Fake chef fools local TV stations into trying his terrible food

March 03, 2014|By Mick Swasko, @swasko | RedEye

Midwest TV stations hard up for programming over the holidays were ripe for the pranking. 

Nick Prueher, one half of the team behind the Found Footage Festival, spent the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's booking himself as a guest on TV stations in Illinois and Wisconsin. His angle was "Chef Keith Guerke," a cooking guru who was supposedly an expert on what to do with leftovers. 

However, the supercut of footage above showed Chef Keith was anything but. He makes ice cream cones out of mashed potatoes and gravy, blends a Thanksgiving dinner and even pushes hosts with his weird comments. At one point, he notes he's now a vegetarian because meat eaters inadvertently eat "a pound" of feces every year, and says he believes suicide rates are so high during the holidays because people are so worried about eating their leftovers. 

It isn't the first time Prueher and co-conspirator Joe Pickett have fooled local news stations. As Deadspin notes, they were behind the now-infamous K-Strass Yo-Yo masters videos, where a completely clueless man tries to do yo-yo tricks on live TV. 

The Found Footage Festival--dedicated to showing footage found in dumpsters, garage sales and thrift stores--begins touring this week. 

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