Fans of Survivor will remember Randy Bailey as the player ousted at the most memorable Tribal Council in the show's history. During his 30 days in the competition, the cantankerous 49-year-old made many enemies, especially clashing with pin-up model Sugar and Olympic athlete Crystal.

When Bob, one of Randy's supposed alliance members, was sent to Exile Island, Randy began tormenting the other contestants even more than usual, apparently hoping that he could obtain the hidden immunity idol upon Bob's return. He thought his outlandish behaviour would prompt the majority of players to vote for him, but once he played the immunity idol, the player with the second-most votes would be eliminated, giving his dying alliance another few days to strategize.

Unbeknownst to Randy's alliance, Sugar had found the hidden immunity idol weeks before and Bob returned from Exile with a fake idol he fashioned himself. In cahoots with Sugar, Bob gave the fake idol to Randy, who then played it at Tribal Council. After a dramatic pause, host Jeff Probst revealed that Randy's idol was useless and, as Sugar and Crystal laughed, the ornery wedding videographer was indeed voted out of the game.

Bailey revealed to us the reasoning behind some of his controversial comments, why he didn't like Sugar and what he was thinking during that eventful Tribal Council.


Was it hard to watch the episode in which you were voted off? Were you embarrassed to see it all happen again?
Oh, I was not embarrassed at all. That was my favourite episode of the season.

What was going through your mind at Tribal Council?
"I wonder what's for dinner tonight?"

You had no reaction to the fake immunity idol?
In all seriousness, when Bob gave it to me, it was a pretty good fake. I literally laid my hands on that idol ten minutes before Tribal Council. All the stuff that I was doing all day long, I was doing that hoping that Bob would get me the idol. I knew I was a goner early on – in fact, I thought I was a goner the week before, when Charlie got voted off. Bob having the immunity idol, the real one, was the only thing that was going to save me. Yes, I thought it was real and when Jeff, at Tribal Council, asked if anyone wanted to play it, I sat there for a second and I saw Crystal and Sugar laughing at me and at that moment, before I played it, I knew it was fake and I had nothing to lose so I played it anyway.

Did you immediately know that Bob had purposely given you a fake idol, or did you think that he'd been fooled into thinking it was real, too?
Uh, no. We saw on the show that he made it and maybe Bob was thinking that I would think he was faked out, also, but no, I did not. I knew instantly that Bob was in on it.

It's interesting to hear that your wild behaviour the day of Tribal Council wasn't actually a strategy to stay in the game, because the show presented it as a legitimate plan to stick around. But the plan – to hope that Bob found the idol and then hope he gave it to you – it seemed to depend on a lot of ifs.
Yeah, it did. If I'd behaved myself, I was going home. If I acted like you saw me act, it would be fun and of course I'd be going home. That's what you saw.

Why didn't anyone seriously consider that Sugar had found the hidden immunity idol already?
Honestly, I didn't think she was smart enough to find it. Then, when G.C. quit the game, Corinne and I and Charlie were kind of thinking, you know, maybe Sugar found it and she played it to save herself and the idol backfired and got G.C. voted off. It didn't make sense for G.C. going home – we didn't know that he quit. They told us that he quit, but we thought they were just telling us that to cover up the fact that the idol was gone. Plus, how could someone have the idol and hang on to it for two or three weeks and nobody doing anything about it? That's rule No. 1 in Survivor: if you suspect someone has the idol, get rid of them.

Why did you clash with Sugar so much?
My first meeting with Sugar was at the game of keep-away. She shows up and Jeff says, "Sugar, what's wrong?" And the first words out of her mouth are, "Randy, he's just so ugly! I don't like the way he plays! I hate him!" This is before I knew her name. How do you address that? She claims that it was because I was mean to her is why she didn't like me, but she had her mind made up before she even met me. She admitted that in a pre-game interview; that she didn't like the "old guy" who walked around and didn't smile at her. It didn't matter – of course she's going to side with the 28-year-old surfer guy instead of the 49-year-old mean guy.

What did you think about her comments in the voting booth when she voted against you?
Yeah, "racist," what was it – "chauvinist, alcoholic loser." She'd known me, I think, for six days. Maybe she has a great career in psychoanalyst or something coming up. Maybe she's smarter than me. I had four beers in my 30 days and if that makes me an alcoholic, God help me.

Well, there certainly was a lot of controversy over your racially-charged comments to Crystal from a few episodes before that.
Yeah, and I didn't see them as "racially charged." I just genuinely didn't like Crystal. I don't care if she's white, black, green, blue.

What about the comments like "your boy, G.C.," and that they were in a gang?
I referred to Matty as a "kid." I referred to Kenny as a "boy." I'm not going to play into this politically correct world that it's become.

Do you regret any of the moves you made? Do you wish you'd done anything differently?
Yeah, of course. Watching the show on TV, you play it all through in your head a second time and you think of a million ways to get out of the predicament you're in. When you're thinking of those things, you've got a full stomach and you're thinking clearly and you're laying on the couch and it's different. Yeah, I should have been nicer to people and on Day 27 when Charlie got voted off, I should have approached Kenny and said, "Look, let's mow down your side and let's mow down my side and it's me and you to the end." But when I'm out there, I didn't see that Kenny was smarter than I gave him credit for. I just thought he was a dumb kid. And notice I called him a "kid." He's Oriental, so I must hate Orientals, too, now, huh?

How do you feel about how you were portrayed on the show?
It was pretty accurate. They started out editing me as the funny, smart jerk and then, the last two episodes, it was just kind of "the jerk." But I was OK with that.


Survivor: Gabon airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Global and CBS.

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