Went Viral! (And Didn’t Have a Bloody Clue!)

It’s pretty clear my career is finished so one of my current greatest worries is how I am going to repay the mortgage on Kangaeroo Corner and, being grossly over-educated and severely lacking talent, becoming a YouTuber making viral videos has popped up in my mind as a way.

Given that I am paying serious thought to the above idea, it’s pretty clear I have no sense of reality.

So, it didn’t really come as a surprise to learn that I posted a video that went viral and I had no idea about it’s popularity until yesterday….10 1/2 years after the video went up.

The video was of a young Johnny Depp during a 1988 appearance on Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday, then one of Australia’s top rating TV shows (and led into by 21 Jump Street, the TV show that helped turn Depp into a heartthrob.

I can’t even remember the circumstances behind the original post, and I’m pretty sure YouTube gave me a copyright strike over this. But it all happened so long ago. Still, it was fun to find out.

Depp would, of course, go on to became a massive superstar. His career also seemed over a couple of years ago, but may not be done yet. Hey, Hey would run for another decade, ending a 30-year run in 1999 and then making a comeback a decade later only to end in ignominy amid accusations of racism. Ossie Ostrich, the pink bird in the photo with Depp above, was one of the co-hosts with Darryl Somers and a bevy of beauties through the years, and would end his run with the program with his reputation untarnished. This segment appeared just before I left Australia to visit Japan. Immigrate here, as it turned out, though that was never the intention until decades after it had happened and returning was not an option.

Click the link below to watch the video (as suspected, the copyright owner blocked embedding):

Johnny Depp Down Under on Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday

Original story from July 8, 2013: 若かりしジョニー・デップの珍しい豪訪問

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