ON Saturday night in a posh Sydney bar the Mount Isa plumber Dan Leyden, 30, is declared to have Australia’s most ordinary dad-bod.
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Part of the decision rested on his mediocre performance on the recorder of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. Anyone who ever attended an Australian primary school could presume how terrible Dan must have sounded, and yet 500 attendees in the Ivy Pool Bar sang the song with him.
“This has just got out of control,” Dan said to a nearby friend shortly after he was announced the Australia’s Most Ordinary Rig winner, and sometime during his three day bender.
Three months earlier Dan was the owner of a plumbing business, one of the boys in a footy team, the husband of Bianca, and the father to daughter Evie, who was born last December. While he is still these things, he’s also now a representative of the average Aussie bloke.
It escalated from the Mount Isa Rodeo in August when the LMFAO song Sexy and I Know It came on between the rodeo competitions. It was Saturday night, Dan was on the “heavy sip” with his mates, Mrs Leyden was out of town, and he was wearing his beloved budgies. He could not resist. Dan stripped down and went for it.
Thousands of spectators predominantly thought it was part of the show, and maybe this is why Dan left the arena with no public nuisance charges made against him. Attending police officers considered it. The rodeo manager Natalie Flecker was just grateful that Dan kept his undies on “in true Outback style”.
An image by photographer Virginia Hills, who coined the label ‘Budgie Smuggler Cowboy’, and local media write-ups brought Dan’s average body to the attention of brand Budgy Smuggler, which ran a clever marketing strategy in its Australia’s Most Ordinary Rig Competition. It was a competition that resulted in the winner presenting $10,000 to charities supporting mental health.
Dan became one of the ten finalists, and Budgy Smuggler invested in two plane tickets to Sydney to ensure that the Budgie Smuggler Cowboy competed in the final ‘gala dinner’. Dan teased that if he won he should be on the famous Mount Isa celebrities billboard next to My Kitchen Rules 2015 finalists Jac and Shaz.
Budgy Smuggler thought it was a good idea. Dan announced on the Today Show on Monday morning that the brand would pay to have a billboard of him in Mount Isa. Yet State Member Rob Katter teased that this wasn’t enough to honour Mount Isa’s newest celebrity
“Why not a large statue of you (Dan) and your trophy...out front of the Buchanan Park main entrance?” Mr Katter said.