That Guy Is A Douche Bag

I work in a top 10 market.  One night, my intern had said **CENSORED** was a douche bag on the air during one of our discussions.  After about 5 minutes the studio hotline rang and I answered it.  It was the celebrity that the intern bashed on the radio.  I knew this had the potential to be radio gold so I hit record on the voxpro.

The celebrity wanted to know who called him a douche bag.  We were all in the studio on speakerphone so everyone in the studio was listening in on this conversation.  I took one look at the intern and he had a look of pure terror on his face.  He's a young guy and I always speculated that he was a coward.

He quickly maned up and said "I am the one who said it."  During situations like this I would normally intervene, but this time the intern was on his own.  The celebrity told the intern stuff like "Bitch, you don't know me.  Don't you ever disrespect me like that again or I will come to your job and beat the shit out of you."

I have never recalled another time in my entire career when it was that quiet in the studio.  Then, something unexpected happened.  The intern told the celebrity "Fuck you.  I am apart of this show and I will say whatever the fuck I want.  If you wanna come beat my ass, come do it now.  Just know, I will sue the shit out of you if you touch me."

It takes a lot to shock me, but that right there made my jaw drop.  "Holy shit!"  I said.  The great thing about all this was that I was recording the whole thing!  I never knew the intern had balls of steel like that.  This wasn't a megastar, but he was famous.  To top it off, the celebrity was just in the news for shedding all kinds of weight and gaining muscle for an upcoming movie role.

They exchanged insults for a moment and then the celebrity started to say that he was going to get the entire show fired.  Like a jackass the intern says "We got the whole conversation recorded, ain't shit going to happen to us."

I wanted to KILL him for saying that because what I feared was going to happen, happened.  The celebrity said "You do not have my permission to use this call on the air or on your web page."  It wasn't long after that when the celebrity hung up.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

By him saying that rendered the audio useless.  What good was it if I couldn't air it?

I bitched out the intern because I was angry. After a little while I calmed down and told the intern that I was impressed by what he had said.  He replied with "I am an unpaid intern, so I got nothing to lose.  If he did come to beat me up I would have sold the story to TMZ for money.  Then, I would have sued and got paid in court."

Even though he ruined what could have been the best phoner of my career, my respect grew for the man that day.