Australian Tumbleweeds
Sometimes dead is better
So Daryl Somers wants to bring Hey Hey It’s Saturday back- well, according to The Herald-Sun he does, on the back of a Facebook campaign to revive the ill-lamented series (here). Yawn. Okay, first there’s a searing burst of unadulterated rage that this kind of rubbish story even sees print, especially as the hard-hitting news team at The Herald-Sun failed to even find someone actually gainfully employed in television to provide some insight on whether Daryl’s dream could possibly ever come true. Presumably they did ask someone, but they were laughing too hard at the idea to croak out a useable quote. But after that… well, yawn.
The reason why this is a non-story no matter how badly Daryl wants to waste others money and our time reliving his glory days is simple: Hey Hey lives amongst us. Or at least, the segments and elements that people actually want to watch – which obviously don’t involve Daryl – are still around us today. For example, the number one reason people give for wanting Hey Hey back (and we’ve sat on enough buses and trains next to people reading news stories in which Daryl says “bring back Hey Hey” to know) is to give people something to watch on a Saturday night before they go out. But such a show already exists and it’s name is Australia’s Funniest Home Videos. After all, roughly 40% of the last two decades or so of Hey Hey was viewers’ letters and funny signs: what else is AFHV but more of the same?
Then there’s the arguement that Hey Hey was a great venue to give local bands and comedians media exposure. Two words sum up the 21st century replacement: Rove… meh. But that’s beside the point – Rove does what Hey Hey did for local / international acts, and does it better (mostly because you don’t hear Rove complaining that a band played a different song live from the one they did in rehersal and thus would never be allowed back). You want variety? There’s everything from Australian Idol to Dancing with the Stars for that. That ramshackle, freewheeling vibe that Hey Hey had going for it before Daryl turned into a grim spectre of comedy death lives on in shows like Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation, Thank God You’re Here and Spicks & Specks. You miss Red Faces? Just watch the first few episodes of Australian Idol each year. And so on and so forth and whatever.
The point of all this is that when Daryl says he wants to bring back Hey Hey, don’t be fooled. Even he must know that every single thing his old show did that was worth keeping lives on. No, Daryl wants Hey Hey back because Daryl wants to come back as the boss of a show where he can do whatever the hell he likes. It may just be a rumour, but the story that Daryl quit his comeback success as host of Dancing with the Stars because Seven (Stars’ home) wouldn’t give him a Hey Hey-style variety show but Nine hinted they would remains sadly plausible. And we say “sadly” because if true, it seems likely that Nine basically told Daryl “quit Stars, then we’ll talk about bringing Hey Hey back”, and once Daryl did what they said… well, at least Nine got what they wanted.
Think about that for a moment: if true, Daryl wants Hey Hey back so desperately badly he was willing to quit being the host of a top-rating show – a gig anyone else at his stage of their career would kill for – for the chance to bring it back. You’d have to admire such passion and commitment – if only Hey Hey wasn’t such a steaming pile of televisual dung for the last decade or so of its run, a naked and calculated insult to the viewing audiences intelligence and sense of shared humanity, a weekly two hour stain on our screens that even a decade on still lingers. Basically, Daryl wants the chance to strut and preen and gloat in front of the nation one more time, providing viewers with absolutely nothing else that they can’t already watch – and watch done better – elsewhere. It’s not news, it’s not sport, it’s not weather, and it doesn’t deserve the briefest slice of time or space in our nation’s media. Move on folks, nothing to see here.
(now, if it was John Blackman calling for Hey Hey’s return, maybe we”d listen…)
Gavan Disney’s wood
It’s long been an article of faith that the only Australian showbiz book better than a warts-n-all look behind the scenes of Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s 20-odd year run would be Tony Martin’s occasionally mentioned (and most likely a gag) examination of MMM management Wankers Away! But that was until the Gavan Disney sex trial.
For those not in the know, as the producer of Hey Hey Disney worked hand in glove with host Daryl Somers week in week out crushing the dreams of anyone who hoped prime-time entertainment in Australia could feature more than just a dead-eyed vicious host focusing his increasingly autocratic gaze on a pack of terrified underlings before cutting to a segment about vaguely smutty roadsigns. It seemed sort of reasonable to assume that Disney was the good cop in their double act – well, it’s not as if there could have been a worse cop than Somers, whose reputation for a uniquely vile brand of self-centered entitlement lives on to this day – until Disney was charged late in 2008 with sexually assaulting a teenage cameraman back in the early 1980s.
Those of you who’ve been following the news know that Disney was subsequently acquitted of all charges. So the court reports that follow are for entertainment purposes only. As is often the case, what makes these now officially false accusations so entertaining is their extremely specific nature. Think about it: someone had to sit down and actually make this stuff up. And not just about anyone – about the producer of “much-loved” variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, a show that in its 20 year run came to symbolise a certain kind of family entertainment that mostly involved low-level smut, thinly veiled abuse, a guy in a duck suit dry-humping members of the band, and absolutely no role for women past singing “folks are dumb where I come from” and giggling at Daryl’s jokes.
In recent years Hey Hey has undergone a minor revival amongst those barely in their teens when it was finally pulled off the air. Nostalgia no doubt plays a part. But watching selected clips on YouTube or on DVD doesn’t begin to convey the grim, arrogant attitude that radiated off the screen whenever Hey Hey was on the air. It became a show that was proud of its rubbish segments and tired gags, a show made by people who firmly believed they didn’t have to give a shit what people wanted to watch: you’ll watch a grim control freak giving his death stare to anyone who dares step on one of his gags and you’ll like it.
