Does this work?!

Yesterday I had occasion to be near a TV in the middle of the day (I wont tell you where I was… but it’s a doozy!) and caught most of Tyra Banks' talk show (I was mostly flicking between that, Date my Mom on MTV and WonderPets on Nickelodeon)

Tyra had some guest who is apparently a real-life HITCH, coaching guys in the art of meeting and attracting women. There was a lot of time spent following this guy (leather jacket, whispy blond hair) was going through some of his best techniques with a couple of dudes in a park (one of these guys looked just like Justin Beiber will look when he goes through puberty).

After doing the basic greet-a-girl-make-a-joke-be-cocky-but-not-arrogant-don’t-hang-around-too-long teacher and pupil went onto an advanced technique that left me baffled. Basically it goes as follows:

(1) Walk around and wait until a woman you like the look of is walking towards you
(2) Reach out and gently grab her arm as she walks towards you and say "Excuse me"
(3) When she has your attention say something along the lines of "I just had to get your attention because if I didn’t I would have kicked myself later"
(4) Before she has a chance to say anything, compliment her. Not compliment her subtly… say "You're drop-dead gorgeous"
(5) After 30 seconds or so of dialogue, say you'd like to hang out with her sometime and ask for her number
(6) Try not to do a victory whoop as you leave

I watched this with disbelief. Surely this doesn’t work? Right?

I don’t have a lot of experience trying to pick up American girls, but if somebody tried that in New Zealand they would either get scowled, or laughed at, or kicked in the nads. I'm not trying to pick up (being happily married and all) but if I were female and some dork tried that with me, I'm certain that I wouldn’t fall for it.

Or have I got it completely wrong? Would this work and its just that the cultural constraints of New Zealand don’t allow for males to be so forward without feeling either retarded or sleazy?

EDIT - I just remembered that a while ago I was talking to a friend who spent some time in Canada and had pretty much the same thing happen to her (if I remember correctly some guy crossed the street to tell her she was gorgeous). This further cements my theory that this technique is one that would only work in Northern America.