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The unlikely star of the Fyre Festival Netflix documentary has finally broken his silence

"What's a me-me?"

The unlikely star of the Fyre Festival Netflix documentary has finally broken his silence
30 January 2019

We all knew that the full story of the Fyre Festival was going to be a wild ride, ever since the spectacle of rich kids eating being chased by wild boars on an island unfolded on social media back in April 2017, but surely no one could have expected just how much of a complete, fully-realised, total car crash of a disaster the whole thing was.

The blame for the whole fiasco, according to the hugely successful Netflix documentary, is very much laid at founder Billy McFarland’s door, yet so many questions remain of why no one else near the top of the chain staged an intervention when it was clear, weeks and even months out from the start of the festival that there was absolutely no chance of it being anything other than a spectacular - and dangerous - failure.

The constant theme is that they simply believed in McFarland’s ability to get things over the line and pull a rabbit out of the hat as he constantly urged them just to pull together, work harder and everything would be fine.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ‘testimony’ of Andy King, one of the festival organisers and one of the few older people with any experience who seem to be present as the story develops. He comes across well, sincere and apologetic, simply saying that he was just taken in by McFarland, getting swept up in his charm.

So much so that, in one of the most memorable moments of the documentary, he explains how - somehow - word reaches him that huge tanks of Evian water, needed for the festival, are being held by Bahamian customs and that the way to get it released without huge import charges might be to offer some ‘relief’ to the head of customs and that, as the only gay man in the upper echelons of the organisation, he is the man to do it.

King explained:

“I literally drove home, took a shower, I drank some mouth wash, and I got into my car to drive across the island to take one for the team. I got to his office fully prepared to suck his dick.”

In the end, the official (who “couldn’t have been nicer”) agrees to release the water and take payment after the festival: a good outcome for King, not so good for the finances of the islands.

Off the back of this apparent willingness to go above and beyond and take one for the team, King soon went viral on social media, spawning a series of hilarious memes.

Now, King has featured in a video released by Netflix in which he explains that he is “blown away with the response of the documentary… . I’m now a noun, a verb, an adjective.”

He says that he is not on social media and didn’t even know what ‘trending’ was - but is glad that the success of the documentary has helped publicise GoFundMe campaigns set up to help those in the Bahamas who suffered financially from the failure of the festival.

“One of our biggest goals, obviously, is paying back all the people in the Bahamas. If I could drive positive influences and a lot of positive energy towards social and environmental impact, then I think I can utilise this moment to do a lot of good.”

A noble quest, although one can’t help but think that, had King had a moment of clarity at the moment he was asked to “suck dick” and realised the festival was doomed, instead of deciding to go through with it, a lot of money and effort could have been saved in the first place.

Still, then we wouldn’t have been able to laugh at all the rich kids would we?

(Image: Netflix)