Too harsh? Doubtful: after it was announced that Hey Hey was ending after 28 years, Daryl proudly said that hearing Tom Jones and John Farnham ad-libbing My Yiddish Momma “was one of the most magical pieces of television ever”. Mostly because it happened on his show. A show that Disney produced week in, week out, a backstage Himmler to Daryl’s comedy Hitler. “Ve haff ways of making you laff” was never more threatening.
Anyway, despite Daryl’s seemingly ceaseless efforts to bring Hey Hey back (including an embarassing on-stage plea during the Logies, for Christ’s sake), that’s all in the past now. But always after a big trial, some questions remains unanswered. What was Dick Emery’s role in all this? Is shaving cream a traditional masturbation aid? And will there be a funnier line in Australian comedy in 2009 than this one: “The jury heard the complainant, now 47, gave conflicting descriptions of Disney’s car interior, the garden of his Melbourne home and his penis.”
For the answers to almost none of those questions, read on. And remember: Disney was, as mentioned earlier, found innocent in a court of law… but guilty in a court of hilarity*
(*not an actual court)
Hey, Hey creator Disney to stand trial on rape charges (The Age, December 19, 2008)
Television identity Gavan Disney has been committed to stand trial over allegations of sexual assault against a teenage boy more than 20 years ago.
Disney, the co-creator of the Nine Network’s long-running program Hey Hey It’s Saturday, faces 15 charges relating to the abuse of a teenager he worked with at Ballarat television station BTV6 in the early 1980s.
Disney’s former BTV6 colleague Frederick Fargher told Ballarat Magistrates Court today Disney had been “mildly infatuated” with the teenager. “I always had the impression Gavan favoured him a bit. He really liked him,” he said.
Mr Fargher said Disney asked him to attend drinks in a dressing room because he wanted to get the teenager’s pants off but didn’t want him to be suspicious. Mr Fargher said he was shocked to enter the dressing room and see the teenager naked with Disney fondling his genitals.
Mr Fargher had also been charged with indecently assaulting the teenager, but the single count was dropped in August when he agreed to give evidence against Disney, 59, of Toorak.
In a statement tendered to the court the alleged victim, now in his 40s, said he was intimidated by Disney. “After the dressing room incident I remember being terrified of being misunderstood and the threat of losing my job,” he said. The man said Disney went out of his way to make him believe he was somebody he was not and called him a “poofter”. “Some other jibes I can recall are, `gee, you’re a good kisser’, `you’ve got nice skin’ and `didn’t you know you were gay’,” he said. The man said Disney first assaulted him when he was drunk. “The acts occurred sporadically, but when they did they were forceful. They were not overly violent,” he said. “They were, however, invasive, unprovoked and defying vocal and physical protest from me.”
Disney is charged with 13 counts of indecent assault and two counts of rape. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The matter was adjourned for a directions hearing in the County Court in Melbourne on February 10.
That’s showbiz’, rape trial told (The Age, June 30, 2009)
Co-creator of the hit television show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Gavan Disney, repeatedly assaulted a teenage colleague almost 30 years ago, telling him “it’s all part of show business”, a jury has heard.
Disney, the former executive producer of the long-running Nine Network program, is fighting accusations he assaulted the teenager while he was employed at Ballarat television station BTV6.
On the first day of his County Court trial, the jury heard that Disney would squeeze the teen’s genitals, kiss him, force him to perform oral sex and, on one occasion, fondled his genitals with shaving foam.
The incidents allegedly took place between 1980 and 1983, soon after the youth joined the station as a 17-year-old, prosecutor Kieran Gilligan said.
Disney, 60, has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of indecent assault and two of rape. His lawyers said Disney denied the allegations and never touched the boy sexually.
Mr Gilligan outlined several incidents in which Disney allegedly assaulted the teen, now 47. He said Disney painted the incidents in a flippant light, saying: “It’s all part of show business.” Mr Gilligan said the teen felt ashamed and embarrassed and feared losing his job. The teen left the Ballarat station in 1981 after getting a job in Melbourne. He reluctantly agreed to meet Disney, who was then producing Hey Hey and managing its star, Daryl Somers, the court was told. Mr Gilligan said the abuse continued in Melbourne.
Mr Gilligan said Disney’s former BTV6 colleague, Frederick Fargher, would testify that Disney had a sexual interest in the teenager. Defence barrister Terry Forrest, QC, said the claims were fabricated. The trial, in Ballarat, continues today.
Former TV host witnessed abuse: court (NineMSN, July 2, 2009)
A former colleague of television identity Gavan Disney has testified that he watched him fondle and abuse a junior colleague.
Former Ballarat television presenter Frederick Fargher told the Victorian County Court Disney invited him for drinks in a television station dressing room and said he wanted to get into a co-worker’s “pants”. Mr Fargher said Disney told him: “I’m going to get into (his) pants tonight and I want you to be there so it’ll look less suspicious”. Mr Fargher said Disney would often play the fool and he wasn’t sure if he was serious. “I remember saying: ‘Oh Gavan’,” he told the court. “He just said: ‘Just do it’ and he walked away.”
