Ben Fordham accidentally gives away $1,000 on air

Former Editor & Content Director

Ben Fordham had a costly mistake on Monday’s show, awarding a $1,000 prize to a listener who hadn’t actually met the requirements of the game.

The ‘2GB For Me’ competition involves Fordham calling a registered listener, who then has 15 seconds to pick up their phone. They win $100 if they answer with the phrase “2GB for me”. This rockets to $1,000 if the listener also know’s the day’s code word.

On Monday, Fordham phoned a listener from Fairfield West, Kathy, who answered on time. Her first words, however, were “Hello”.

Fordham, seemingly caught up in the moment, awarded Kathy the $1,000 when she knew the winning code word, “winner”.

Kathys’ initial response was confusion: “You’re kidding me.”

“Would I joke about that?,” Fordham replied.

“I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know.”

Fordham then realised Kathy had answered the phone incorrectly, and shouldn’t actually have been awarded any prize money.

He decided, however, to cop the mistake, rather than taking the cash back from Kathy.

“I’ll tell you what, if you did it incorrectly, then it’s my mistake and I’ll be covering it anyway. So guess what? You’ve won $1,000.”

Fordham clarified for listeners that the competition has changed a few times, which led to the confusion.

“So that was my mistake. So Kathy, in fact, has not won $1,000 from 2GB, because she didn’t say ‘2GB for me’. But I made the mistake, so I’ll cover the mistake, and I’ll pay the $1,000 to Kathy, because I’m not going to have a situation where I’ve just told someone they won $1,000 and then all of a sudden they don’t win $1,000,” he said.

“I want to make clear that Kathy is receiving the $1,000 from me, not from 2GB, because I know that the bosses will say to me that I should have paid attention to the rules and regulations associated with the competition, and therefore I can’t be handing out the money to someone who hasn’t won.”

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Mick C
9 Feb 2021 - 12:21 pm

Anything for publicity
Cant stand the guy

And when he turns on 9 honey or what ever its called i change channels.

David Wicks
9 Feb 2021 - 12:24 pm

Wow! Nine Radio is the last of the big spenders.
$1,000 up for grabs!
How many times a day do they do that little promotion?

GRAHAM BARRY
9 Feb 2021 - 5:49 pm

looks like mr. vanilla biege is earning his keep staying in the spotlight.
since the channel 9 take over of radio there is no freedom of speech any more.
a simple blunder to make fordham more syrupy and smarmy.
cant stand channel 9 or their radio stations

Craig Huggins
9 Feb 2021 - 6:38 pm

Haha, how’s old mate Kathy saying twice she answered “2GB for Me” 🙂 Yeah, nah Kathy we don’t record any of this stuff… hehehehehe

David de Figueiredo
10 Feb 2021 - 7:10 am

Mick c, do you know Ben?

Robin masters
3 Mar 2021 - 8:26 pm

Ben is nowhere as good to listen to as Alan Jones or others on 2gb. The early morning program unfortunately is very hard to listen to. There is no depth to his radio show. Sorry I can’t believe he got 17. something
In his first radio rankings.

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