Rio's World Cup Wind-Ups was a short hidden camera practical joke show hosted by English footballer Rio Ferdinand which was filmed shortly before the 2006 FIFA World Cup.^[1] The show strongly resembled the American show Punk'd which is hosted and produced by Ashton Kutcher. Ferdinand chose certain English footballers to play a prank on. The pranks would usually end with the catchphrase — You got merked!.

Footballers who were "Merked"

• Gary Neville: Neville comes for training (with Ryan Giggs) and parks his car. The police stop him and charge him for speeding and a number of traffic offences and proceed to interrogate him.
• Ashley Cole: Cole is visiting a music recording studio for a charity deal. The sound engineer's American partner then accuses him of deleting the track vocal parts and messing things up.
• Shaun Wright-Phillips: Wright-Phillips accidentally gets a waiter fired. (John Terry was supposed to be the victim but he found out after seeing the message in his wife's mobile phone explaining the prank. Terry then found Wright-Phillips as a substitute.)
• Peter Crouch: Crouch is offered an investment deal by an Indian businessman whose Russian business partners later barge in and demand money.
• Wayne Rooney: Rooney is visiting a dogs' home with his wife Colleen when a little boy's dog dies.
• David James: James goes to an art gallery and he is accused of breaking a piece of artwork made by a French artist.
• David Beckham: Beckham is picked up by a driver that takes a detour to make him late for his meeting.

Accomplices

• Colleen McLoughlin (Wayne Rooney's girlfriend and now his wife, knew about prank)
• Ryan Giggs (in the Gary Neville prank)
• John Terry (gets Shaun Wright-Phillips involved)
• Robbie Fowler (in the Peter Crouch prank)

References