Disney, the co-creator of the Nine Network’s long-running program Hey Hey It’s Saturday, is fighting accusations he assaulted a teenager with whom he worked at Ballarat television station BTV6 almost 30 years ago. The 60-year-old has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of indecent assault and two of rape over alleged incidents relating to the person.
The jury has heard the abuse began soon after the alleged victim joined the station in 1980, aged 17. Mr Fargher said he went with Disney to the dressing room and the alleged victim soon joined them. Both Disney and the complainant were drinking alcohol and were joking, he said. Mr Fargher alleged Disney “mildly encouraged” the teenager to keep drinking and repeatedly asked him to take off his pants. “I was a bit worried that he was serious about it,” Mr Fargher said.
He said Disney pulled the teenager onto his lap and again said: “C’mon, take your pants off”. The alleged victim agreed, saying: “Okay Gavan, if it means that much to you”. The teenager removed his clothes and Disney began fondling his genitals, Mr Fargher said. During the incident, Disney told the complainant: “Gee, you’ve got a great body,” he said. Disney then fondled the teenager’s genitals with shaving cream, before the boy vomited onto the carpet.
Mr Fargher said Disney then told the alleged victim: “If you’re going to throw up, go to the toilet”.
The alleged victim did not object and he himself remained quiet during the incident, Mr Fargher said. Mr Fargher, who is now retired, was questioned in 2004 and also charged with sexual offences after the alleged victim made similar abuse claims but the charges were later withdrawn.
Under cross examination, he denied abusing or having any sexual interest in the alleged victim. He also denied lying about what happened to become a police witness and avoid charges. “As God is my witness, I am not,” he said. Mr Fargher said he was unaware the teenager had not complained of a shaving cream incident. He also denied being motivated by a professional vendetta toward Disney whom he believed had wanted to sack him from BTV6.
Mr Fargher said Disney tended to favour the teenager over other employees. He added the boy also liked the attention. “He liked being Gavan’s number one boy,” he said. Mr Fargher said Disney remarked many times on how attractive the alleged victim was and how he fancied him. The trial, in Ballarat in central Victoria, continues on Friday.
Gavan Disney Sex Trial Hears Of Pants- Off Request (The Herald-Sun, July 03, 2009)
A WITNESS in the sex trial of Hey Hey It’s Saturday producer Gavan Disney told a court the alleged victim liked to be considered “Gavan’s number one boy”.
Former BTV6 compere Frederick Fargher told a County Court sitting in Ballarat yesterday that Mr Disney often described the alleged victim as attractive, and fondled the young TV employee with shaving cream in a studio dressing room one night. Mr Fargher, 69, said Mr Disney hired the alleged victim — who can’t be named — because he believed young people from Melbourne were “more worldly”.
He told the court Mr Disney, at times an amusing and charming man who drank scotch whisky and ice, told him he wanted to get into the young man’s pants. Mr Fargher worked with Mr Disney — a former talent manager who became the BTV6 production manager — when he compered an open-ended Thursday night chat show, Six Tonight. He said the program showcased local and international talent, including British comedian Dick Emery.
He told the court that one night in the early 1980s while in his office, Mr Disney appeared with drink in hand and told him there were drinks on in his dressing room after recording. Mr Fargher said that while all three drank alcohol, Mr Disney asked the young man to take his pants off. “I was worried that he was serious about it,” Mr Fargher said. Eventually the young man undressed and Mr Disney tried to masturbate him with the shaving cream, the court was told.
Under cross-examination from Peter Morrissey, QC, Mr Fargher denied he made up the dressing room incident. Mr Fargher described the man as being a “confident and ambitious” young employee back in the 1980s at BTV6. “He liked being Gavan’s number one boy,” he said.
Mr Disney, 60, has pleaded not guilty to committing 13 acts of indecent assault and two acts of rape. On Monday the court was told Mr Disney sexually assaulted the young man several times, telling him it was “all part of showbusiness”. Prosecutor Kieran Gilligan alleged sex crimes — including fondling, kissing and oral sex — happened at the BTV6 studio and other places including Mr Disney’s home and his car between 1980 and 1983. Mr Gilligan alleged the last of the assaults occurred when both men were working at Channel 9 in Melbourne where Mr Disney went on to produce Hey Hey while managing the show’s host, Daryl Somers.
Defence counsel Terry Forrest, QC, told the jury Mr Disney strenuously denied ever touching the alleged victim sexually in any way. The trial, before Judge Paul Lacava continues.
Disney cleared of sex assault charges (The Age, July 9, 2009)
Gavan Disney, a producer of the long-running TV show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, has walked free from court after being cleared of raping and assaulting a junior employee 30 years ago.
Disney, 60, was accused of assaulting the worker while he held an executive role at Ballarat television station BTV6 in the early 1980s. It was alleged at his County Court trial Disney fondled the complainant’s genitals, kissed him and forced him to have oral sex soon after the junior joined the station as a 17-year-old, telling him it was “all part of show business”.
But today, a jury acquitted Disney of 10 counts of indecent assault and two of rape after a day of deliberations. After the verdict, Disney hugged his wife and family members, telling reporters outside court he was “very happy” with the outcome.
Prosecutor Kieran Gilligan had alleged Disney, then aged about 30, escalated his assaults against the teenager when he knew he would not complain. He alleged Disney assaulted the teenager at work, in his car and at other places and taunted him with comments such as, “You’re a poofter” and “Didn’t know you were gay”. He said the assaults were usually accompanied by alcohol and the complainant feared losing his job if he spoke up.
