Media : Poland's Premier of Pranks Prevails : Janusz Weiss keeps 'em laughing--and thinking-- on Radio Zet by testing the limits of tolerance.

By KITTY McKINSEY

Feb. 1, 1994 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

WARSAW — The recently returned Polish emigre was frustrated at the lack of snow in his yard and had learned during his stay in America that money could buy anything.

So he called a trucking company and asked it to deliver snow from the Tatra Mountains so his children could build snowmen in still-green Warsaw.

The trucking company employee was uncertain. “OK, I’ll call your competitor,” the businessman threatened. No, no, came the reply over the phone, they would deliver the snow immediately.

Gotcha!

Poland’s premier prankster, Janusz Weiss, is at it again--and much of Warsaw is listening in on Radio Zet.

Poland’s first private radio station has revolutionized broadcasting in this former Communist country where all radio and television used to be under state control. And one of Radio Zet’s star attractions is Weiss, with his daily telephone practical jokes--a sophisticated version of the American third-grader’s “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”

But it is more than comedy. Weiss, a longtime underground cabaret performer in the Communist days, has gleaned important insights into what the Polish capital’s residents are thinking about these days. And the two main themes are: How far has capitalism progressed, and do we really have civil rights in the face of the formerly totalitarian government?

“People like very much to check what they can do and what they can’t,” Weiss said in an interview. “These people couldn’t really order a truck full of snow because they don’t have that much money. But they like to know this kind of thing is possible.”

Radio Zet’s listeners set the challenges for Weiss, who is part practical joker and part ombudsman.

They tape-record their dares, which are then vetted by a committee. If the idea is accepted, the listener gets 1 million zlotys--about $50--which is a lot of money in Poland. If Weiss fails to pull off the suggestion, the listener gets another million.

“I get a lot of tasks where I’m asked to present myself as a foreigner or a rich capitalist,” said Weiss, 45, whose cabaret troupe was banned in 1975. He later ran an underground video parlor that showed banned films during the days after martial law was imposed at the end of 1981.

Weiss puts his acting talents to good use, using a variety of voices to improvise his unlikely phone conversations, which are broadcast live.

Some of the challenges are strictly jokes--such as trying to persuade the owner of a car wash to clean an elephant.

But others plumb the taboos of Polish society--such as asking a cafe to organize a reception for a homosexual wedding (agreed). Or asking the city-run bus company to install condom-vending machines on buses. (Bureaucrats insisted that “society wouldn’t accept it.”)

Weiss’ challenges also examine the contradictions in a country that remains heavily Roman Catholic despite having been Communist for 45 years. He recently stunned a worker at the ex-Communist Party’s headquarters by announcing that the Warsaw bishop had agreed to bless the building. The man accepted the offer and even acceded to the request that two believers be present for the ceremony.

“No problem,” the former Communist official said. “I myself was an acolyte.”

Cafe owner Jurek Zaporski makes a point of tuning into Weiss’ program every day. “Life is gray and difficult,” Zaporski said. “It’s so nice to hear something funny. It improves people’s moods. People need something to make them relax.”

Every third radio in Warsaw is tuned to Radio Zet (a snappier version of the station’s original name, Radio Gazeta, or Radio Newspaper), which has built fortune and clout on a predictable American formula: rock music, news scoops, competitions, games and generous cash giveaways.

The Weiss show is only one of many ways that the station gets listeners involved. A telephone hot line--”the red telephone”--solicits news tips and pays the equivalent of an average month’s salary for good ones. (Radio Zet gives away about $2,000 a day in prizes.)

“We always know which minister had too many drinks the night before and destroyed the restaurant,” said the station’s founder and biggest shareholder, Andrzej Woyciechowski. In one of the most astonishing tips, a policeman called in from the scene of a bank robbery before taking off in pursuit of the criminals.

“We get 20 scoops a day,” Woyciechowski boasts. “Every day we are quoted by (the Polish news agency) PAP. Two or three times a week we are quoted by (the Western news agencies) UPI, AP and Agence France-Presse.”

Proud as he is of his news-gathering operation--70 of the station’s 160 employees are journalists--Woyciechowski is also full of admiration for Weiss.

“This is the most difficult thing we do,” Woyciechowski said of Weiss’ program. “This requires great acting skills, lots of invention and a very big sense of humor. To be funny is always the most difficult thing.”

Weiss admitted that it is hard work, but he obviously enjoys it.

“It’s very stressful,” he said. “You have to be in good shape, but if I succeed, then I have very big satisfaction.”

And even though he considers himself an expert on human behavior, the listeners sometimes astonish him.

In one recent prank, he pretended to be a talking computer, offering to fulfill the dream of just one person from the whole human race.

He instructed the woman who answered his call to speak her dream after three beeps. He waited for jokes--or predictable greed for personal wealth. Instead there was a long silence, and then the wish: “May there be peace.”