The Block finale: Dave Hughes reveals identity of mystery caller

DAVE Hughes has revealed the truth about one of the most tense moments from The Block finale.

Fans of the Channel 9 show will recall that Norm and Jess’s penthouse apartment auction got off to a slow start and stalled once their reserve price of $2,650,000 had been reached.

It eventually fired up a little before once again coming to a standstill.

In a desperate attempt to get some last-minute bids, buyers advocate Nicole was shown running out onto the deck to make an urgent phone call to a potential buyer.

Norm and Jess, who were watching the auction on a TV screen, were hoping the mystery caller might chip in with a huge offer. But it wasn’t to be, with the person on the other end of the phone declining to make an offer.

In a surprise twist, Dave Hughes revealed on his Hit Network radio show yesterday afternoon that he was the person on the other end of the call.

“Nicole rang me. I got a phone call. Random,” Hughes said on air.

“But you hadn’t even registered,” his co-host Kate Langbroek replied. “You weren’t interested in the auction, you’d made it quite clear.”

Hughes then explained that someone had registered his interest in the auction on his behalf, although he didn’t find out about it until after they’d done it.

“I knew they’d done it, but I didn’t ask them to do it,” he said. “I didn’t disagree with them doing it … I consented after the fact.”

The penthouse eventually sold for $2,859,000 meaning Norm and Jess walked away from The Block with $209,000 in prize money.

Hughes explained to Langbroek that he was standing next to his wife, Holly, when he received the call from buyer’s advocate Nicole.

“My wife gave me that look, ‘No!’” he said.

Hughes is still in the bad books with his wife after he spent $3.067 million to buy Josh and Elyse’s house from The Block last year, a figure that some property experts said was “between $417,000 and $517,000 too much”.

Speaking on radio after the purchase, Holly said, “The only thing I asked was, ‘If you are going to bid can you please just do it through an advocate so we can keep it private’”.

But Hughes didn’t keep it private and was featured in last year’s finale posing with The Block contestants.

“Raffy’s (the couple’s son) whispering people were hassling him about it at school,” Holly said at the time. “Raffy’s saying he feels like dad was showing off.”

Hughes is currently renting out the property in Elsternwick but he did confess to Triple M’s Hot Breakfast in January that it took him a while to find tenants.

“I had trouble renting it,” he said. “It took a while.

“At one point the real estate agent rang me and said, ‘Someone wants to move in but they’ve got a dog’. I felt like saying, ‘I don’t care whether they’ve got a meth lab’.

“It’s a little dog and it’s fine. They put in their own doggie door.”

According to realestate.com.au, rent for the five-bedroom house would be somewhere between $2500-$3000 per week.

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