But on the witness stand, Disney denied being infatuated with the complainant and rejected all allegations. Disney described his accuser as a keen and eager worker, but said he never gave him preferential treatment. “He showed potential and he was given an opportunity,” he said. Disney denied using his power to take sexual advantage of the complainant and any fear he had of losing his job. “I’m telling the truth and (he) was not a quiet retiring type,” he said.
Disney agreed he met the complainant in 1994 after they both moved to Melbourne. But he denied his accuser confronted him over the allegations at this meeting, saying it was because he wanted a job. “He had been through a bad time. I thought he looked a little unwell,” Disney said. “I felt he wasn’t up to being employed by me.”
Former Ballarat television presenter Frederick Fargher testified he saw Disney fondle the teenager’s genitals with shaving cream in a television station dressing room. Before the incident, he alleged Disney told him: “I’m going to get into (his) pants tonight and I want you to be there so it’ll look less suspicious.” Mr Fargher said Disney had expressed a sexual interest in the complainant and tended to favour him over other workers. The complainant also “liked being Gavan’s number one boy”, he said.
Mr Fargher was originally charged over similar allegations involving the complainant but this was dropped when he agreed to testify against Disney. He denied being motivated by a professional vendetta against Disney and denied lying to avoid charges himself. The jury heard the complainant, now 47, gave conflicting descriptions of Disney’s car interior, the garden of his Melbourne home and his penis.
Disney’s wife Margaret Disney described the complainant as a confident and happy man. She said her husband’s employees looked up to him and respected him. Judge Paul Lacava last week instructed the jury to find Disney not guilty on three further indecent assault charges due to lack of evidence.
Great Australian Comedy Mysteries of the 20th Century #1: Shaun Micallef on Comic Relief 1999
Big comedy fans like myself usually have a list of Holy Grails; bits of footage we’d like to see and facts we’d like to confirm. Finding that footage or getting to the bottom of a particular story can become an obsession. I myself have spent countless hours trying to find out more about one particularly intriguing piece of footage involving a well known comedian – even going so far as to cajole my other half into searching through an entire year of newspapers in order to find out more about it – but I’ll tell you about that some other time.
Back in 2006 a person on a forum I frequented asked whether it was true that Shaun Micallef had appeared on Comic Relief in 1999. Comic Relief, if you don’t know, is a biannual telethon/spectacular which airs on the BBC and involves as many comedy and entertainment stars as can be herded into BBC Television Centre on the night. There’s music, pre-recorded specials of popular programmes and live sketches, and viewers are encouraged to call in and pledge money to support Comic Relief projects in the UK and overseas. This year more than £57million was raised on the night.
In order to confirm whether Micallef had appeared on the show in 1999 or not, I went straight to the BBC’s INFAX database, which lists, among others things, who appeared in what programme. INFAX was then available online as an experimental prototype, and was being hammered by TV enthusiasts. Whether it will become publicly available again I don’t know, but my fingers are crossed.
Anyway, I typed in Micallef’s name but found he was not listed. Then I typed in Comic Relief 1999, but did not spot Micallef in the cast list. I concluded that Shaun Micallef had not been in the show – it seemed pretty unlikely anyway – and totally forgot about it.
But Viv, the UK’s number one Shaun Micallef fan, got in touch the other day and reminded me of it. This footage is Viv’s Holy Grail: she remembers seeing – it’s what got her into Shaun Micallef – and she even had it on tape at one point, but lent it to someone years ago, and they never returned it. Since then she’s been trying to track down the footage and has asked countless comedy fans if they have it, to no avail.
Viv says that Micallef was not live in the studio (which would explain why he’s not listed on INFAX), but that the sketch was existing footage that was played on the night. The Micallef Programme started to air on the Paramount Comedy Channel (a UK satellite channel) a few weeks later, so it’s likely it is something from that show which Paramount supplied to the BBC to play on Comic Relief.
The sketch itself was an audience participation segment, involving Melbourne and a map, which didn’t quite go to plan, concluding with Micallef having a stand-up argument with an audience member (played, Viv thinks, by Wayne Hope). Viv remembers that the Comic Relief studio audience didn’t laugh much at the sketch and appeared not to get the joke. She suggests that Jonathan Ross’ introduction, which was along the lines of: “We know you’re all looking forward to Alan Partridge… [audience start cheering, thinking he’s about to come on] …but in the meantime here’s the Australian version, Shaun Micallef…”, can’t have helped matters.
But what is most intriguing about the sketch is that it doesn’t appear to have aired anywhere else. Was this footage from a Micallef Programme pilot, which somehow made it to the UK? Was the sketch specifically filmed for Comic Relief? Was it some kind of promo footage, filmed to sell the show overseas? Or had it been shot for series one or two, but never made the final edit? Either way, the footage is not on any of the three Micallef Programme DVDs, and absolutely no one seems to remember it.
The other problem with tracking down the footage is that none of the various UK comedy fans I know (all prolific recorders of this kind of thing) have the footage, although one was able to tell me that Alan Partridge came on at exactly 9pm, meaning this sketch would have gone to air before then.
So, here’s the first of many appeals for footage I’ll be making on this blog (because if you can’t use your blog to put a dent in your Holy Grails list, what’s the point of having one?): Did you record any of Comic Relief 1999? If so, please check the tape and get in touch. Viv (and I) will be eternally grateful.
