Home
The website soon turned into ''Survivor'' central, boasting TYM's daily gossip updates and a lively discussion room, with, he says, around 1.2 million hits in one 3 week period (93 percent of them from the U.S.). Then, he claims, just to make sure everyone took notice, midway through last fall's shoot he choppered over the camp and mercy dropped 100 Ghirardelli chocolate bars.
TYM's exploits certainly have not gone unnoticed by ''Survivor'' sites Stateside. (CBS itself issued a perfunctory debunking of ''erroneous material'' on the Net.) Some U.S. websites ''have been really ticked off that an Aussie dude has been taking all their traffic,'' says Tim the Yowie Man, a 28 year old former economics student who steadfastly refuses to reveal his name. ''I've noticed a lot of websites have been using my stuff.''
The folks from ''Survivor'' 2 -- which begins airing Jan. 28 -- first became aware of TYM when, he says, he trekked some 18 hours along a crocodile inhabited riverbed to the site. He says he even made it all the way to Tribal Council -- before any contestants had arrived. However, according to ''Survivor'' exec producer Mark Burnett, ''nobody broke our perimeter.'' TYM (whose moniker refers to Australia's version of Bigfoot) says he also managed to enlist a ''Survivor'' informant, who faxed him daily call sheets of the shoot.
Among the leaks: ''One challenge [involving boomerangs] took the contestants three days to rehearse before they even filmed it,'' says TYM. ''Which only proves how much of this is a setup.'' Then there were those emails from a certain Richard Hatch. ''I can't be sure it was the real one, but he told me what a great job I was doing,'' says TYM.
TYM aims to establish himself as a kind of ''Twilight Zone'' version of Down Under's ''Crocodile Hunter.'' The offbeat adventurer says he's a cryptozoologist, a specialist in detective work on strange animals and rare phenomena. He claims he's already been on searches for Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster.
Tim the Yowie Man also claims to have completed a ''Blair Witch'' style tale in which he hunts down Australia's Yowie, and he says he has several TV pilots in the works. But with the attention he's received from his ''Survivor'' exploits, he may want to consider a career change: ''People have suggested I become a professional spoiler -- crashing TV or film sets that are top secret,'' he says. Woody Allen, consider yourself warned.
You Might Also Like
- TV Review Survivor: The Australian Outback | Ken Tucker
- TV Review Survivor: The Australian Outback | Ken Tucker
- Television News Reality TV DQ's and ousters: Michael Skupin
- Television News Smooth Operator
- Pop Culture News Hero Or Chump? | Caroline Kepnes
- Television News Aussie Powers | Mari Cartel
