The Chaser Report - ARVO: I Did A Thing is suing Jeremy Clarkson

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Famous YouTuber and friend of The Chaser, Alex 'I Did A Thing' stops by the studio for an Arvo Chat with Gabbi and Aleksa! Alex talks how his entire identity is being stolen through copyright by Top-Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, and how he is solving this problem by taking Clarkson to court. Alex and Aleksa share some of their favourite YouTube videos they've made together, and what Alex is working on currently. Plus, resident I Did A Thing super-fan Gabbi makes a very special request. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Welcome back to another afternoon edition of The Chaser Report. We are talking today to Alex Apollo, who Alexa is your mate from I Did a Thing on YouTube. Hello, hello. My face is seeing you here. You're on the show today, Alex, because I heard that you have a lawsuit incoming. Apparently, apparently I'm suing Jeremy Clarkson, everybody. Holy shit.

I found out from Daily Mail and Unilad. Me too. How did they get the scoop before you did? I don't know. Apparently they made it up and then it became mainstream and apparently I need to sue him now. Are you going to? Yeah, what's the deal? Before we start, Alex is a very important public figure.

He's a YouTuber called I Did a Thing and he's got how many subscribers, how many subscribers, 2.6 million or 2.7 million? I was thinking like 2.6 subscribers is like pretty good. Don't know how you got the 0.6, but they've almost subscribed. 2.6 million. That's amazing. Yeah, it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. A bit scary. The Chaser Report. News you know you can't trust. So, okay, so how did Jeremy Clarkson get roped into all of this?

So what happened was last week I logged onto Twitter like I usually do. How you do? And I had been tagged in an article. that Jeremy Clarkson had trademarked the phrase, I did a thing, which is my name. So then I firstly found it funny and then got really scared thinking, oh, this means he could own my channel. Jeremy Clarkson would just own everything I do.

So I thought the solution would be to tweet at him, telling him to get fucked. I saw that tweet. Very good. And threatening to drone strike him. Did not see that tweet. A bit concerning. How would you do that?

Actually, maybe not. Yeah, actually, don't go into details. How would you allegedly and hypothetically? Well, hypothetically, if I was to drone strike Jeremy Clarkson, and I would use a contraption I've made in a previous video, which is a drone that drops projectiles from a height, on his car, on one of his very fast cars. Oh, hit him where it hurts.

Exactly. The top gear presented getting a car blown up, it's pretty iconic. So for what I understand, he's trademarking it because he came up with a show last year called like Clarkson's farm or some bullshit and he um it's like a phrase that he says when he does farm stuff he's like I did a thing on the farm

apparently that's why it was even more insulting because I thought it was like oh maybe it's top gear so at least you know he's been saying it forever and then you're right it's called like the Tuesday farm with Jeremy Clarkson or something like no offense but honestly like why would you trademark that that is the shittest name slash phrase it's such a common phrase too like

BuzzFeed presenters say I He used his dumb millennial phrase, which I kind of regret picking because it was something that I didn't know the channel was going to get big. I was just like, well, I don't know what I'm going to make, so I did a thing. I made something. And now it's just, yeah, millennials and Jeremy Clarkson use it. And he thinks he deserves money from it. Wait, so like, did he respond to all your measured and nice comments on Twitter?

He did actually respond. So after enough people liked it, and I think when it was published in the news, then his team must have got on top of it. and said, you've got to say something to cool this crazy man down. So Jeremy responded. Oh, you'll drone strike your house. Exactly. So Jeremy responded saying something along the lines of like, oh, sorry, like, I wasn't even

involved in this trademark. I wasn't aware it was happening. What? And then immediately when this happened, I got quite excited that Jeremy Clarkson responded, so I rang up Alexa, who is also here. Oh, hey. And I said, should I do a serious response or should I threaten him? And then so me and Alexa thought it would be funnier to threaten him.

