Seattlest Interviews Bill Gates On Subject Of Fake Interview

Last night after an imaginary evening in Ballard, we got ditched by our ride and ended up waiting for the 44 bus to 45th Street which, of course, took forever to come and was nearly full when we finally boarded and dumped our handful of dimes and nickels into the machine. There was only one seat left next to some weird-looking wirey guy so we considered standing in the aisle, but finally laziness won out and we sat down next to him. Dude turned out to be Bill Gates.

Seattlest's crack typing pool is currently transcribing the interview for posting, but we can tell you that we asked him all about that fake interview that was published in a Norwegian magazine recently. Yeah, apparently some Norwegian journalist invented a chance encounter with Bill on a European flight. Wholly Fake Bill told the guy that he never carries more than a dime in his pocket and that he and Melinda make dollar bets with each other all the time. When we asked him about that specifically he said it was "total bullshit." He does have a lucky coin that he carries with him wherever he goes. It's one of those fake broken pennies and he recently took the other half from Melinda and gave it to Warren Buffett. Touching. He also showed us what he carries in his wallet, which was so stuffed full of cash that he could barely bend it in half and a bunch of jewels and doubloons spilled out of it while he was trying to put it away. It's possible that we spotted a grill in there, but Bill would neither confirm nor deny. Questions we wanted to ask but didn't: "Why won't the Gates Foundation bail out Seattle public schools?" and "How much more is Vista going to slip?"

The best part about the AP writeup of the interview that never happened is the response from the magazine and actually all the quotes from Norwegians are pretty good and oddly quoted.

The interview, printed in the Norwegian magazine Mann and top-selling Swedish tabloid daily Aftonbladet, was "totally fake," said Eirik Lae Solberg, spokesman for Microsoft Norway.

and

Earlier, he told Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv that the piece was "real."

and

Solberg said Microsoft Norway would be "pleased" with the apology.

Other interviews by that reporter are now in question including two with Michael Shumacher.