Double Take? More like spit take
With the looming arrival of Seven’s new old-style sketch show Double Take, there’s bound to be a resurgance of the view that, while Double Take itself might be rubbish, at least it’s providing a valuable training ground for the comedians of the future. Shaun Micallef and Eric Bana came from Full Frontal, after all, and Big Bite gave Chris Lilley’s career a big push forward.
Seems almost reasonable when it’s put that way. But in all the excitement over the new age of comedy that’ll no doubt be dawning over the next few weeks (and no, we haven’t forgotten Ed Kavalee’s upcoming TV Burp either), here’s a bucket of cold water: Comedy Inc (The Late Shift) ran for five full seasons. That’s 95 one hour doses of sketch comedy that showed no noticable improvement at all at any stage. There were no classic sketches, no break-out stars, and no mesaurable benefit gained from its existance by anyone except those cashing a paycheck from the production company. In fact, the closest thing to a success that it generated over those five seasons was Paul McCarthy’s notoriously weak Kochie impression… which is back as part of Double Take.
Of course, Double Take just might be brilliant – we haven’t seen it yet. But if it turns out to be the dull, tired collection of weak celebrity impressions and aimless sketches that the promos promise… well, in Australian comedy behind every cloud is another cloud that’s exactly the friggin’ same.
yet again with The Chaser…
It was probably around the “Baby Day Spa’ sketch on this week’s episode of The Chaser’s War on Everything that I realised a couple of things…
1): If you’re still keeping tabs on the number of Chaser ‘references’ to earlier sketch comedy shows, then the gag about the baby getting a massage could very well have been lifted from US sketch comedy series Mr. Show. Who also did a ‘Make-A-Wish’ style sketch a decade or so ago, by the way.
2): Or they could just think seeing a baby getting a backrub is funny. Which it is.
3): Being dubbed “controversial” is pretty much the worst thing that could have happened to The Chaser. Take this weeks episode – a passably but bland collection of fairly safe gags enlivened mostly by Chaz’s extended sketch about using those text message “love calculators” in real life –
(a sketch, by the way, he seemed to have worked up pretty much on his own, much as he was the driving force behind the consistently entertaining “What Have We Learnt From Current Affairs Shows” in earlier series of TCWOE. Could it be that Chaz is the series’ real stand-out star?)
-and a couple of passable musical numbers. Not a controversial edge in sight, no matter how hard I shouted “controversial” at the television every time someone said “arse”. Unfortunately for The Chaser, what was by local standards a relatively competent slice of aimless sketch comedy stood no chance in hell of living up to their reputation as “rebels”, even if they did wave some fake e-mails at Malcolm Turnball early on in proceedings.
4): That said, this episode was an improvement over, say, pretty much all of series two, not to mention the first two episodes of this current series. It’s almost as if, without the crutch of their “edgy” material to lean on, they’ve been forced to go with ideas that are just plain amusing. Fingers crossed their next series is a revival of A Country Practice – no doubt they’d come up with something hilarious.
5): And then the next morning I picked up this week’s copy of Melbourne street paper InPress and read the following in occasional television column: ‘The TV Set’ by Andrew Mast. It’s worth quoting at length because, to the best of my knowledge, it’s the first non net-rant example of someone actually buying into the hype around The Chaser:
“So, anyone else feeling like the rebels are without a cause? That The Chaser rolled over where you expected them to fight (or at least arm wrestle)?”
[some discussion of the mild nature of the Make-A-Wish sketch, the overwrought reaction from the tabloid press, and the excessive nature of the ABC’s two-week suspension response follows. We rejoin The TV Set already in progress]
“Did The Chaser lads apologise in the hope that they could save the job of Amanda Duthrie, the head of comedy who was eventually rolled? Did they not arc-up about this ridiculous over-reaction because they wanted to show the BBC what easy-going, un-Brand-and-Ross guys they really are? [Mast had earlier mentioned that compilation episodes of TCWOE have started screening on the BBC – he doesn’t seem to have realised these comps were the ones made for US television tho’] Or do they really believe they went too far? We will probably have to wait a long while before the real behind-the-scenes stories surface… Hey Foxtel, how about a Chaser biopic? For now it seems that The Chaser didn’t just lose this war but didn’t even bother manning the tanks. Can audiences sue the team under the Trade Practices Act for their deceptive title? Or perhaps they should re-imagine themselves as The Chaser’s War On Government-Approved Targets?”
By all reports Mast is a decent guy, but he seems to have missed the point on this one. As much as it’d be nice to imagine The Chaser telling the Murdoch press to get fucked before driving off in a stolen outside broadcast van to beam pranks involving them vomiting on Don Bradman’s corpse direct to the public, once it became clear that The ABC wasn’t going to support The Chaser against the tabloid press they had no realistic choice but to cave. Even their first apology – made when it still looked like they could wriggle out of things – was savaged by The Herald-Sun and others as not going far enough. It was fairly obvious fairly quickly for those who remembered how The Mick Molloy Show was kicked to death over something far less offensive that unless The Chaser showed their bellies to the tabloids on this one they were going to go down in flames. Sadly, in this country you can only be as offensive as The Herald-Sun allows you to be.