So I responded, something along the lines of don't play dumb, Jeremy. The next car you'll be reviewing is a police car, which was then the headline of a bunch of different articles. I was going to say, but the articles came out before that. And it's just like, I did a thing, threatens to sue Jeremy Clark. I'm like, you didn't threaten to sue him, did you? I know. I said my sister's uncle's brother's boyfriend's lawyer husband is scary. Watch out.

I guess that counts as a legal threat, maybe. This is the best story. What I like even more, though, is the nuanced take of Jeremy Clarkson being like, oh, this wasn't me, which tells me that like there's an editor of this show that he's making coming up going, you know what phrase this guy says a lot. This is a cash cow to happen. But he's lying. He's lying because in an article that wrote about the trademark, it said the quote from Jeremy saying,

I've been saying this for years, I don't see why other people should profit off it. So he just lied to me. Lie to you on Twitter? I can't believe it. Maybe it was after I threatened a drone strike. Yeah, that might not do it. But I also love that it's like

other people shouldn't get to profit off this, except me. I get to, fuck. My favorite response of yours was the tweet where you tried to copyright his name in Australia. Yes. It was so cheap as well.

$450 to copyright Jeremy Clark for shoes, for t-shirts, all of it, yeah. For mugs, I should just with Jeremy Clarkson's face on it. You absolutely should. I just can't write my own name though. I can say Jeremy Clarkson, not I did a thing. Well, he will presumably come out with I did a thing merch. I mean, there's really not many reasons to trademark a phrase,

like just unless you were going to sell the phrase. So you absolutely need to make Jeremy Clarkson merch. That's a brilliant idea. I'm doing it. Is that where your merch is going to be? Like, how do you make merch without the name of your channel in it? I don't know. I feel like merch with the name

your channel is usually lame, especially when you've got a name like mine. I didn't think. Maybe it should be like an artwork of you, but then just Jeremy Clarkson. Just as Jeremy Clarkson. And then it could be one of those niche things that your fan base are like,

oh, I know what that's about. I get it, but then I won't sell any shirts. Maybe I will. Probably would. I'd buy one. Are the Chase is the right people to go to for merch advice? Fuck no.

You have way more subscribers than us. We should probably come to you for merch advice. You should also buy, Well, I'm on it. Actually, you should buy the domain name, any domain name for Jeremy Clarkson you should get. Then you can sell your Jeremy Clarkson merch from a Jeremy Clarkson website.

I think I should buy my own name first. Oh, yeah. Maybe learn your lessons. Start there, yeah. One thing I noticed, though, because I hadn't bought it, and it was for sale for like $3,000. But as soon as the Jeremy...

Yeah, and soon as the whole Jeremy Clarkson fiasco happened, it went, we'd, like, doubled in price. I was like, no, they saw it. We need to get you a go-fund me. Help me buy my website By my name back Myself please Well when you're not

Allegedly suing Jeremy Clarkson How do you fill up your time What happens on this channel That you've stolen from him Oh um Usually it's just me Pretending I know how to make things And then not actually making anything

And just filling it out with lame comedy Okay I was gonna say I've seen a fair few Like I'm a bit of a closeted I did a thing fan actually Which one, the Jeremy Clarkson or this one? Oh, this one. Oh, good, yeah.

Yeah, thank God, no, fuck Jeremy Clarkson, no. But I watched a fair, yeah, fuck. I watched a fair few of the videos and I do, like the first thought that always comes to mind is like, I'm like, does this guy have like an engineering degree? Like, are you trained? Or did you just pick up an axe grinder one day and went, fuck it. Like, I know how to do this now.

I think the majority of things I make aren't actually very hard to make. I think you just need to be kind of dumb enough to try, stupid things, but then a lot of free time as well to waste. Because each individual skill is not very hard. It's just one of those things you pick it up and you learn it in an afternoon. And then you just need to do that a lot of times and then you learn how to weld badly. In an afternoon? Yeah.

But it's like being bad at these things is one thing, but it feels like you go out of your way to put yourself in danger. Like you're constantly, you're using like a, what is it called a smelter? No, what's it called? A furnace. Yeah, you're using a furnace with your shoes off your life. Yeah, you are barefoot a lot. Yeah, so that is something, that is the true character, personality.

