A real estate agent recalls how a parody of ‘The Wiggles’ became a legal hot potato

News Corp Australia Network

A real estate agent has recalled the difficulty in removing a video parody of The Wiggles from YouTube. . Picture: Supplied.

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An inadvertent run-in with The Wiggles continues to trigger strong memories for a real estate agent who once created a video parody of the children’s entertainer’s to sell a nondescript house north of Brisbane.

Innov8 Property principal Michael Spillane has recalled how an attempt to sell a Brendale house became a legal hot potato after the video went viral within hours.

To avert a legal problem, Mr Spillane said it took him six weeks to have the 2012 ‘Wiggles’ video removed from YouTube.

The Wiggles line-up at about the same time Innov8 Property real estate agent Michael Spillane had an inadvertent run-in with the children’s entertainers. Pic Handout.

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In the video, the real estate agent appeared as all four Wiggles, lip-synched a few songs and pulled off dance moves, to sell 31 Brendale St, Brendale.

Fearing a copyright breach, he said he got “on the front foot” and contacted The Wiggles about the video who said they would review it at their next board meeting.

“In the meantime, we sold the property for a ridiculously huge price at the time,” Mr Spillane wrote in a weekly newsletter.

The nondescript home at 31 Brendale St, Brendale sold within a week after a video parody of The Wiggles went viral and almost landed the real estate agent in hot water. Picture: Supplied

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“The video must have attracted enough attention for them to address it sooner as I received a letter from their company … that “raised some concerns”.

“I must say – the letter was very polite although it addressed (in great detail) the ‘areas of concern’ of the video where copyright was breached … and when you put them together, it was basically the entire video.

“We made the obvious decision … we removed the video from YouTube and thought nothing more of it.

“A few days later, we received another letter asking us again to remove the video.

Innov8 Property principal Michael Spillane has recalled how difficult it was to remove a parody of The Wiggles off YouTube. Picture: Supplied

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“Countless calls, emails and messages to YouTube meant that we slowly started to get rid of the videos – the problem was that no faster had we managed to have one removed, another one was re-posted and the only analogy I can use is that if felt like trying to control the outbreak of ‘Covid-19’ where the case numbers were exploding.”

He said after they succeeded in having the videos removed, “we even destroyed our own copy of the video”.

As for the house, it sold within a week for $410,000, almost triple its price of a decade earlier.