Block ‘quitters’ Elle Ferguson and Joel Patfull have remained silent amid questions about their exit from the makeover show after just 48 hours.
And in an attempt to finally hear their side of the story, Nova’s Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald and Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli cold-called the Sydney couple this week, but things didn’t go well.
The radio duet was welcomed The Block host Scott Cam on his show on Thursday in the wake of his repeated public jabs at the Instagram influencer and retired AFL player, when Wippa told Cam they tried to contact Elle and Joel the day before.
“We called them yesterday, Scotty, we can’t even play the audio because there’s nothing to play,” Wippa said.
Fitzy further claimed: “Elle picked up the phone and said, ‘This is Joel’s phone.’ And I said, ‘Hi Elle, we’re looking for Joel, this is Fitzy and Wippa.’ And then Joel walks in and says ‘Hello, how are you?’ And we introduced ourselves again and then bang, he was gone. He hung up. He’s not a fan. [our] show.”
Cam has been busy sledging the pair for throwing in the towel so quickly on set, calling him “poor p*ss” and “un-Australian”, despite reports they left to look after Joel’s mum who had suffered a nasty fall in adelaide.
Given the understandable circumstances, many have wondered why Cam has hit them so passionately.
Speaking to news.com.au ahead of the season premiere of Tree Change next week, the Channel 9 personality said her frustration stemmed from the couple erecting poles in the middle of the night without “without explanation”.
“They didn’t give us a reason why they were leaving. They never mentioned anything to us about visiting their sick mother,” Cam said.
“We actually took them to Adelaide earlier The Block they started for a week and put them in a hotel so they could see (Joel’s mother) and they came back and said “everything is fine”.
According to Cam, the cast and crew were shocked when Joel and Elle disappeared.
“They never spoke to us, they just left in the middle of the night,” he said, adding: “I still don’t know why they left. They never mentioned their sick mother in the 48 hours before they left or after leave. The executive producer talked to them (after they left) and then they didn’t mention their sick mother either.”
Following your comments Fitzy and WippaCam said the network would have “stopped production” to allow Elle and Joel to see their family.
“You know, come talk to me and just tell me,” he said. “We would have solved them. Because a couple of years ago, Bec de Bec and George, great couple, contestants The Block … His mother died during the show and we shut down the whole show for a week.
“We took them all in and started again when it was ready, we’d shut down for two weeks if I needed to.”
Cam revealed that Elle and Joel raised some concerns with the executive producer just hours before they eloped, and that his sudden disappearance caused “chaos” on set.
“We had a promotion day that day. It was a Saturday morning, we had 50 or 60 people coming from Sydney. A whole crew with trucks and everything. And we’re two contestants short,” he said.
“So we had to re-record a lot of stuff, and it was really chaos.”
Elle and Joel have yet to officially comment.