John Basedow

John Basedow is a bodybuilder and self-proclaimed "fitness celebrity" known in the United States for his Fitness Made Simple home workout video tapes. Ads for these appear on television a lot.

Besides the fame brought on by his ubiquitous television commercials, John was the subject of an Internet hoax that claimed he had perished as a victim of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake that had recently ravaged southeast Asia. This originated on January 2, 2005, when PRWeb, a press release newswire, published an apparently fraudulent press release attributed to Manta Communications, the publisher and distributor of Fitness Made Simple, stating that Basedow died while vacationing in Phuket, Thailand. This was refuted later when the Fitness Made Simple website added a message which denied that Basedow had been missing or injured as a result of the tsunami, or that he had even ever been to Thailand. Further proof (and also an answer to critics who alleged that Manta Communications was simply covering up his death to sell videos) is contained in a radio interview [1] where John discusses the rumor and verifies that he is doing fine and finishing up his new infomercial, just like the web site said.

External links

• Fitness Made Simple - Official site
• PRWeb.com - The press release