If you regularly send messages and requests into triple j via the station’s trusty textline, you may want to go to your phone contacts and double check the number. If it’s 0439 75 7555, everything’s fine. If you’re one number off, you may have come into contact with Same Number Kev.

We know what you’re thinking: worst Marvel villain ever. But Same Number Kev is actually Kevin, the bloke who just so happens to have a phone number that’s one digit off from our national youth broadcaster’s textline and who occasionally replies to the messages he’s sent.

The Bundaberg-based construction professional recently caught up with triple j hosts Veronica and Lewis to share some of the highlights of having a number that’s almost identical to the station’s textline and how it’s occasionally affected his personal life for the worse.

“I was married long ago (key word here is was – woohoo!) my succubus ex-wife was convinced these texts were coming from a mistress or girlfriend, so that was awkward,” Kev recounts. “Girlfriends since then have also thought it weird that I receive numerous texts at random times that I sometimes answer.”

As for the best texts he’s ever received, Kev reckons “the one where the girls in WA sent me a tittie pic” was a highlight, he recalls one incident where “a bloke [was] a little too interested in me”, and he’s had “a couple of girls get chatty too”.

Funnily enough, Kev, who describes himself as being of “indeterminate age” and “gainfully employed in the emergency response field at a major construction project” doesn’t actually listen to the station whose texts he’s been replying to.

“Although I may not listen to triple j or radio at all for that matter, I do enjoy a wide range of music,” he told Veronica and Lewis. Apparently, he’s too busy “saving enough money to retire in a few years” so that he can live out his dream of being “a grotty yachtie”.

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine