Penny for thinking up Vernon K
Last week I was rabbiting on about what a good thing Vernon Koekemoer was, but that I thought the real heroes of this mulleted Internet phenomenon were the bright sparks who invented him.
So I suggested we should send them money — but I wrote that I didn’t know who them were.
Without further ado, one Damian Armstrong e-mailed to claim the kudos.
I spoke to Damian and asked him to e-mail me the nitty gritty of how he came to create Koekemoer.
Damian, a self-employed director and writer and something called an underground DJ, acknowledged that it was his mate, Anikesh Ramani, who first brought Vernon to his notice.
We now know the exact date — even time — when Vernon Koekemoer was born: 10.55am on Wednesday March 12 2008.
At that precise moment Anikesh e-mailed Damian with a picture of the muscular mullet attending an East Rand knees-up called H2O.
Quick as a flash, Damian responded: “Awesome! Dr Frankenstein put his monster in a time machine/ transmogrifier (forgetting that he’d left his niece’s Ken doll and some depilatory cream in there) sent him through the 1980s and on towards Benoni.”
Damian told Anikesh he reckoned they had to get Vernon (real name Cassie Booyse) onto Facebook because, as he e-mailed, he reckoned Vernon could be “huge”.
The two, plus Damian’s girlfriend, Sharon Becker, then got all their Photoshop-capable friends to start work on Vernon, putting him in all sorts of unlikely situations and settings.
Carried on Damian: “From there on I got no work done. I spent the whole day in tears, unable to stop laughing at the brilliant situations and places that Vernon found himself in. By the end of the day we had 50 members and 25 pics! Wow! This thing is huge. Surely it won’t get much bigger, I thought.”
What Damian and Anikesh then went through were several of the emotions and challenges faced by suddenly successful entrepreneurs. Success threatened to engulf them and their lives; they couldn’t think of anything else.
Then the copycats arrived. Then some people became jealous of their success. Some got nasty.
Then Damian and Anikesh became really worried: what if the real Vernon’s wife had just left him; what if he was suicidal? What if he was a brute with no sense of humour whose friends were all hit men or libel lawyers?
At one stage they even tried to kill off Koekemoer. Damian was pooping himself, but eventually he plucked up the courage to phone the real Vernon Koekemoer:
“Is that Cassie Booyse?” (It is!) Damian decided not to give his name. “I don’t know if you’ve seen that … erm … you know that Internet thing about Vernon? Well, I kinda, like, started that group.”
Silence. Then Cassie laughs. “Ag no man, when these guys told me about it I thought, ‘What’s going on here? Who’s having a laugh at me?’”
Damian asked him if he was upset. He wasn’t — he thought it was quite funny.
Damian writes: “We chat for some time. He’s not sure he wants to pursue the fame thing. He’s going fishing on the long weekend and is going to think about it.
“I call Sharon and then Anikesh. They’re both over the moon. This guy is bigger and better than any of the exaggerations online. Our consciences can rest — the monster we created is no such thing.”
Damian, Anikesh and Sharon relax and enjoy the rest of the Vernon ride. They’ve created a massive, if short-lived, entrepreneurial success, but they still haven’t made a cent out of it.
So I suggest why don’t we (me) pass the hat around?
If they give me their bank account, I can publish the details and see if people want to cough up a few bob for the laughs.
Damian thinks about it, but then comes back to me to say they don’t want to be seen to be scrounging. I respect that. Vernon Koekemoer would respect that.
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