Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - BONUS: Simon and Hot John From The Wiggles!

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

We caught up with Simon and the new wiggle (John) ahead of their NZ tour!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hits, the Jono and Ben podcast. Big news, big concert announcement this week, very exciting. Wiggles coming back August this year. Hello Where The Wiggles is the name of their tour going right around the country. It's great to have The Wiggles back and wiggling back into our lives again. We got to catch up with a couple of Wiggles over Zoom, didn't we? Yeah, Jon and Simon, good to have you. Jono, how you going guys?

We're doing good. Jon, Simon, nice to see you. Yeah, you too. Are we in the Wiggles meeting room here? What's the situation? Yeah, wherever we go, we have a blow-up Wiggles set we take around. In Hurstville in Sydney. So we've just finished our sound check, so we're on the stage. Have you got a pre-show rituals that you do backstage?

Oh, no, real rituals. I backstage? Oh no real rituals I think just getting ready and I think Simon does a bit of meditating. If you call Kathleen meditating that's and niggly zoom interviews with New Zealand radio hosts. Yeah that's right yeah. What's it like backstage you have all the cold spaghetti and hot potatoes and fruit salad you can eat or what's out there? You know our rider consists of water and fruit. We always have a joke that we go to hotel rooms, we don't trash them, we clean them up before we leave. That's a nice thing you do.

John, you know, you're new to the Wiggles, causing a wee bit of a flutter online. You know, the hearts are all racing for you. I don't know if you've seen it, you know, like, yeah. Yeah, it's been really good and I think you know it's um it's very welcoming it's a good positive response online isn't it just like the new guy here it's very very positive yeah listen i sympathize i get the same thing he does i'm sure i'm treated like a piece of me it's a piece of me more more more and i'm like back off please were you expecting that like when

you when you when you came into the wiggles no no no i guess you you can't really predict those type of things and i think um it's just something that kind of happened and um yeah i kind of look at it as it's really flattering and uh yeah you can't really say too much can you well yeah back again uh in new zealand again i felt like you were just here and you're back again and there's there's tickets that they go so fast well apparently they sell like hot potatoes. Is that what they do? Coming to New Zealand we can't wait. Every year we try to get to see you guys and we have the best time.

You've got the perfect recipe because people keep creating new fans. Don't they? You just keep every couple of years there's new fans coming through. So it's an endless supply of audience for you yes that's right we won't get into the details about how they're creating not new fans no we won't we won't we won't go into those details but yes the the audience does regenerate every couple of years and celebrities like you know there's so many kids of celebrities that have been to your shows over the years everyone i was reading you know jerry seinfeld shaquille o'neal chris rock are some of the members of like metallica and all sorts you know it's just such a wide spectrum of people that have come along yeah it's um it's it's really cool to you know be able to meet and connect with

such you know iconic faces around the world and it's it's a privilege to be able to you know entertain their children and i guess children are kind of similar around the world. And children are children. And if their parents are celebrities, that's a plus. Who's the one person you've met and you're like, wow, you were fanning out a bit? We met, I can't remember, Steve Cottrell. No, not Steve. Steve Correll?

He's the one guy, yeah, I'm fanning over, but I can't remember his name. He obviously made an impact yeah yeah that's awesome Steve so Steve Carell the comedian he did he bring his kids along we did we did a little thing with him for the new Minions movie that came out so that was amazing I think I saw that he was in like a yellow because yeah the Minions color and he was in the yellow skimmy right yeah he's one of the auditioned for the yellow wiggle so yeah it was really funny did he get the part or not no no he didn't i mean i can't remember his name so how could he get that because you do it like you say three or four shows a day i have been to one of your shows and

listen big fan but one was kind of enough for me the energy levels in the stadium high high running at 120. Oh, you see they're backing up four in a day sort of thing. Four in a day is a lot of screaming at you. Yeah, there's a lot of screaming. My wife Lauren bought me a new watch which tells you your heart rate, and I think she did it because it does the ECG thing because she's concerned about my heart.

I just turned 51. You're still jumping on stage. But it also gives you the the audio the reading of how loud the room is it starts my watch starts yelling at me telling me that you know that it's too loud you're gonna have a heart attack that's right it's too loud you're about to have a heart attack get off well hopefully there's not wake up simon as well now too in the middle of the concert well we are so stoked that you're coming back. I know you've got so many fans in New Zealand. Before we go, you must perform your songs many, many times.

We wanna see if this works over Zoom. We've got like one second, the first second of some of your songs. Can you pick which song we're about to go into? All right. All right, let's try. Let's try. Let's see if this works over Zoom.

This could be a shambles. Here's the first one. Fruit salad? Yeah! Yummy, yummy! One from one. Here's the next one. This is second take with the wiggles. Oh there we go. Yeah that's two two chugga chugga big red car. I forgot that one. I like John's like, yeah that's my jam. There we's it, there we go. Oh, lovely to see you guys. We love your work. We can't wait to have you back in New Zealand. Yeah, we can't wait to see you.

Thanks for having us.