That's not put on for the... It's not put on. I'm not pretending I don't know this. Yeah, Alexa, why are you pretending you don't know? You're in the video. It's just, guys, not wear his shoes in my videos. I honestly thought it was like a second source of income. I thought the barefoot thing was like, if I don't make money off the video, I do it.

Oh, it's the foot fetish people. Don't you have, you have lots of people... I got a very bad rating on that. Very bad. That's surprising. Like barely above 50%. I think they were like 2.9 out of five. There is such high quality.

I know. You have insurance, right? No. He doesn't even trademark his own name. He's not going to... True, actually. Sorry, what was I thinking? The Chaser Report.

Less news. Less often. Well, I saw as well, in a recent video, you actually honored your fans' requests. to make their suggestions. Yeah. Like you said, what's the most fucked up thing

I should make? And you actually made, and I used to have one of these as a kid, which is why it freaked me out so much. You made like the ankle hoppers, but with a knife? Yeah, that was a bad. That was a bad idea.

What was the, was there a purpose, just to hurt yourself? I know, so they asked me to make that, but there was a very sensible purpose and it was to cut my lawn with it. So, you know, spinning it at a high,

high enough speed that you can kind of bring it in and just get a perfect clean cut. And it didn't work. What? I know. Who would have thought? Oh, my God.

My favorite one is when you accidentally stumbled on a grow house. Oh, I wonder why that's your favorite, Alexa. No, it's a great video in which you and me released a giant blade. So it was made out of an old circular sawmill blade. It was probably a meter wide, spun at high speed with a chainsaw, and then kind of released into a random house. An abandoned house. Abandoned. Right, I thought you like met like he went down the street

when that looks pretty shunkey. No, it's like it's a sweepstakes. We asked his fans, who wants that? And one winner. So yeah, we went down, we found this abandoned house and it turns out this house was a ex-drug lab,

which had burned down. And that's why it was abandoned. Yeah. Shoddy drug wiring. Alexa liked that video because you found a little stash of, what did you find? No, I didn't find any.

You didn't find anything. They were they, they, no, no. I found in the kitchen they had a bag of chippies. Oh, I remember. The fire didn't touch, and the drug dealer did not finish. No. So much for the famous munchies. Those chippies were mine.

Do you know what, actually, though, I think one of my other favorites is one that's less dangerous, finally, for you. The one that I could not stop watching was the people catcher. Oh. You made like a prototype to actually help. Yeah. I actually think they should make this mass scale. The rare video in which I try to, yeah, be.

helpful to society and it was like where was it from I don't want to get it wrong the idea it's actually they they use this in a lot of police departments around the world I know they use it in china they use it in Brazil they have a different version in Singapore this one in Singapore has like latches that close but they've got little spikes on the front so that's so it's like a dog catcher for humans yeah so the idea is if someone is not armed but let's say you know aggressive aggressive and drug and do psychosis something like that that there are ways to capture them without killing them. I like the American way where you just shoot.

Yeah. It's very effective. Yeah. You're so much less work. I agree. I agree. But yeah, you made this, like you looked at the stick and went, I actually think I can make this better.

Yeah, so I tried to make a version which was kind of crossed with a medieval device, which was called the man-catcher, which was something that they used to use to grab knights that ride horses. Yeah. So then I kind of made a cross between the two that exists, so made this kind of locking mechanism that you could put around a person and then you've just caught a criminal.

Yeah. And you can hold them and they can't get away and it's very useful if you don't want to kill them. You tested on your brother. Tested on my brother. It worked to my brother, but everyone pointed out that if you had to secure an 80-kiloman who actually wanted to hurt you, it might be a bit different. What I think is interesting is that you pitch this as like a security, like a policing device, but who,

Who are the only people who ride horses around the city? Police. Yeah, you designed a police catcher. See, that's what I didn't tell everyone. He's the Robin Hood about time. Yeah, exactly. But I actually had a police department reach out to me after that from New York, yeah.

