The Block judge reveals truth behind shock 'cheating' scandal: 'Not suitable'

The Block judge Darren Palmer has revealed the truth behind what was seen as "the biggest Block scandal ever" at the time when brothers Simon and Shannon Vos hid a phone under a bed to record the judges' feedback in 2014. Viewers saw Darren look under the bed to check on the location of power points, only to find the phone instead.

In the lead-up to the 2024 season of the show, The Block shared the clip from 2014 to Instagram, with the caption reading, "Shannon and Simon tried some phone-y business but all was revealed in this Reveal!"

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'Cheeky monkeys'

Darren told the other judges that the brothers had made an error by not moving their power points to accommodate a king-size bed, adding, "Speaking of errors, there's a major error down here."

"And guess what he found?" Scott Cam asked the brothers. "No idea? He found this," he said, pulling the iPhone out of his pocket.

"Cheeky monkeys are recording this," Darren is seen saying.

However, Darren took to his own Instagram Stories to say, "We had to overdub 'cheeky monkeys' as what I actually said was not suitable for the time slot."

Upon further investigation, it would seem as though what Darren actually said looked like, "Cheeky f***ers," definitely not appropriate for prime-time TV.

Back in the clip, Scott revealed that the phone was recording everything that the judges were saying, leaving the other contestants shocked.

"That is really bad, is that cheating?" Shaynna Blaze asked.

"I don't know if it's cheating, but it's definitely giving them something that everybody else doesn't get," Darren said, adding, "Like Scott delivers our judgements – recording them? That's never been done on The Block before."

Shannon collected the phone from Scott, saying, "That was awkward."

'Producers set them up'

Some viewers were confused about why the judges even looked under the bed, with one user writing, "The judges never look under the beds but this time when there happened to be a phone recording underneath they did?"

"At least hide the phone better 😂," another said.

"But clearly they have never checked under a bed before so producers set them up," a third said.

"Mmmm but someone must have tipped them off... it's obvious," someone else said.

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Another viewer remembered, "And then they placed a phone (not recording) in plain sight at the next reveal!"

Others wrote that the show was much better back then, with one viewer writing, "All these flashbacks are a great reminder of how great the show used to be."

"When The Block was entertaining to watch," another said.

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