Look, none of us is above pettiness, especially when it comes to family arguments. But one man’s sisters took things to a whole new level, as he revealed in a radio call-in. The brother, named Callum, told New Zealand’s ZM show that his siblings once convinced his parents he was dead. And his poor mum and dad only learned the truth when he called them for a catch-up... six months later. Hosts Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith and Hayley Sproull listened to the story with dropped jaws, branding it the “best” they’d ever heard. The trio were quick to probe Callum on the details of the crazy deception, and he duly obliged. "My sisters were in a bit of a tiff with my parents at the time and they weren't really getting along,” he explained. "I was living in Wellington while they were in Christchurch. And my older sister actually called my parents up and told them that I’d died." His sisters then apparently claimed that the funeral had already taken place and their parents hadn’t been invited because his ex-girlfriend’s mum and dad “didn’t want them there”. (Makes sense.) At this point, a stunned Smith interjected: ”I'm going to say this, and in the nicest possible way – your sister sounds like a crazy b**h. "No offence. Your sister sounds like a top-level, red flag, crazy b***h!" @fvhzm Callum wins the award for the greatest sentence ever said on-air in ZM history ? The hosts then posed the million-dollar question: how had Callum not spoken to his parents for half a year? He responded matter-of-factly: "I was just busy with life and work and then I was like, wait, I haven't heard from my parents in a while. I wonder what's going on?” He then revealed that he “gave them a call up” and, shocked, they responded: “You're alive?” Asked how they reacted upon hearing the voice of their presumed late son, Callum admitted they were “beside themselves”. “My mum was absolutely in tears and my dad was kind of just gobsmacked – he was just like 'what the f**k is going on?'” he recounted. But, he later said that they were “over the moon” when he went down to visit them that same weekend to “reassure them” that he was, indeed, alive. Naturally, the presenters asked how it was possible that his parents just accepted the news of his death without trying to verify it. "They were kind of like just running around, calling up all our other family – seeing if they had heard anything, from what I was told," he explained. "And then they didn't really know anything to go off so my parents kind of just presumed 'yeah he died'." The presenters then debated whether you would call someone up if you’d heard they’d died. “If somebody said that your friend is dead, you’re not going to pick up the phone and call them, are you? You’re just going to be like, oh, well, yeah, they’re dead,” Fletcher said. But Smith insisted that he would get drunk and call their voicemail just to hear their voice. After the personal reflections, the hosts asked Callum how he’d “died” according to his sisters – whether it had been a car accident or some other unfortunate event. But no, they apparently told his parents that he’d been stabbed. "Wait wait wait. So you are murdered?” Smith laughed delightedly. "You're not dead by your own hand or dead in an accident, someone murdered you?” He then asked Callum if he was “the sort of person who would have been stabbed?", to which he replied: "I was not in some gangs but I will say, at the point in time, it wouldn't have been unpeculiar for me to get stabbed." The caller went on to insist that he didn’t know why his sisters “hate” him, and he also revealed that his parents no longer speak to them. “We've nearly been doing this for 20 years,” Smith said. “This is the wildest phone call I've ever had.” ZM Radio shared the excerpt from the episode to TikTok and it racked up more than 1.5 million views and 167,000 likes in a week. However, the plot thickened when a commentator claiming to be Callum’s sister wrote: “I can confirm I never told my parents he was dead.” She said there had been a stabbing in the city of Porirua at the time, and no one had heard from Callum “for a few months” and so she contacted him to check he was ok. And when she found out he was, “she was happy”. She then suggested her family had a number of issues and that she “tried to stay away” from them. Urged to call into the radio show and “get this straightened out”, she replied: “Is it really even worth it? In order to do that I would need to air everyone's dirty laundry. It would turn from comical to sad very quickly.” Besides, she said, she didn’t really “mind” his on-air account, conceding: “The story was a good laugh.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

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Britney Spears revealed she was "glad" to have lost the lead role in The Notebook to Rachel McAdams, prompting casting director Matthew Barry to share her audition tape with The Daily Mail. In the two-minute long video, Spears says, whilst her eyes well up with tears, "I prayed for you to die in the war, really. Well, not die. I would have felt completely horrible if you would've died. But I kinda didn't want you to be alive anymore because I couldn't bear the thought of you being with somebody else, or of us never seeing each other again. So I gotta go, okay?" Barry told The Daily Mail the pop star "wasn't just good, she was phenomenal." "It was a tough decision," he continued, reflecting on Spears' audition. "Britney blew us all away. Our jaws were on the floor. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. She brought her A-game that day." Since the sharing of Spears' audition, people have praised her acting but ultimately agreed that it should have been McAdams that got the part. "Love Britney down and she looked adorable but Rachel McAdams was just born for the role", the top comment under the tape read: "I mean [obviously] Rachel is perfect in this role, but I'm actually really impressed with [Britney's] audition", wrote another. This sentiment was prevalent throughout the reactions to Spears' tape. "Rachel was perfect and iconic for the role. HOWEVER... seeing this I now understand why Britney was considered for the role", one user shared. It seems Spears agrees that role should have gone to McAdams, writing in her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me "Even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The Mickey Mouse Club, I'm glad I didn't do it," she writes. "If I had, instead of working on my album 'In the Zone' I'd have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night." Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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