Just before the elections, we had a few yuks when a Montreal radio DJ punk’d Sarah Palin (remember her?) with a gag phone interview, posing as French President Nicholas Sarkozy. While that brilliant hoax kept us in stitches for quite a while at AITS, that feat pales in comparison to the body of work by Joey Skaggs.

Skaggs, a longtime New York artist, has led a 40-plus year career of pulling off various stunts, hoaxes and media pranks - all in the name of political or social satire. He has fooled the best of them: Entertainment Tonight, To Tell The Truth, Geraldo, and other media entities that should’ve known better.  And he’s still at it today.

Skaggs created a cathouse for dogs, a celebrity sperm bank, promoted a bogus lottery for the renaming rights to the Brooklyn Bridge, and advertised cure-all cockroach vitamins. He tied a 50-foot bra across the front of the U.S. Treasury Building, appeared on the media as various fictitious characters and has suckered people with urban legends long before that started happening on the Internet. People all over the world have fallen for his schtick, hook, line and sinker.

Skaggs is a little bit of P.T. Barnum, Borat, Orson Welles, and the Blarney Stone all rolled into one.

All of us at Alligators In The Sewer would like to dedicate this post to Joey Skaggs, and bow to the master. We stand in awe of your evil comedic genius, sir.