Triple M Sydney 10-12pm on Sunday nights. He has a small sporting segment on Dolphin Juice in which he reviews the week in sport. Garfield allegedly wishes to play a part in the "Star Trek Commander", where he says he would leave the Triple M studios to go and play a minor role in.

Listeners are able to contribute to the show by phone, SMS, e-mail or via the form on the Triple M website. Throughout the show, calls are the primary focus; however, Spoony will often read out selected SMSs and e-mails related to the topics of discussion. Occasionally, Spoony will lapse into his native Portuguese and begin ranting about how birds keep following him.

[edit] Segments

The show usually begins with Spoony discussing the major news topics and current events for the day and setting an agenda for discussion. Each show from Monday to Wednesday typically revolves around 2 or 3 topics. Thursdays is different because there is no limit to the topics of discussion.

The show also includes a number of regular and semi-regular segments including the Cruel Quiz, Brush with Fame, Get it off Your Chest and Spoony's War on Error.

[edit] Thursday Night Free-for-All

Every Thursday night, The Spoonman turns the show over to his listeners to talk about whatever topic they like. Although he begins the show by briefly talking about day's major news headlines, listeners are free to call in and talk about anything at all.

It is common for topics to include anything from current events to previous topics of discussion or something going on in a caller's personal life. Callers will often raise topics near the beginning of the program which are then continued by other callers wishing to give their opinions on the matter.

[edit] Cruel Quiz

The first Cruel Quiz was held on Monday, 2006-06-06^[1] and has become a regular segment, which is run most nights. This quiz comprises 5 general knowledge questions. At the beginning, 10 callers are lined up ready to play. Each caller is allowed 5 seconds to answer each question (known as the fudge factor). The short time limit is designed to reduce the ability of a caller to quickly Google the answer. In one instance, a caller by the name of Edwin attempted to Google the Austrian capital when Spoonman heard his light typing and cut him off the line. He usually does this to tell the caller off without them being able to say anything back.

If a caller answers a question correctly, they move on to the next question. If not, Spoony moves onto the next caller. The caller to answer the 5th and final question correctly wins a limited edition Spoonman singlet, with a stated value of around $105 on eBay. If a caller answers all 5 questions correctly, they will also win a bonus pack of CDs and DVDs (although this is yet to occur).

If, by the end of the set of 10 callers, there are questions remaining and the final question has not been asked, a new set of callers is lined up over the break. If the final question has been asked, but was not correctly answered, the quiz enters a penalty shoot out. In this situation, rather than lining up 10 callers, listeners are asked to keep calling and one caller will be picked of the switchboard at random after the break. This is to make it fair because the listeners have time to look up the correct answer.

Since its inception, the cruel quiz has received a fair amount disdain. On Tuesday, 2006-09-12, after Spoony received an SMS stating that everybody hates the quiz, he ran an e-mail and SMS poll to determine how people really felt about it. During the course of the evening, he mentioned that it was roughly a 50/50 split and that he would put the topic on the agenda for Wednesday's show. However, the next day, it was not put the agenda and Spoony had decided overnight to keep it anyway. Although the exact results of the poll are unknown, the fact that he decided to keep it suggests that the majority were in favour of it.

[edit] Brush with Fame

Brush with Fame is an occasional segment for callers to talk about their encounters with celebrities. Callers are encouraged to talk about who they met, how and where they met them, and what they were like when they met.

[edit] Get it off Your Chest

Get it off Your Chest is an occasional segment for callers to call in and confess their sins. Spoony has called this "radio's most dangerous confessional". The confessions can be for anything, ranging in seriousness and are typically for minor acts, such as thefts (or borrowing without returning) or lies, which have been haunting callers for a while.

In one notable and deeply disturbing segment, a caller confessed to an elaborate lie to an ex-boyfriend about giving birth to a child of his (which was actually miscarried) and subsequently putting the child up for adoption.^[2] The caller admitted to faking documentation (such as borrowing a friend's ultrasounds and photos) and that she never intends to confess the truth to him, despite losing significant sleep over it. The crux of the matter is that this person and his family have been mislead and believe that he has a child he can never meet.

[edit] Spoony's War on Error

The War on Error is dedicated to exposing errors spotted by listeners, anywhere they happen to see them. Sometimes, this will even include errors made by Spoony himself. This segment is usually run on Wednesday nights, although Spoony will occasionally mention minor errors throughout the week.

[edit] Letters to Spoony

This is an infrequent segment that Spoony does whenever a listener sends him a Letter to Spoony. The letters are usually from a listener asking for advice (from both Spoony and other listeners) about a personal issue in their lives. Such issues are often about a relationship of some kind, such as an unfaithful partner or a partner caught-in-the-act of doing something unsettling.

[edit] Editorials

Every Friday, Spoony records a set of short editorials (approx. 1 minute each) giving a final opinion of the week's major topics. They are aired on Triple M at various times over the weekend as well as being published and archived on the website for listeners to download [2].

[edit] Criticisms

The Spoonman has often been criticised by listeners claiming that he will drown out or cut off people who disagree with his opinions. He is a frequent target of prank callers who appear to be genuine, but curse or otherwise disrupt his show before being cut off.^{[citation needed]}

In August 2005, he was criticised after discussing the suicide attempt of then leader of the NSW Opposition, John Brogden, describing the method, wrist-cutting, as 'half-arsed' ^[3]. In September 2006, on the evening of Steve Irwin's death, Spoony raised issues concerning Irwin's treatment of animals, criticising him for regularly harassing and provoking them in his documentaries. He also claimed that "plenty of Aussies thought he was just a wanker".^[4] Although he has made similar statements in the past, the timing of this incident led to public outrage (including callers abusing him on air and reported death threats sent by e-mail and SMS). The statements, although they were retracted,^[5]^[6] have been a sorepoint in his career. One media producer described it as "tactless, distasteful and going too far" and promised that Carlton would not get another job in the media industry again.^{[citation needed]}