You gotta love a good old fashioned hidden-camera prank.
These days one of my favorite TV shows is Impractical Jokers, which features friends telling each other what to say and do with some pretty hilarious results. But back in the ’90s (and well before then too), the big hidden camera show was Candid Camera. And it was so popular that everybody wanted to get in on the fun.
If you grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, you probably remember the popular talk show Crook & Chase on The Nashville Network, or TNN, which eventually became Spike TV, and now Paramount Network. (Everybody still remembers Shotgun Red from TNN, right?)
But anyway, that’s beside the point. Back to Crook & Chase.
Hosted by Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase, the show focused primarily on country music, but also featured hidden camera pranks on some of country music’s biggest stars.
And one of those who got got by the show was Alan Jackson.
Crook & Chase went all out, even filming a new show to play on the TV in the TNN office. And while Alan was there, they ran a fake story reporting that Alan was set to play a role in an upcoming movie (not true) and the film was going to feature two nude scenes from Big Al (and it sounds like a full frontal shot of little Al too).
They even filmed fake reactions from fans on the street to include in the story. And many of them were hilarious:
“I don’t that at all, I think it would really take away from the wholesome family image that country music can give us.
“Oh, I think it’s great, if Kevin Costner can do it, I have no reason to doubt that Alan can do it.”
“If women go see it and like what they see, they might buy more albums.”
I mean, if Kevin Costner can do it…
Of course, this was all news to Alan, who couldn’t wait to call his manager and find out what the hell was going on.
But then, he also got call from his wife Denise wanting to know why the hell he was doing nude scenes in the upcoming California Cowboys film, and you can slowly see Alan start to think this is getting out of control.
You can almost see the wheels turning in his mind, as if half of his brain is telling him it’s just a joke, but the other half telling him he’s about to be standing in his birthday suit in front of millions of people.
But that call from Denise really sent him over the edge and got him thinking he was in the doghouse.
The mild-mannered Jackson is usually pretty unshakable, so it’s funny to watch him squirm a bit at the thought of getting naked in front of the camera.
And once they revealed the joke to him, it seems like Alan was more upset with himself for getting pranked than anything else.
Classic.
