Scott Cam labels Block quitters Elle Ferguson and Joel Patfull ‘piss-poor’ for walk off

Scott Cam has let rip on Elle Ferguson and Joel Patfull, claiming their reality TV walk-off was un-Australian and embarrassing.

Scott Cam has doubled down on his brutal assessment of Block quitters Elle Ferguson and Joel Patfull saying their actions were un-Australian, embarrassing and piss-poor.

Cam let rip at the Bondi influencers who stunningly walked off The Block just days after the show started filming in April, claiming they left without even saying goodbye to the crew and cast.

“Un-Australian. The Aussie spirit, which I love so much, is to dig deep and go hard and their behaviour was piss-poor. It was an embarrassment,” Cam said, standing by his brief comment at a post-Logies brunch on the Gold Coast on Monday.

“Come on, 48 hours and this is too hard? Why did you join the show in the first place?

“And there have been 18 seasons, so you certainly know what is going on.

“Just from a worker point of view, I just think it is pretty ordinary.”

Ferguson and Patfull, an ex-AFL player, said at the time they were leaving as Patfull’s Adelaide-based mother had sustained serious injuries from a fall and they wanted to dash to South Australia to be by her side.

“Family always comes first,” Ferguson wrote on Instagram at the time.

Ferguson’s manager Camille Thioulouse said on Tuesday the fashion influencer would not be commenting on Cam’s views.

Ferguson posted on Instagram after the walk-off, claiming “family comes first”.

The couple lasted just three days into production.

Cam said the couple had given no indication they were getting cold feet in the lead up to them deciding to leave.

“No, they seemed pretty happy to start with and then they just scarpered without saying goodbye or thank you,” Cam said.

“And you know what, another Australian trait is to own up, be honest, so you come to me and say ‘Listen Scott, this is not for me, we underestimated, we did not realise, we just can’t continue,’ and I’d go ‘OK, I accept that,’ but to scarper, not say goodbye, not say thank you, not say sorry, so we had to scramble for the show.”

He said he had even told contestants during the judging of the show’s first challenge that if they wanted to go now was the chance to speak up.

“On the night before they left, which was the (48-hour challenge) judgement day in our studio, I actually, unbelievably, I don’t know why, I said ‘if anybody can’t hack the pace I am giving you an out right now’,” Cam recounted.

“We have never said that before. ‘So if you can’t handle it, I am giving you an out, now is your chance, I have got another couple waiting behind the screen’ – I was joking – we didn’t have that and they did not say anything and the next day they scarpered.

“I gave them the out, they could have put their hand up and said, ‘Listen, this is not for us’, at that moment, but they didn’t do that.”

Scott Cam says the couple took off without a goodbye or a thankyou.

Ferguson, a well-known influencer, has refused to comment.

Cam said The Block quickly moved on.

“We have got new great contestants that replaced them, but just from a worker point of view it just seems pretty ordinary,” he said.

The Block is being filmed in Gisborne South this year, 45 minutes outside of Melbourne, where contestants are each developing 10-acre luxury mini estates.

The show has been besieged with challenges and setbacks since filming started in April.

Delays with permits and paperwork related to the subdivision meant the renovation show started filming weeks later than originally planned.

That late start date meant the build would be taking place in the heart of winter.

On top of that, a contestant contracted Covid on the eve of filming getting underway and had to quarantine which pushed the start of shooting back by yet another week.

Then Ferguson and Patfull suddenly quit the show, triggering a casting change and a new team being flown in from Sydney and starting work on The Block within 36 hours.

There have been challenging supply issues with building materials. The cost of materials has skyrocketed and the production had to do a desperate call out for tradies last week.

The weather conditions have been arctic and heavy rain has turned much of the construction site to mud.

As the show enters its last three weeks of filming, executive producer Julian Cress said last week it would take a mammoth effort to complete the five properties within the filming schedule.