K-Chat

K-Chat logo

K-Chat (also stylized as K-CHAT) is a celebrity talk radio station in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City hosted by Amy Sheckenhausen (voiced by Leyna Weber). Sheckenhausen is a ditzy girl with a cheery voice, who tends to gush over her famous guests while ignoring those she tends to find boring. She sometimes reads a book during interviews and forgets when there's a commercial playing. Of the nine radio stations in the game, K-Chat is one of the two stations not represented in the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Official Soundtrack, along with Vice City Public Radio.

Interviews

K-Chat runs "live" interviews with both local and national celebrities, along with listener call-in participation. During the broadcast played in the game, Amy talks with seven interviewees, some of whom appear elsewhere in the game.

One of the characters that appears elsewhere in the game is Jezz Torrent, of the fictional band Love Fist. After this segment is an interview with professor and exaggerated feminist Michaela Carapadis (Mary Birdsong). She is over-obsessed with hating men and even dresses as one. She also discusses her recently-published thesis, which describes an undercover experience on her study into the male psyche: cross-dressing so as to approach males and study their mentality. She is later insulted by a caller on air after being told that her work is totally nonsense and is nothing but a "load of crap" as she says. Following that is an interview with Pat "Mr. Zoo" Flannerdy, an anachronistic Steve Irwin parody with an unconventional love for animals. He is later removed from the studio by his doctor (after molesting an animal) after he reveals to Amy that he is just a very mentally sick man and is taken to a mental clinic.

After Mr. Zoo is removed from the studio, Amy interviews a New Age priestess by the name of Gethsemanee Starhawk Moonmaker. During this interview, a caller makes lewd comments to Gethsemanee, asking her for punishment in a BDSM manner; this same caller calls Lazlow Jones, the host on Chatterbox FM, the talk radio station in Grand Theft Auto III, asking to be spanked by a nanny. The next interviewee is BJ Smith, an aggressive and overzealous American football legend (voiced by real-life legend Lawrence Taylor). Late in the game, Tommy Vercetti, through the player's choice, is able to buy a used car dealership from Smith. He also appears in commercials on other radio stations advertising his used car dealership.

The final two interviewees appear in commercials on other radio stations in the game. The first is Claude Maginot, a classically-trained actor who is ashamed at his recent forced career change, a successful audition for the part of the father in Just the Five of Us, a fictional sitcom with a ridiculous premise involving a "mix-up at the adoption agency" and "three zany new house guests". Both this sitcom and his unsuccessful interpretive dance performance, In the Future, There Will Be Robots, are advertised on other stations. Finally, Norse deity Thor (or a reincarnation, impersonator or channeler of him — it is not explained which in the game) appears to further explain and sell his series of self-help tapes, which give very ancient (and often violent) answers to common personal problems, such as decapitating one's girlfriend and parading her head on a stick as a declaration of love. He is critical of women, exampled in his treatment of the host - "Go and live in a chimney, ye troll!" and "Wench Amy" - and he is known to speak in the third person. Thor has a fan club in the city, who call themselves the Bloods. They invite Thor during his interview to pillage with them. The caller also calls in Chatterbox FM in Grand Theft Auto III complaining about the English and association football (soccer).