Ben Folds' ode to ChatRoulette lookalike

Piano-playing rocker Ben Folds performed live on ChatRoulette during a concert in an "ode to Merton", the newly minted YouTube celebrity who many believed was actually Folds.

Merton quickly became the new voyeuristic webcam chat service's biggest star after publishing his "Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv" clip on YouTube. The clip, which has now amassed almost four millions views, shows Merton singing a song about the random people he's chatting with on the site.

Blogs and entertainment websites were quick to report that the entertaining YouTube maestro was actually Folds in disguise, but these reports were dismissed by a modest Merton, who said "Ben is a much better pianist".

Folds evidently caught wind of Merton's video and in response performed an "Ode to Merton" in front of 2000 people at a concert in North Carolina on Saturday.

In a clip of the performance published on YouTube, Folds, wearing almost exactly what Merton wore in his clip, sings his own ChatRoulette piano improv with random webcam partners. A laptop can be seen perched on top of Folds' piano and the audience in North Carolina sings along.

Last week, online measurement company comScore released data showing that, for the US alone, ChatRoulette's audience has "exploded" from 109,000 unique visitors in January to 960,000 in February.

In Australia, unique visitors to the site jumped five-fold from 18,000 in January to 97,000 in February.

But other data revealed ChatRoulette was becoming overrun with males and perverts, and it's not uncommon to come across men masturbating while using the site.

The Folds performance was free of pervs but one of the chat partners was sitting on the toilet, which garnered a positive response from the audience and added some spice and humour to Folds' song.

- © Fairfax NZ News