No. Yeah. And they said that, so one of the guys in R&D was gonna get back to me. Oh, that's right, because American police have so much fucking money. I was like, what is this R&D department? Yeah.

Like Redfern police. It is weird, it's very unexpected. It's especially like police to be like, oh, we want to hurt people less. I didn't know that that was. This device seems innovative. Wow. Where does it shoot from?

We have one improvement. It's a gun on the top. We capture them, then we shoot them from close range. 100% kill. Less work for my arms, like we tell you. Save so many bullets as well. Sorry, no. But like, would they want to fund it?

No, so they said exactly that, that they were going to try and implement their own version and test it. So you might be right, Gabby, they're just going to put a gun on the front. You're like, you're getting in copyright lawsuits all over the place.

If they start mass producing those and they make a shit ton of money, you're just going to be looking at a gold mine that's not yours. All the nights from 2,000 years ago are going to be looking to sue. So I wanted to ask you, like, if you're allowed to give away

this is allowed. I've just asked you, if you had insurance, you said no, so I imagine you don't have anyone telling you not to give stuff away. But like, what's on the horizon? What are you thinking of inventing next? So it's actually related to the reason I'm in here today was I came into the city

to pick up a industrial kind of cutting device for cutting a knife-proof fabric because I'm making a shark-proof wetsuit. But I had the strangest coincidence happen, so I want to make a shark-proof wetsuit. So I went to buy this fabric cutter, and I went and picked it up from a man, which he had it, and I'd used it twice. And then as I was leaving, he said, what are you using it for? I was like, oh, I'm making a shark-proof wetsuit. I make stupid videos.

And then he just stopped and was like, I make shark-proof wetsuits. And it did not even trigger in my mind that he could have said that. So I literally repeated it. I said, no, no, no, I made shark-proof wetsuits. Then he said it again. And I went, you make shark-whip wets? And I swear I just fell into a dream. It was so strange.

But then what ended up happening was he just took me down into his car park, showed me all these prototypes he had for shark-proof wetsuits, let me stretch the material and gave me advice on how to cut this shit. That's amazing. So it was so weird, and he introduced to do his wife as well. So before you got this device, how are you planning to cut the cut-proof material? Well, I didn't realize how hard it would be to cut-proof material. I just tried with scissors, broke three pairs of scissors.

I got it like a soldering iron and attached a, a scalpel blade on the end. Like a hot. So like a hot scalpel I thought would be able to melt through this plastic material. Not? That's amazing.

Well, good thing this marks don't have. Do you what I love the most about this is it's kind of like a passing of the torch of Shardlessy. Like he could have been like, listen, there are not many people to do what I do, but I'm going to let you in on the secret. I know.

It's amazing. And I got all the secrets. I got so many secrets and I know so much about different cut proof materials now. And I like his wife asked me, she was like, oh, so how far into development are you? I was like, well, I'm here buying the tool I need to cut the material. That's how far. Like, this is your life?

I know. And I had to explain. It's like, no, I'm not actually going to make her. I'm not competition, buddy. Yeah. And his wife, when it's a very strange coincidence, said, oh, maybe it's the universe telling you that you two are meant to meet. So I think I'm going to give him a free shout out in my video.

Oh, you should. I want to know about Mr. Sharpsuit, man. Genuinely a good idea. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And people needing a shark-proof wetsuit will now, in abundance, go to this guy. I still can't imagine that it works that well. Like, you sure, their teeth are sharp and you've stopped that,

but they're still going to, like, crunch through you. And I imagine, like, you're wearing this suit. They crunch through the bottom of you, and it's like, you're just like a thing of toothpaste, and you just pop out the top. I think it's just more the internal bleeding you'll still get you. I asked, luckily, I asked this man. this question he said that the majority 99% of cases are from cutting

a femoral artery and so of course he'd say that he's trying to sell the thing he's right he doesn't want to show pictures of people squeezed out like a roll of toothpost tell you what he should go on shark tank oh such a shit joke no that's good that's very you're gonna steal for your video i am i'm stealing that dude thank you gabby i'll sue you can you release this after my video yeah sure fuck it i don't know i think it's coming out tomorrow isn't oh no one cut that when it came out today. We're talking to him right now.

