The first time I thought that I could win stuff was when my friend Dean Jezard sent me an email with the subject line “mate – you would surely win this!”. Dean plays drums for a band that my old drummer now sings and plays guitar for. We also both work for TigerSpike (he and I are two of the original founders in fact!), so he knew I could whistle.
Anyway GIO, an Australian Insurance company (I lived in Sydney at the time) has a commercial with people whistling men at work’s ‘land down under’, so they had a competition before Jazz in the doman, and Classical in the domain (Non Australians – ‘the Domain’ is a park in Sydney) to see who could whistle it the best.
The prize up for grabs (which may be the biggest prize in whistling to date!) was a big screen TV and home surround sound system valued at AU$7,000! (US$6k). So I decided to enter!
The format was that people just walked up and whistled for some judges (not real judges, just volunteers who worked at the Domain). Then they picked 6 of us, and the crowd cheered for who they thought should win.
There were over 50,000 people in the crowd (not for the whistling, they were waiting to hear the Jazz), and after fighting off some stiff competition from a 5 year old cute girl (who got many cheers for those facts alone), I won!… And my home theatre was awesome, and it was marred only by some people thinking I cheated by having something in my mouth (you David Berkelouw – although I hear you won the classical one… that true?)
So anyway after that I wanted to win more so I got on the net and did some research, and found out that the Mt Everest of whistling competitions is in Louisburg, and is run by Franklyn County arts Council (see it here). But I had missed the 07 deadline and didn’t realise that it was being held in Japan in 08, so waited until 09 – which was made easier because I moved from Sydney to New York earlier in the year.
The difference between the Australian competition and Louisburg, is that in Australia there were no other people who specifically went there because they could whistle. They just went up on stage for a laugh… while in Louisburg they were pretty much all amazing (you don’t travel to Louisburg from Norway ‘just for a laugh’). There were 55 competitors from all over the world who went there, with the biggest contingent being the Japanese
