The Chaser Report - BEST OF: The Hamish and Andy Podcast, and more!

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

In this BEST OF we look back at the time we were Hamish and Andy, or at least when our editor Cam posed as them anyway. We also take a look at one of our best stunts of the year when Aleksa broke into an arms convention. Plus Zander and Lachlan became housemates year, so we take a look at the time Charles quizzed them on being roomies before they'd even moved in together. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Thursday the 23rd of December. It's almost Christmas Charles Firth and Alex Avulovich. I'm Dom Nights still, by the way. It's Christmas Eve, Eve. It is Christmas Eve Eve. And we're back with even more best of content.

And first up today is what I like to call a little Alex special. It's actually very long. It's going to be great to relieve this. It's your armsteel stunt. Alex, so that's been nominated as one of the best moments of the year. And I think it's one of the year of many stunts for us. This surely stunt at the year. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I mean, it was an exciting time and it was great to see all those foreign arms dealers coming in without having to do COVID checks. It was... I just love the fact that you got in, you just snuck in. Yeah. By using the old trick of pretending to have a pass. I was so sad the whole time, so I'm like, I'm up in Brisbane, I'm just going to disappoint Charles because there's absolutely no way I'm getting into this thing.

And how many views online have that's done here? It's doing great. It's got like multiple million on Facebook. It just passed a million on YouTube. People love it when you sneak into arms conventions. And they love it when you sneak into arms conventions with plastic arms. Like actually, like manic at arms. Now that's coming up.

We also have on today's show, this was really, this got genuinely awkward. I loved it. Two of the interns became housemates this year, Lachlan and Zander. Oh, yeah. And Charles subjected them to a quiz. about whether they were ready for the tension that ensued. And I've lived with members of the Chaser in the past. And look, fair point.

Fair point. It's been a couple of months now. I wish they heated those warnings because things have only gone downhill. Yeah, they don't speak to each other anymore. Now they do. Or do they? I don't actually know. I haven't paid attention.

But it was good to milk that for comedy. And, oh, this is another highlight from the early days. Cam, the editor of the Chaser website, come up with a fairly brilliant idea to take over Hamish and Andy's podcast in her manner of speaking. Oh, yeah, that was great. It's coming up. All right after this.

Joining us now is one of our very lucky interns, Lexer Volovic. Is there right? Vullovich. It's good to see you treat the interns well, hey? I mean, you know, look, we sack them so quickly. We don't like to learn their names or anything. If you learn their names, you become familiar with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To get sentimental. Anyway, we sent up to Brisbane this week. Why did we send you up to Brisbane? There's a big arms expo for the past three days, biggest military expo in Australia. No, no, this is what we've always worried about, okay? Charles is always into expanding the chase into areas. And I just, the number of times we've told him

not to become arms manufacturers or buyers or set up his own army, don't do this, okay, Alexa, man? You should have gotten talking to him, you know, a few days ago. He already sent me in. The horse has already bolted them on that back, right? You'll be happy to find him. find out that they didn't like any of the ideas I pitched. They didn't want to buy any of our products.

Did you get in? Yeah, somehow. How did you get in? Like, is it just open, can anyone go in who wants to buy my arms? It's invite only. So you have to, you have to be a weapons manufacturer and you have to earn more than like, I think it was like $25 million a year or something. Okay.

And so I'll send you up there with the idea that maybe you'd be able to sneak in via a goods lift or something like that, right? So how did you actually get in? Look, I think we were quite lucky in the fact. that we were so disorganized that we couldn't go on the first day. So I only showed up on the second day. But given that extra time, I was able to Google land forces. And on Twitter, you've got all these pictures of people with their lanyards just like

smiling at the expo. Oh, very good. That's pretty sneaky. That's clever. This wasn't planned. This was a complete accident. But ended up finding the lanyards, copying the design vaguely. I don't know how legal.

I got a late night call from Elexa the night before going, can I just copy and paste the logo and put it on a lanyards? And I said, because I'm, you know, big on not being illegal, right? Yes, yeah. I said, I think that might be actually illegal. But also, what did you do with the QR card? Oh, right. So I saw there's a little QR code.

I'm like, I assume they scanned this. And I just got a QR code of the Chaser website, popped it on the ID. Like, I was quite sure that we weren't going to be let in. Also, they had, like, orange lanyards, office works, and they had black ones. Like, it was, you know, it was a long shot. Yeah, yeah. But it was. So he was whilst in there.

I presume you were in a suit, were you? Yeah, I was in a suit, my formal suit from when I was 19. I was going to say, I mean, you're young, right? Yeah, thank you. You don't look like, I presume, your average arms manufacturer. I'm an up-and-coming arms dealer, you know, trying to break into the market. But did they scam the QR code? That's the insane bit.

Like, we went through two different security guards. One guy kind of looked at it. Obviously, like, my thing is completely fake. It's like a third of the size of all the other passes, all the wrong colors. He waves me in. So it was different size as well. I mean, I couldn't gauge properly the size. Also, I didn't have a printer, so I had to rely on someone else.

He made it the same size as it looked on Twitter. Yeah, exactly. And I had the tweet around it as well. You had a picture of another guy holding it. And yeah, got past that guy, and a lady went to scan it. She scanned it. I have no idea would appear on her scanning machine, but she was just like, come on through. And after they had the conveyor belts with, like, the security stuff,

they sent my back through. I had all my recording equipment in there. They didn't mind that. I had a lapel mic, like, taped to my chest underneath. my clothes went through the metal detector it did a beeping thing and then it took out the handheld metal detector went over the lapel mic it beeped exactly where the mic was

I'm like oh fuck okay this is my time to go and I think he just assumed it was my lanyard like chain or the metal bit from there and he's just like hop on through and I just came face and face with a giant tank well there you go it's good to know there's this crap security at an arms convention this is great to hear and were there guns and things like

could you have conceivably walked away I was having so much fun there were so many guns I was shooting everyone at the convention. So what did you do on the convention? It was confronting. The first thing I saw as I went in, these two guys, and like full body armor, like digital exoskeleton things,

they kind of looked like Darth Vader, and they were just wailing on each other. They had all these weapons. They were kind of demonstrating how much you could throw each other around, all these people in suits, watching and applauding. This is like they're in exoskeleton type thing. Yeah, this is like future tech. Oh, no.

God, we're going to die. Yeah, it's pretty horrible. But I spoke to one of the dudes, one of the exoskeleton guys, and I asked him, I was like, Oh, you know, this kind of looks a bit like Darth Vader. Don't you feel like, you're the bad guy when you put this on? And he was like, yeah, yeah, I do, but it's actually a good thing. He was like, it helped, once I put this mask on, it kind of dehumanizes it and I don't feel as responsible for what I'm doing.

Oh, that's good. That's a good thing. He's like, this is great. I can kill it random and not care about the consequences. He was so open. And he just kept going. He's like, yeah, and it's really good for, like, domestic kind of riot situations of people like on the street. You know, you put this on and you can just like do whatever you want to them.

Oh, shit. Like, who do you think you're talking to? This is going to really screw over those climate strikes. Exactly. Hey kids. But you were there to sell arms. Oh, yeah. I had some cool weapons.

So I went to the big guys. I went to Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest, or the biggest arms manufacturer in the world. And so tried to sell one of our missiles. The pitch was that there are no war crimes in space. So we're going to make a missile that shoots so high up into space that by the time it comes down, the Geneva Convention doesn't count. Oh, that's good. But they're just like, yeah, we've got that. Yeah, we've done that already.

I think it's just like, well, the Geneva Convention never stopped us before. so I don't think that's really a marketable device. And so we've got a, the first video came out last night. Yes. It's available on Twitter at Chaser, on Facebook, which is at the Chaser. And the TikTok. Furtherly for the young ones. Yeah, which is at chaser.com.com.

Do you want to just give a hint of what that one? Well, I tried to get into the arms convention as an arms dealer, but what I had was a whole bunch of mannequin arms. So I was just trying to get in there selling arms and confuse us to why they wouldn't let me in. Oh, that's very good. Oh, we'll look out for it. Thank you. Nice job.

Yes, Alexa. Well done. