| Hello, Special Agent DeLunTrash here. Owen Sagem is a Bob Saget lookalike, who, with his two brothers in law and three neices pose as the Full House troope at parties, weddings, funerals and other special events. He has gained worldwide recognition, doing gigs for celebrities such as Steve Guttenburg, Maggie Thatcher and the guy who did the voice for Sebastian the Crab in the Little Mermaid. I bumped into Owen,a good frined of Celias at the Santa parade and arranged a casual interveiw over a coffee and bagel yesterday luchtime at 1.00 in everyones favourite hang out, the Yellow Rocket. I sat glancing over a book, anticipating his arrival . Owen is a very magnetic person and whilst looking like Bob Saget, he has a whole lot more to him than that. At 1.15 the door opened and there was no mistaking that powder blue suit and mulicoloured tie. He had just come from a gig at the Big Brother house in the Gold Coast. Although this was not his excuse for lateness, he just laughed and said "It's still cool to be fashionalbly late isn't it?" He ordered a long black with cold milk at the side and a pumpkin and chive bagel lightly toasted with garden vegetable cream chese, smoked salmon and no butter. The English girl at the till overcharged him by accident, she pressed the "extra filling button" instad of the "c/c filling". The till beeped for five mintues until someone put it right. She's probably still telling her friends that she served Bob Saget and stuffed it up. If only she knew! Haha . She handed him a number, 18, and he came over to join me: HELLO OWEN! HOW ARE YOU TODAY? Im fabulous, thanks for asking 1.WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALISE YOU LOOKED LIKE BOB SAGET? I guess it was back in '92 when Full House really took off. Until then Bob had been relatively unknown, so no one had really pointed out the similarity between us... So when Bob became a household name people started to see me in the streets and asking for autographs. It was pretty insane at first, but I took the hint and researched the show. Turned out I was the spitting image of Bob (or vice versa) and figured I could make some money out of it. 2.YOUR YOUNGEST NEICE, AMY WHO PLAYS MICHELLE, ANY CONCERNS SHE�S NOT A TWIN LIKE THE OLSENS? Well the reason they used twins for the part of Michelle was because children under the age of 12 are only allowed to work 7 hours on set a week. It's a law. So really they had to have twins for the amount of time she was on screen. We don't have that problem. We're a roving stage show that has tutors for our younger actors. It's legit as. 3.WHAT DO YOU THINK THE FULL HOUSE TROOPE WOULD BE UP TO NOW IN 2001 IF THEY WERE STILL ON TV? I think that considering how much times have changed since Full House stopped filming the show would have had to have dealt with a whole lot of new issues. As we saw Nicky and Alex (Jesse and Rebecca's sons) grow up there would have been issues like sexually transmitted diseases, and homosexuality dealt with. There probably would have been story lines involving serious stuff like pregnancy aswell, expressed through Michelle etc. 4.IF YOU WERE A FLOWER, WHAT WOULD YOU BE? A dandelion. People really underrate dandelions. 5.EVER CONSIDERED INTORDUCING A KIMMI? We did at one stage, and even experimented with a girl called Janey who acted as a Kimmi. But people didn't really respond well. No one really liked Gibbler on the show. It's a hard task trying to script her in as an authentic character and make her likeable. We flagged the idea after two shows in Palmerston North which we got hate mail for. 6.CELIASAYS ONCE DID A FULL HOUSE TRIBUTE, DID YOU SEE IT AND IF SO, WHAT DID YOU THINK? I thought it was great. It's really wonderful to see people who remember and love Full House for its fun loving way of dealing with family life. 7.CELIA SAYS HI. THAT�S NOT A QUESTION, I JUST THOUGHT I�D TELL YOU. Great. She's a great lady. We met when she came to a celebrity show in Brisbane. We were raising money for research into Lime Disease and she had a backstage press pass. She came into the dressing room afterwards and had a coffee and a chat. (At this point the coffee and bagel arrived) THANKYOU Yeah, thanks. 8.SAGEM IS A SIMILAR NAME TO SAGET, COINCIDENCE? Yes actually. People always think that I changed my name after I realised the physical similarites between Bob and I. But no, it's actually Icelandic in origin. 9.WHAT GOES ON AT THE GIGS YOU DO? There's a lot that goes on backstage that people don't know about. We have a team of 12 techies and make-up and costume people who travel with us all round the world. Not to mention our PAs, the kids' tutors the director and scriptwriters. Behind the scenes there is always something going on. If we stay in one town for more than two shows we put together a running story line which is great for people who like to watch longer stories unfold. We all work on the scripts with Mac and Suz and their team of writers. Quite often we can all be found brainstorming ideas in Mac hotel room at 3 in the morning. It's a gruelling scheldule, but we work hard and always eat three square meals a day. 10.YOU SUPPRTED ROBBIE WILLIAMS IN HIS RECENT NZ TOUR. WHAT WAS IT LIKE? That was awesom. Robbie is a great guy. It was a real shock to be asked to tour with him in New Zealand, but we took up the offer like that! [snaps fingers]. We had to make up the musical element pretty quickly and we postponed our Russian shows to do it. Mac and Suz incorporated Jesse and the Rockers really well in with the whole family, so that it was like Cats meets Meatloaf meets Full House. Robbie is a great guy too. We had a good chat about Celia, he was really dissapointed she couldn't be at the show... We all were. 11.ARE THE RUMOURS TRUE? Haha! Unfortunately no, they're not. We had a scare, sure, but it wasn't actually Ebola. 12.WAKE UP SAN FRANSISCO, ANY COMPETITON FOR �BREAKFAST� WITH LIZ AND MIKE? Yeah, I think people who see the Wake Up Sanfransisco bits in the show draw a lot of comparisons with Mike and Liz, but really we're portraying an American based show. People respond a lot better to Mike and Liz because they're local, but we do get a lot of inspiration from them. 13.YOU ONCE CALLED ONE OF MY FAVOURITE ACTORS, TOM HANKS A GIMP. WHY? Well he came to the '99 show we did in Madison Square Gardens just after his unfortunate accident with the ride-on mower. He was on crutches and came backstage. I meant to say he had a limp, but it was noisey with all the people in the conference room and he thought I said 'gimp'. He decked me with one of his crutches. I had concussion and we had to cancel our New Jersey shows. 14.DO YOU LIKE BJORK? I do, shes a wonderful woman. Very odd, but very cool. Because of my Icelandic heritage I've spent a bit of time with her in Iceland and also here in New Zealand. We get on great and her music is fabulous. 15.COMPLETE THE SENTENCE. �HAPPINESS IS�� cold ham sandwiches. (Long pause) UH....YOU HAVE CREAM CHEESE ROUND YOUR MOUTH I do? YEAH, I JUST THOUGHT I'D MENTION IT Whereabouts? JUST TO THE LEFT...UP A BIT...YEAH All gone? YEAH, SORRY ABOUT THAT IT WAS JUST REALLY ANNOYING ME Shall we carry on? WHAT? OH! (nervous laugh) OFCOUSE....(rustle of papers) UH...... 16.ARE THE RUMOURS OF AN APPEARANCE ON A CHRISTMAS CELEBRITY EDITION OF TV1�S �RISK� TRUE? No, Jon asked some of us to appear, but unfortunately we are booked out in Papatoetoe and then we have to go straight to California to deal with some legal issues in the coming weeks. It's a real shame, it would have been good publicity. 17.HOW DO YOU REACT WHEN YOU SEE A NUN? I like nuns, I think they're great. They're some of the few people who don't recognise me and I'm always willing to have a chat with them when I come across them. I really admire the work they do. 18.WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR CHRISTMAS? I'm actually going to spend my first Christmas since 1998 bacl home in Taupo with my family. It's been a long time coming and all the cast is really looking foward to having a bit of a break. God knows my wife is sick of spending Christmas in hotel restaurants and watching me appear in live interviews on the one day of the year everyone should be with their loved ones. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME OWEN. IT�S BEEN A TREAT. MERRY CHIRSTMAS. Merry Christmas to you too Deluntrash. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Pass on my regards to all the team at Celiasays. Wow, what an experience. What a handshake. What a guy. Sorry ladies, he's married. Owen and the gang will be appearing at the CeliaSays Christmas Party on Dec 21. If you're invited you're gonna want to come. It'll be a blast. What a guy. Sigh. And guess what PLC, you and him score 89%! Watch out though, I'm right behind you with 74%. So Owen Sagem. Friend or Fraud? Probably a bit of both, you deicde. But you hafta admit, he's a pretty nice guy. -DE LUNTRASH xxx |
| OWEN SAGEM Full House Friend or Fraud? -a DeLunTrash exclusive |
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