Russia President Vladimir Putin spoke to world famous musician Sir Elton John, Buzzfeed News, citing a Russian news outlet.
John posted on Instagram last week that he had talked to Putin and organized a face-to-face meeting to discuss LGBT rights in Russia.
Soon after, the Kremlin said that Putin had never talked with John and a pair of TV personalities announced they had posed as Putin and punked the LGBT rights activist.
But on Thursday, the Russian news outlet reported a real phone call took place later.
“Putin spoke to Elton John,” Putin’s spokesperson said, according to BuzzFeed. “Putin phoned him and said ‘I know some guys played a trick on you on the phone but don’t get offended. They are harmless people though that of course does not justify what they did.’”
“Watch me callink gay boy and pretend to be mechanik!”
“Hel-lo. Jun? Rolls very seek. Need new head gass-ket!”
Ha, ha, it wasn’t really Elton!
That’s funny. Back when the pranksters first admitted they did it, there were lots of commenters insisting that Elton John was arrogant and delusional for thinking that he’d be important enough for Putin to call. But even that article ended with a Putin spokesman saying Putin wanted to arrange a visit, which all of these people ignored. And it looks like a phone call has now taken place, meaning that Elton John was deservedly as arrogant as these people attacked him for being.
And this is really the only proper ending to this, since the prank itself was lame. The whole point of pulling a prank is the reveal, when you’ve reached the point that things can’t get more ridiculous and you get the final reaction from the victim. But if the prankster just has a normal conversation and hangs up without the victim knowing it’s a prank, then what’s the point? You’re not pulling a prank. You’re just being a weirdo.
There was a lot of potential humor in faking a phone call between Elton John and Vladmir Putin, and these guys missed it completely. And so the proper punchline is for John and Putin to have their conversation after all, where hopefully they discussed having orgies at the Kremlin, just because.
Putin went on to invite Elton to a ‘stag’ camping & horseback riding trip with (wink, wink) Prince Albert.
Note to Elton: Wear paste jewelry.
…and then checked his stock of Polonium-210.