More importantly, expecting some kind of flat-out rebellious response from The Chaser in the face of real opposition indicates a basic misunderstanding of what they do. It’s the same (willful?) misunderstanding that has noted right-wing commentator Gerard Henderson currently campaigning – read: trying to piggyback on their ratings – to send them to Mecca (http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/wordpress/). In the fantasy world where The Chaser are “rebels”, once they touched down they’d instantly do a prank that would get them executed: in the real world they’d probably just annoy some Saudi taxi drivers by asking them if they listened to Alan Jones.
(and isn’t it a good thing that the Catholic Church is no long a collection of infidel-murdering killers? Surely a sketch showing The Catholic Church’s current tolerance of opposing viewpoints and mockery – the Vatican balloon sketch seems to have inserted itself up Henderson’s arse, judging by his current desire to have The Chaser killed – is actually a positive for the Church?)
Let’s be blunt: The Chaser’s comedy rarely exposes any kind of underlying “truth” behind the topics they tackle – if it did they wouldn’t have had half the success they’ve enjoyed (just ask John Safran). At their best, they make broad gags about baby day spas and stupid commercials; at their worst, they wave bits of photoshopped paper in politicians faces while wearing a silly costume. How either makes you a “rebel”, let alone someone who should be waging a war against the ABC – an ABC that has been very willing to give Chaser member Chris Taylor plenty of odd-jobs around the place, by the way – remains a mystery. Not one that needs the Foxtel biopic treatment, mind you.
Never forgive, never forget…
Our love of The Mick Molloy Show isn’t exactly a secret – as the closest thing to an One True Successor to the wide-ranging genius of The Late Show (well, at least it tried), its demise at the hands of the tabloid press remains a true tragedy. So it was interesting to hear from a friend of a friend’s friend recently the following story…
It seems that, years after The Mick Molloy Show went belly up, a producer on the show was at a party where s/he got to talking to someone who turned out to be a producer on a major Melbourne talkback radio station. Turning the topic to Mick’s show without revealing his / her interest in said topic, the radio station producer revealed that not only had the station made a conscious, commercial decision to run a campaign to get Mick’s show taken off the air, but that various people at the station had received raises / promotions when they succeeded.
Not exactly a shock to anyone who remembers the heady days of 1999 (we’ll get around to discussing then-Herald-Sun TV critic Robert Fidgeon soon enough), but it’s always good to have these things confirmed. Even at fourth hand…
The Chaser is still exactly the same
A recent article which appeared in the Herald-Sun and various other Murdoch-owned newspapers and websites argued that The Chaser had “gone soft”, “looked tentative” and was now taking “aim at some easy targets”. “Like all episodes of The Chaser, there was just as many misses as bullseyes” said authors Colin Vickery and Patrick Horan. They concluded:
In the current environment The Chaser seems a bit old hat – a sort of comedy version of Gordon Ramsay, whose foul-mouthed tirades seem so 2007. Who knows whether they can get their mojo back, and even if they do, whether anyone will care.
It’s hard to not ask where Vickery and Horan were during the first two series of The Chaser’s War on Everything, or even the first two episodes of the current series. Looking tentative and taking aim at easy targets has been the CWOE’s stock in trade throughout its entire run, with large numbers of their sketches being neither funny, satirical, topical, well-judged or original. Last Wednesday’s episode, by contrast, was an improvement, at least in the first half of the show.
The episode started with a quick mention of the “Make A Realistic Wish” scandal before swiftly turning to Kevin ‘I didn’t see the sketch, but I was told it wasn’t very nice’ Rudd, the government’s media management style (making it hard for journalists to cover events; arranging for minders to stand behind spokespeople and nod at what they say) and Rudd’s notorious temper. This section was funny and made some good satirical points. A sketch which appeared a little later in the programme, where Julian Morrow asked a priest to join him in a prayer that the Catholic church, having committed the modern mortal sin of “accumulating excess wealth”, would be saved, was similarly praiseworthy. But thereafter, the quality dipped to what, sadly, has been the CWOE’s usual level.
There was the weak sketch which wondered what would happen if sports-style commentaries were applied to shows like Lateline, followed by a long and dull attempt to get free travel around the UK by dressing up as The Stig. The show ended with another “what would happen if…” sketch, although this one asked boxers not to fight by punching each other, but by using modern counselling techniques. Even the punchline to this, where the boxers realised the counsellor was the guy from the “Make A Realistic Wish” sketch and decided to go him with a chair, fell a little flat.
But the good sketches from this episode had their problems too. The press has been talking about Rudd’s anger management issues for months, the Catholic church’s list of modern mortal sins was first reported in the media more than a year ago, and that cameraman are now interviewing politicians in place of journalists was first reported by Media Watch weeks ago. Even if they were amusing and well made good points, is there much point in airing them well after their topicality has passed? And more to the point, why weren’t The Chaser striving to make different observations about what’s happening in the news, rather than taking relatively recent news stories and re-tooling them into a lame pranks?
Originality and daring have never been their strong point in the CWOE, though. Compare the stilted, been-through-so-many-lawyers-it’s-not-funny-anymore linking material in any episode of the CWOE to the often shambolic, but always funny interludes on The Late Show. And speaking of The Late Show, it’s one of the many series keen-eyed comedy fans have accused The Chaser of ripping off. Others include:
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This sketch from CWOE series 2, episode 16 about inappropriate movie roles for Hugh Grant which is strikingly similar to this sketch from the 1999 series The Mick Molloy Show.
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This sketch from CWOE series 2, episode 22 about finding the face of Jesus in a toilet, which turned out to be very similar to this sketch from Channel 31’s The Ugly Stick.
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And this sketch in series 2, episode 9 where The Chaser sent donations to the Liberal and Labor parties from the Ku Klux Klan, the Man-Boy Love Association and Al Qaeda Australia, a prank strikingly similar to one Michael Moore did in 1996 (documented in his 1997 book Downsize This!) in which Moore sent small donations to leading Presidential candidates from fake organisations such as Pedophiles For Free Trade and Hemp Growers of America.
In more recent allegations of ripping-off other comedians, Media Watch (among others) have pointed out that Foxtel’s The Mansion did a similar sketch to “Make A Realistic Wish” last year. And the other day Shaun Micallef reminded readers of the Sydney Morning Herald that he and Gary McCaffrie had written a sketch for The Micallef Programme in which a dying child had contacted the Make A Wish Foundation and requested to be masturbated by Lisa McCune.
Micallef added that The Chaser’s Chris Taylor had offered Newstopia the “Make Realistic A Wish” sketch last year, but:
Micallef turned the sketch down but not because it wasn’t funny. “It makes you laugh; it is funny.” He turned it down because he didn’t want to repeat himself and he’d decided his character “wasn’t going to be that nasty any more”. He also admits he “couldn’t really think of a way to justify it”.
What Micallef seemed to hinting at was that the major problem with the “Make A Realistic Wish” sketch was that it was misfocused. It certainly seems unlikely that The Chaser team hate children or think dying kids are selfish as the tabloid press and current affairs show have hinted, poor writing is far more likely. My theory is that the sketch was based on the notion that it would be amusing if the Make A Wish Foundation ran out of cash and could only afford to give dying kids cheap gifts. Unfortunately, what appeared on the screen was not, say, a Make A Wish representative going up to a dying child and trying to fob them off with a stick or a pencil case (thus making the baddie in the sketch the cheapskate Make A Wish representative, rather than the dying kid), but a spoof ad with a voice-over man saying lines like “…curbing their extravagance and greed…”, which made it look like The Chaser were saying that sick and dying kids who wanted to meet celebrities or go on overseas trips are nasty little takers milking people’s sympathy.
Shaun Micallef also told the SMH: “Self-censorship is a really insidious thing and I hope it doesn’t affect their writing”, a very generous statement given that self-censorship (as well as lack of focus) have always been the biggest problems in the CWOE. During the later part of the Howard years, when the show was supposedly in its prime, The Chaser spent far more time making sketches involving the Surprise Spruiker, the Citizen’s Infringement Officer or the Crazy Rug Warehouse Guy, than they did satirising politicians or government policy. And when they did satirise government policy it always seemed toothless, like they were more interested in the fact that John Howard went power walking every morning and that was kinda goofy, rather than that he was trying to reduce the earnings of the average Australian, had engaged the country in two unjustified wars, was doing bugger all about global warming and wouldn’t apologise to the Stolen Generation.
And yet it has only been during the current series, when the quality of the show has been about the same as ever, and it’s been kinda clear that this would be the final series of the show anyway, that commentators and fans have tentatively suggested that The Chaser are past their prime. Whether this is part of the same “neutrality and balance/please don’t sue us” trend that seems to prevent The Chaser from doing any decent satire at all, or just that they can’t see the wood for the trees I’ll leave you to judge, but one thing’s for sure – as the Herald-Sun, Shaun Micallef and everyone else has noted, they still rate and that’s, seemingly, all that matters.
It’s in the stars
TV networks don’t like talent. They’re in the business of making programs, not making stars. Which is hardly surprising: once you’ve seen Eddie McGuire become a household name, clearly that side of things is in the hands – or tentacles- of some kind of morality- and sanity-free Lovecraftian Elder God.
But so ingrained is the notion that shows make stars and not the other way around that… well, let’s take a step back for a second. Last week on ABC radio Green Guide writer Debi Enker suggested that Ten’s 7pm cooking show Master Chef was doing so well its high ratings were lifting the ratings of the shows around it. The show that she used as an example was the Shaun Micallef hosted ratings smash – and there’s a phrase we all never thought we’d read – Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation.
That’s right: supposedly fans of a cooking demonstration wrapped in a soft-sell reality show are sticking around to watch Shaun Micallef do his Woody Allen impersonation. And yet, from a TV insider’s point of view, this obviously dim-witted statement makes perfect sense. That’s because from a format point of view – and for insiders format is king – TAYG is hardly the stuff ratings dreams are made of.
It’s yet another limp comedy quiz featuring a collection of mostly also-ran guests, with question segments that drag on too long and an angle – generational facts and fads – that covers all the viewing demographics without doing much to make it appealing to any of them. So if you’re of a mind that the format is what viewers are coming to see, then clearly TAYG’s success (and it’s bringing in around 1.7 million viewers each week) must be slipstreaming from an earlier, even more successful show where the format actually is the reason why people tune in. After all, if viewers only tune into shows for the format, why aren’t they also tuning in for SBS’s mostly-ignored sports-themed comedy quiz The Squiz?
Leaving aside why Enker’s Green Guide fails to bring this angle up when covering every single locally-made ABC comedy shown at 9pm Wednesdays – where the slipstream effect from equally successful comedy quiz Spicks & Specks should apply just as strongly – this view pretty much sums up why so much Australian comedy each and every year is nothing more than steaming clumps of dung dropping from the gassy rectum of a bloated milk cow.
