If bFM doesn’t continue to broadcast “fuck-knuckles, cock and piss. Balls”, the nation will scream “fuck-knuckles, cock and piss. Balls”.

When the government moved to scrap the Broadcasting Standards Authority, it prompted a flurry of questions. What will this mean for news media regulation? Is the internet always going to be a factory churning out death threats, vaccine misinformation and Andrew Tate? But most importantly, what will this mean for a recording of a man explaining the BSA complaints process before dispassionately reading out the words “fuck-knuckles, cock and piss. Balls” on 95bFM?

The bFM “fuck-knuckles” ad might be the best piece of content to arise in the entire time the BSA ruled over New Zealand’s airwaves. Its first edition came out nearly 30 years ago. The Auckland student station’s then-creative director Bob Kerrigan remembers the recording well. He had initially ordered staffer Jeremy Parkinson to do a dry voiceover letting listeners know how they could complain to the BSA. But then, with Parkinson already standing at the mic, a brainwave hit. “I was listening to this thing and going, ‘what if this ad got a complaint?’,” he says. “Then he read it out and I said, ‘Can you do it again and this time just add fuck-knuckles, cock and piss in there’.”

An advertising classic was born. Contrary to Kerrigan’s wishes, the piss-infused PSA not only failed to garner a single BSA complaint; it became an instant hit. The ad was updated in the early 2000s under new creative director Wallace Chapman. He asked bFM stalwart Josh Hetherington to voice the new version, but kept the script the same except for one addition. “Richard Larsen and I just added the one word: balls,” says Chapman. “Nearly 30 years on Bob Kerrigan’s legendary ad is still on the air. And shit it would be a shame if it were discontinued.” 

Chapman, now a presenter on RNZ, is worried because without a BSA, there’s technically no reason for the “fuck-knuckles” notice to exist. After all this time, could it finally be forced off air, not by an influx of delicate-earred listeners, but by the death of the complaints service it’s meant to be directing them to? 95bFM station manager Tom Tremewan says he’s determined to find a way to keep the ad in circulation. “It’s such an iconic ad that we can’t retire it. We won’t retire it,” he says.

But that might mean coming up with some innovative solutions. Though most people remember the words “fuck-knuckles, cock and piss. Balls”, much of the ad is devoted to guiding people through the BSA complaints process. That won’t make a lot of sense in a few months’ time, when media and communications minister Paul Goldsmith gets rid of the regulator for good.

Some outlets might substitute the BSA for the Media Council and update their complaints’ notices accordingly, but bFM is famously skint and Tremewan is reluctant to pay the council’s membership fee. That leaves another slightly more abrasive option on the table. “We would still want to allow listeners who do take offense to anything in our broadcast to complain, because it keeps us honest and it keeps us straight and narrow,” he says. “And since we are not currently part of the Media Council, we would probably be looking for those audience members to get in touch with the minister directly.”

That will likely mean asking Hetherington to redo his ad, this time with Goldsmith’s email address as its subject rather than the BSA. Tremewan thinks that’s a suitable solution given Goldsmith is replacing the BSA while offering little clarity on what will be installed in its place. “The danger now is that we replace an imperfect system with a vague one.”

Hetherington, now a teacher in Albany on Auckland’s North Shore, says he’s up for revoicing the ad provided the script retains its original magic. He’s proud of how the existing version has encapsulated bFM’s anti-institution, renegade spirit in a few irreverent words. Its impact is such that he still occasionally gets recognised in bars just by his voice. “Someone will be standing next to me and go ‘you’re not fuck-knuckles, cock and piss are you?’” he says. It’s sort of his claim to fame. “You know, Andy Warhol didn’t really say what the 15 minutes would be for.”

Kerrigan has another idea on how to recycle the notice. He astutely notes that both the BSA and bFM start with the letter “b”. Instead of directing people to a whole new entity, the station could just set up an in-house “bFM standards authority” to assess complaints, he says. “So when people call asking to complain to the BSA, we don’t have to say they don’t exist, we can just say we’ll put you through,” he says. “This is the solution. I’m glad that we’ve created this here.”

No matter what they do, it’s a point of pride for Kerrigan to see his spur-of-the-moment, deliberately provocative script outlast the regulator he was trying to troll. “It’s like, we won the battle. We beat the BSA,” he says. 

In its time on air, the fuck-knuckles ad only prompted one official BSA complaint. In 2021, the authority ruled the notice could remain, as the station’s target audience was likely to appreciate it as satire. At the time, 95bFM’s programme director Sarah Thomson told the complainant fuck-kncukles had become part of the “fabric of the station”. If Tremewan gets his wish, it will remain that way for years to come, playing once a day as per usual. The Spinoff wishes him well, and if anyone seriously thinks that stance crosses a line, they can email Paul Goldsmith. 

Fuck-knuckles, cock and piss. Balls. Thank you.