I mean, honestly, Alex, I don't think it'll matter. Gabby is the only woman in the office, and therefore every man steals her jokes constantly and receives complete credit. That's true. It's kind of my bit. This is nothing new. Is this true?

Yeah, actually, he stole my bit like six times in one day once. Beautiful. That's great. To be fair, he does it to everyone, but he has such bad memory. He forgets he even stole it. He just says it. It's like, you stole my joke.

No. Not. The funniest bit for me is when I say it in a group meeting and no one laughs and then 10 minutes later he says the exact same thing and everyone's like, ha ha ha ha, so funny, Alexa. It's the best. That's what's delivery.

That's what's kind of fucked like if Gabby stops working here because she gets too famous, I'm just going to disappear. Like I'll have nothing to say anymore. You're actually a puppet for whatever comedy I need to come up with that I can't present myself. You just have to follow Gabby around and be in the background making people laugh. I have a proposition for you though, Alex.

ever since I was a little girl my god I get emotional ever since I was little I saw the Vanessa Coulton film clip for the incredible song A Thousand Miles right and if you're not familiar with this film clip Vanessa Carlton in all of her super famous glory sits at this piano at the beginning of the film clip and then for some reason just throughout the entire thing

she starts playing and the fucking thing just speeds like down the streets of wherever the fuck and she's just zooming through on this piano So I was always just like, I wonder if you could make like a piano car, like a driver-able piano. So that has been your dream to get in a high-speed collision with no seatbelt on a piano. I just want to be able to play through the streets of Sydney. I like that, I like that. You reckon?

Is it impossible? Is that a binding I like that? Nothing's binding with me. The thing is I do like it. Except for the phrase I did a thing. Exactly. But not anymore. No.

But yeah, do you reckon that's an option? I reckon that is an option. And it sounds fun. I think it's one of those things, because I've done so many illegal things, but I feel like road safety laws are the bit, like if you found private property, you'll probably be alright.

So we need a paddock bash of piano. You need it. Yeah, forward drive. We get all terrain wheels on this thing. Off road. Take it into the forest. That sounds a monster truck keyboard. It would be amazing if the speed of which you played

was linked to the speed of the car. So if you're really slow. You could learn to drive. That'd be great, just playing Benny Hill music. Yeah, I'll practice if you make it. I'll make it. I'm imagining scooter, bunged into the bottom of a grand piano, and you're done.

That sounds incredible. Balance sounds like with scooters, you need, you need four wheels. You would need more wheels, but I feel like that's definitely enough power. How fast do you want to go, Gabby? I don't care. Honestly, I don't have insurance either. How fast was Vanessa Carlton going? So I feel like it was blurry behind her.

Yeah, she was zooming. Have you seen how they actually did the video clip for that? It's her on the back of a trailer, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. She's like on the back of a truck doing it. And then they just film her and they're like, cool, done. Lame. Exactly.

We're not about safety. We need some destruction. Yeah, no, we got to go to the full hall. Well, it's great getting this interview with Alex, but also with Gabby here before Alex kills her on the road. Yeah, this is my last episode. Tell my mother I love her and that I've got nothing for them in the will. There's nothing there.

I will. I will. I'm not writing this thing. I'm going to trademark, I did the thing back. And then we can't mention you as the killer then, it's fine. That's great, Jeremy Clarkson's the killer. We've done it. I'll just leave a note in my pocket that says Jeremy Clarkson did it.

He killed me. Yeah, brilliant. I can't wait. Thanks for coming on the show. No, thanks for having me, Gabby, and my best friend. No, we're not about nepotism here. No. You got in here on merit.

That's what we tell all the other interns. Our gear is from road microphones and we are part of the 8. cast creator network until somebody wants to sue us for using those two sentences. I don't know. Jeremy.