A Q&A with the viral wheelchair crowd surfer

You may seen his iconic photo blowing up one social media - a man being hoisted up in the middle of a Billy Talent concert, surfing over the crowd.

Ryan, from 104.7 The LIZARD, tracked down the lucky concert goer to talk to the legend, and get the full scoop straight from the source.

Below is a transcription of the interview with Francis Laderoute!

Ryan: You went a little bit viral here, can you tell us what happened at the Billy Talent concert?

Francis Laderoute: I go crowd surfing at every show I go to. It's kind of just part of the ritual to get in the game and rig my brakes up to make sure that when I'm picked up, I have a solid platform and I just go crowd surfing.

My brother and my friends usually start the crowd surf, but then from there they can't stop me from being passed on through the rest of the crowd.

R: Have you been in a wheelchair your whole life?

FL: No, I had an injury ten years ago. Turns out Jeeps don't fly so good. I learned that one the hard way.

R: And is everyone just happy to keep you floating?

FL: Yeah, we usually just corral a couple of willing participants in the audience to give me a lift up and people love to see it. Honestly, I do it almost more for the audience rather than my own enjoyment.

It’s wild because I really don't know who's paying attention and who is not. Unless I'm looking down and then I see everybody either looking or not, then I imagine that I have to bounce off of a couple of people's head on the way through. But nobody seems to mind!

R: And It's not just cool for the people that are actually taking part, even people that are way off in the stands that are just watching it. It's really cool for them, too.

FL: Yeah, it's great. Many people seem to enjoy it. I'm always a bit wary of the staff of the venue because just recently at Dethklok, the staff came up to me after the show and they're like, ‘Woah, that's sick dude, rock on.’

I feel that maybe the staff at the Penticton venue, maybe they weren't quite as happy about it. So, I kind of gauge how it's going, like what the staff is looking like, and that kind of dictates how many times I want to go up.

Because if they're unhappy then I'm doing this maybe only three or four times, if they love it, then I'll go five, six, ten times. Just however many times the mood strikes.

R: Have you ever gotten a response from the band members on stage?

FL: Yeah, actually. The previous Billy Talent concert that I had crowd surfed at, I got put over the barricade and the staff approached me, speaking into my ear and he said, ‘If you want to go on stage, all you have to do is say yes.’

And I just looked at him and said, yes. And I got hoisted on the stage and I got to meet Ben and the rest of the band and sing part of ‘Devil on My Shoulder’.