7.30 are delighted to announce that satirist Mark Humphries will be joining the program with a fortnightly satirical segment starting Thursday October 4.

Mark and his co-writer Evan Williams are excited to join the 7.30 team.

Mark and Evan said: “We had many offers but the prospect of bringing the ABC’s flagship current affairs program down to the level of third-rate undergraduate humour was too tempting to resist.

“We just love the job stability that can only be found at the ABC.”

This is not the first time 7.30 has had satire, with the much loved Clarke and Dawe segments gracing 7.30’s screens for many years.

Mark and Evan said: “We will never be able to fill John Clarke’s shoes, because his family refuses to give them to us.” 

Leigh Sales said “I’m a huge fan of quality political satire so you can only imagine my disappointment that we couldn’t land Shaun Micallef.”

The fortnightly segment begins Thursday October 4.

Guess the Pointless gig isn’t quite the dream job it was promoted as.

This is the kind of decision that makes sense on just about every level until you sit down to think about it. Humphries’ satire on The Feed grabbed a lot of attention towards the end, his shift to Ten boosted his profile significantly, and John Clarke remains dead: who better to take his place?

Thing is, Sammy J – remember him? – has been taking Clarke & Dawe’s place Thursdays at 6.55 for most of this year, and Clarke & Dawe’s place was nowhere near 7.30 for the last few years of their run. After a few amazingly bungled attempts to replace C&D – who reportedly were extremely happy to no longer be involved with 7.30 – the ABC current affairs show gave up on comedy entirely and we were all the better for it. So what’s the real deal here?

Our eyebrow remains stubbornly raised at the “fortnightly” schedule too, which may have come from Humphries and Williams (who we guess is either back from his relocation to the US or phoning it in) but seems like the kind of half-arsed compromise that comes from somebody having a great idea that not everybody is convinced by. Having them on once a fortnight is a great way to build up no viewer interest whatsoever (“is this the week the funny people are on?”) – unless the real point is for them to create clips that can “go viral” online and they’re just being dumped on 7.30 to show the ABC is serious about the whole thing.

And then there’s “satirist” Mark Humphries. We’ll get back to you on that.