Tag: Andrew Hanson

The Censor’s Test

This weekend Sydney-siders had the chance to attend World's Funniest Island, a two-day, Big Day Out-style festival of comedy on Cockatoo Island. Amongst the acts were Alexei Sayle, The Goodies, Jane Bussman, Merrick & Rosso, the Scared Weird Little Guys and a host of others. The Goodies' show, featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden with Bill Oddie on video (he's currently ill, so couldn't make it) in conversation with The Chaser's Andrew Hanson, is of particular interest as it featured censored footage from The Goodies which was recently discovered in Australia but no longer exists within the BBC Archives. With recent talk about how “political correctness” and media OUTRAGE is, or may be, resulting in the censorship of comedy, it's interesting to examine what was actually censored from comedy almost 40 years... Read More »

Gerard Henderson vs The Chaser

If there was a running gag throughout this week’s Chaser, it was Andrew Hanson’s furious letter-writer character Phillip Harley of Adelaide complaining about how the the show wasn’t attacking enough religious groups. The Harley character has usually popped-up once or twice in each episode of the current series to complain about various non-issues, but it... Read More »