Who cares if the latest sketch comedy show is nothing more than the same old hack faces scraped together to do exactly the same face-pulling that failed the last time? Who cares if the latest panel show features the usual kak-handed suspects drivelling away with the jokes they couldn’t get up on their breakfast radio gigs? It’s the format that counts, not the people plugged into it.
(By the by, this is also a large part of why sitcoms hardly ever get up on Australian television: even at their most generic, a sitcom usually doesn’t look a lot like another sitcom. Kath & Kim didn’t lead to a new dawn for the Aussie sitcom, and yet The Panel spawned a good half-dozen knock-offs and Spicks & Specks is still spitting out imitations to this day.)
It’s little wonder that TV insiders are starting to put out the notion that TAYG’s success has something to do with what’s going on around it; the only other possible explanation for its success (bearing in mind that as a comedy quiz goes it’s hardly surprising or new) is that Shaun Micallef is a funny guy. And if viewers are tuning in to watch a funny guy be funny… well, what’s left for the people who think up (read: rip off other) TV formats to do?
Catherine Deveny knows comedy
We all know what the tabloid press were doing during the furore over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish” foundation sketch: they were obsessed with making rational and well-reasoned contributions to the debate, if the Herald-Sun’s “They spat in the face of dying children” headline was anything to go by.
And that kind of demented rabble-rousing is easy for them to say: if you discount the people who write those tiny “choice pick” blurbs at the top of the TV listings, the Herald-Sun doesn’t employ a single television critic who could have pointed out that The Chaser’s sketch was just something on television and not some kind of real-world living nightmare that was actually happening to sick kiddies every time the clip was viewed on YouTube.
But what about the “quality” press? Where were they in all the Chaser outrage? Hedging their bets for the most part, by covering “the outrage”, and running the same trashy stories while pretending to be above it all. And who can blame them? Like all media in this country, they’re running scared of shrinking readerships and revenues. But at least a paper like The Age actually has television reviewers to balance out the opinion pieces claiming that The Chaser’s sketch symbolised the Death of Compassion (Shaun Carney, The Age, June 9th), right?
Well, maybe. Marieke Hardy couldn’t pull herself away from her cappuccino long enough to comment – hardly surprising, as she’s also an ABC employee. Gee, that policy of only hiring media insiders to comment on the media is really working out, hey? And in the other corner we had Catherine Deveny’s ‘Couch Life’ column of June 13th. Surely a major metropolitan newspaper’s chief TV columnist would be able to point out that the sketch was merely a joke, right? Guess again, as she sums up life itself with impressive brevity:
“Wrong. Simple as that.” Wow. And they pay you to review television? Why bother giving you a full third of a tabloid page when all you need is a single word? Underbelly: “nup”. Four Corners: “hmm”. Master Chief : “burp”. But wait, there’s more: “And not funny. Not because it was offensive… Wrong because it didn’t make people laugh or think.” Not because it didn’t make Deveny laugh or think, mind you, but “people” in general. As Margaret Thatcher said to George Negus, “name six”.
So if it had made “people” laugh or think it would have been okay, right? Well, maybe not think: Deveny’s column is usually full of comedic references to her rough’n ready lifestyle and how she’d like her kids to play in traffic. It’s fair to assume she doesn’t really want people thinking too long or hard on what those jokes might mean – after all, they’re clearly just jokes, right?
(And it’s interesting to note also that the choice being offered is to “laugh or think”. Judged by those rigorous criteria, even Ian Kershaw’s two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler could get under the wire as a non-stop kak-fest in the newly discovered “think” comedy category. Sure, you’re mostly thinking what a tool this Hitler guy is, but at least you’re thinking – something that’s rarely at risk when Deveny picks up the pen.)
Perhaps if she’d simply stuck to “not funny” she could have added something to the sum total of useful human knowledge. And if she’d then gone on to explain exactly why it wasn’t funny in coherent, non-emotive terms, all would have been right with the world. But of course, not only did she say it didn’t make “people” laugh – declaring it one of the very rare events in human history that no-one at all will ever derive amusement from – she went on to say “The point wasn’t strong enough to warrant the offense”.
Jokes now need to have a point beyond making people laugh? Well, no. Jokes can have a point beyond getting a laugh, but when you argue that a joke fails because it doesn’t make a strong point… well, where were you when The Mighty Boosh was getting a run? Why aren’t you complaining about Sam Simmons each and every week? Or more to the point, what exactly is the higher meaning behind your jokes about you mistreating your kids that excuses their (on the surface) horrific content? Oh, it’s just a joke? So The Chaser’s sketch wasn’t?
To be fair, compared to the tabloid drivel on the topic Deveny’s a searing light of truth. But compared to the tabloid drivel on the topic the text message “LOLfagz 6 ded kidz” is the wisdom of Solomon. It might be difficult to imagine a sketch about dying children that was hysterically funny. It might be even more difficult to imagine The Chaser being the ones who came up with such a sketch. But it’s flat out impossible to imagine anyone taking Catherine Deveny’s views on comedy seriously when the best she can come up with is this barely coherent ramble designed more to justify her readers’ outrage than explain to them why sometimes comedy just might offend someone. And why comedy should always be treated first and foremost as a joke.