No Chubbies? Fat Chance

Nevertheless, Karolchyk takes delight in posing as a victim of media operations too gutless to let him share his hard-ass lessons about diet and exercise with a porky public even when he's willing to pay handsomely for the privilege. His website's home page asserts that he's been "blackballed at Colorado & Co.," put on "double secret probation from Mix 100.3" and "banned from CBS," and these claims prove accurate, more or less. Colorado & Co. producer Dreux DeMack offers a no-comment — "I really don't want to feed it," he says — but the show has definitely stopped accepting Karolchyk's cash. So has the Mix, whose head honcho, Don Howe, felt that Anti-Gym ads — like the one in which a hefty gal mopes about having to get dates drunk before they'll have sex with her — didn't fit the station's profile. "Their spots are aimed at shocking and shaming people into picking up the phone," he maintains. "That may be an effective strategy for them, but it's not advertising we're going to send out to our listeners, who were very vocal about the ads. They used words like 'offensive' and 'insulting.'" And Walt DeHaven, general manager of Channel 4, a CBS outlet, says attempts to find a middle ground between Karolchyk's desire for provocative promotion and the station's interest in keeping the switchboard quiet "never came together."

According to DeHaven, his dealings with the Anti-Gym ended there. But Karolchyk argues otherwise in a labyrinthine tale that involves Martin Higgins, a comedian who currently works on Anti-Gym commercials, and another TV station, Channel 7. Higgins says that last year he happened upon a posting on Craigslist announcing a protest against the Anti-Gym and attended out of curiosity. There he got his first look at Karolchyk, who went into the street and berated his critics through a bullhorn. Even though Higgins is a plus-size fellow, he says he was fascinated by Karolchyk's flair and recognized the opportunity to stage the equivalent of guerrilla theater. So he arranged to meet with the Anti-Gym's king rat, and together they came up with what they considered to be a foolproof way to garner more publicity.

"What Marty does is infiltrate fat acceptance groups," Karolchyk reveals. "He gets involved in them, or starts some of them, and gets real fat people to hate me. People ask about the protests we've had in the past, and the way it works is, there are five or six hired people who get paid, and then about twenty real ones will show up."

Before long, Channel 7 reporter Lane Lyon learned of a planned protest from a press release and contacted Higgins for an interview, not knowing the supposed Anti-Gym hater was actually in Karolchyk's corner. "It was an incredible marketing opportunity, and no one was going to get hurt by it," says Higgins, who was listed on the release as Martin Kitson — his mother's maiden name. "And as a comedian, I couldn't pass it up."

Lyon subsequently interviewed Karolchyk and Higgins/Kitson, and the report appeared that evening. Shortly thereafter, word filtered back to the station that Lyon had been bamboozled. Karolchyk swears he didn't know in advance that Lyon had interviewed Higgins, but he certainly did by the time the reporter returned for an explanation — and he chose to play things coy. "Lane Lyon said, 'You gave me a fake story.' I said, 'No, I didn't.' He said, 'What about this guy, this Martin Kitson? They said he works for you.' And I said, 'I don't know a Martin Kitson' — and I don't. I know a Martin Higgins, but not a Martin Kitson. So I told a little white lie. But it wasn't my fault. It was his fault. He should have done better research."