By AIDAN KNIGHT
A BIZARRE jest turned into a community event, after a comedic ‘public notice’ poster made waves on Facebook last year.
More than 500 people responded to a Facebook event titled ‘Darren V Paul: The Battle Of The Toothbrush’ after sightings of the same event poster were seen plastered on power poles around Moe.
The public boxing match, allegedly to be held at Moe Botanical Gardens, was scheduled for 3pm on Thursday, August 14, between the ex-husband (Paul) and new boyfriend (Darren) of a woman named Meg.
The poster alleged that Paul had left his toothbrush in Meg’s house after their recent breakup, and “this man has already moved into our family home and is using my toothbrush each night”.
The public match was to determine which of the two would keep the toothbrush, with the support and witnessing of the community.
Locals online were enthralled and fascinated by this strange poster, to the point where Sportsbet odds were being discussed in the comment section, only for it to be revealed that a local joker was behind these posters – and many others, within the area.
Molly-Rose Wilson is a Moe resident who “regularly creates stupid posters like this to prank the locals and lift my own spirits”.
Her work can be found regularly on the noticeboard between the Coffee Pod and Aussie Disposals in Moore Street.
Locals speculated that the Express had seemingly published one of Wilson’s fake ads in our Classified section, which she circulated an image of on her social media. After further speculation, our publication can confirm this image is a doctored one, and no such ad has run in the Express – thanks to our stringent classies officers.
The self-declared ‘poster menace’ owned up to the Battle of the Toothbrush via the Facebook event page on August 1, which had been created by someone else after seeing copies of the poster around Morwell CBD.
“This one blew up way more than I anticipated,” she said in her post.
“Sorry to let you down, but maybe we can all hang out (at the event time) anyway?”
Steve Riley, the local who created the page, jumped at this.
While Ms Wilson received a mixed response of laughter and frustration from those following the page, even leading to ABC radio interviews, which exposed that news of the event had reached Melbourne prior to Wilson revealing herself.
Mr Riley proposed to the 500-odd people who responded to the event that while “Paul and Darren” were fictional characters, it would become a community event, which he would run with his background as a youth boxing coach and DJ, and would even supply a sausage sizzle himself.
“When I saw how many people thought it was real, I knew I had to make it a real event,” he declared online.
“Every participant gets a trophy, crowd favourite gets a golden toothbrush.”
As for Meg, she remains fictional – but if she were real, we can only hope she’s finally bought a new toothbrush.
