PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Video pranksters were drooling after Mayor Lee Sullivan told them -- on camera -- that his city offers spring break visitors unbridled opportunities for sex and underage drinking while admitting it has "no culture."
New York City-based Alltrue Networks Inc., which produces reality video programming for various media outlets, issued a news release Monday bragging that it had put one over on Sullivan.
Two Alltrue staffers posed as representatives of Britain's Prince William and, during a videotaped meeting with the mayor, claimed he was interested in visiting Florida's spring break capital to "let loose."
"It was really fun," said Dewey Thompson, editor in chief of Alltrue's Web site, Alltrue.com. "I don't think there are many politicians in the country who are so candid."
Sullivan agreed, but he said the joke's on Thompson.
The mayor, known for his sense of humor and flamboyant style, said he learned his visitors were not on the up-and-up when his wife called England to check them out. So, he said, he played them along.
"I will suggest to you that if Prince William had an agent, that when one called Buckingham Palace and asked for him and they didn't know who you were talking about, even someone as dull-witted as I might have anticipated that the Bonnie Prince was not on the Greyhound bus headed here," Sullivan said.
A tourism official and City Manager Richard Jackson sat in on parts of the meeting, but Sullivan did not let them in on the joke.
"They could have fooled me," Jackson said. "Well, they did fool me."
Alltrue.com bills itself as a humor site that specializes in "prankumentaries." The Sullivan interview is the highlight of a video about spring break in Panama City Beach, Thompson said.
"He's talking about all these 'wonderful nubile youths,' and girls covering themselves with whip cream and he just goes on and on," Thompson said. "He was even telling us that not only are waffles good to eat, but it's really good to puke up because it's soft and chewy."
Even after that statement, Thompson said he did not believe Sullivan was onto him.
"You don't try to sell a watermelon to a watermelon farmer," Sullivan said. "I was just my usual affable self. He just ran all around with his camera, but he wasn't getting any action from my compadres."
