On Sunday night (10 April) hip-hopper
JR (who has no surname) won the million buck prize on the third season of
Tropika Island of Treasure, when he was last man standing on the island of Phuket. Literally.
The rest of the guys had been whacked by the finale, leaving JR up against
Dionne Song,
Latoya Ragebult and
Thandi Steenkamp. After the final showdown, JR came out six zeros richer. Minus R150 000: he's giving R50 000 to his fellow final three = R850 000.
After only eight days.
Quizzy to know what he's going to be spending it on I gave him a phonebuzz on Tuesday to get the dirrrty on his cash for us. Of course the first question I asked is what he plans to do with it, to which he replied: he has no idea. And he genuinely seems to have no clue.
I didn't believe him, asked again and he was like: No, I
really don't know. I'm going to keep it to decide.
1 000 000
Not that he had it yet. I asked about this too natch: Is it
in your bank account? Did you watch it rushing in? But it wasn't yet. Apparently there's paperwork that needs to get done first etc. Crazy-ass bank charges too probably. How much would they charge for a deposit of that size?
I don't know about you but I wouldn't
move from my internet banking for days, waiting, watching,
needing to see all those zero's suddenly appear. I'd also change my password everytime I logged in.
Trippy moolah thought: isn't bizarre how zero's represent both nothing and riches at the same time? And also, how it's all such an illusion created by people. As gold is.
Imagine if everyone were to say:"Hey guys, let's not see gold as valuable anymore - let's rather make stone from a particular mountain very valuable." The system of gold would become worthless. Same thing with cash. If we swapped rands with eggs.
Zero tolerance vs big bucks
What did it take to win the million? It was only eight days so how hard could it have been? I quizzed JR on this and he spilt that he was emotionally drained when he got back from Phuket.
He told me that the most difficult thing about winning it was that he had to be in touch and in tune with each of the contestants. Like connect with them even when they were in a bad mood or being otherwise.
JR: "On Survivor it's a whole group of people who need to vote you out but on Tropika
one person can vote you out so you have to make sure that no-one wants to vote you out."
As for what
really went down behind-the-scenes he confirmed that everything we've heard about the beefly shenanigans between
Khanyi,
Bonang and
Tatum were true.
JR: "The game started before we got to the island." Their behind-the-scenes tensions started on the bus as they were going to the show's location apparently. He said that he thought the reason it happened is because you always get friction when there are too many beautiful women in one place.
Which gave me the perfect to comeback with: "Don't you think the game's unfair on women because of how physical the challenges are?" He tried to argue that it isn't all physical, which I disagreed with - throwing in the blow of that challenge where the contestants had to smack each other - where Tatum got punched.
His response: "But it was with noodles!"
Speaking of noodles, turns out JR's very tight with
Jack Parow, in real life too. They're so buddy-buddy that JR wants him to be on the next season of the TIOT.
you didn't hear it from me
Who would he like to see on the next season?
JR was hestitant to answer at first, saying that he didn't want to be seen as influencing the casting. Didn't want to have people saying: "Oh, he's putting in a good word," type thing.
The next moment he blurted out: "Jack Parow". As you may know, the pair of them did a collab at the MK Awards in February and have most recently released a single together called The Show Goes On.
From how JR described him, Jack Parow sounds like a muddle of emotions (including funny and moody) so would be good entertainment.
So who's asked for cash after his win?
Tashi: How many people have already asked you for cash?
JR: Only my father.
Tashi: Really?
JR: Yes, I was expecting it.
Who would he have wanted to win if he were watching the show?
He replied that if he wasn't in it it himself, he would have wanted
Loyiso Gola to win. Because he's so tall and needs the money to buy special pants.
With JR being undecided, the million buck question remains: if you won R1 000 000 eight days from now, what would you spend it on?