I’ve been waiting weeks and finally it’s here: in Episode 7 of Kagiso’s Island of Treasure, Kagiso Lediga finally goes head to head with Jamaican Olympian Yohan “The Beast” Blake! I’ve been hoping for weeks that he’d be bringing his sharpest one-liners to this particular interview and he doesn’t disappoint in this extended interview.

Yohan Blake is of course the 100 and 200-metre sprinter who took home a gold medal in the 2011 Olympics and a silver one in the 2012 Olympics. The guy trains with Usain Bolt (who also makes a brief appearance in this episode) and his record of 9.69 seconds makes him the second fastest man in the world. And they call him The Beast. He’s not a guy you want to mess with, even if he wears an anime character’s symbol on his headband while he trains.

Rosina takes Kagiso to meet Blake so he can learn a little something about what it takes to be a winner. This is the sort of thing that should end in bad National Lampoon shenanigans involving Kagiso trying to get into a sports club to see his hero or something, but thankfully the Tropika team forego that rubbish and go straight for the jugular with this one.

The interview with Blake is better than I expected. Kagiso balances out his usual quips with a few legitimate gasps and nods when Blake talks about his hard life growing up on the streets of Kingston. It doesn’t stop him from tearing into the guy, which obviously takes some serious balls. It helps that Blake’s such a good sport about it. It sounds like Kagiso’s going way off-script with this one, challenging the champ with a hypothetical race against the SAPS and hamming it up as always with some stories from his own childhood spent running around the streets here in SA.

And then there’s that truly audacious moment of product placement! I can only commend the Tropika crew for being willing to ham that moment up as much as they did. This is by far the best episode of the series so far, and that’s saying a lot.

We’ve only got three more to go after this and Kagiso’s finally decided he wants to get serious about his documentary. With that in mind, the team’s off to the Bob Marley Museum next week.

We’ll bring you a new episode of Kagiso’s Island of Treasure every week for the next 10 weeks in the lead-up to the launch of the Tropika Island of Treasure 5 on SABC 1. You can also check them out on Youtube over at Tropika’s channel.

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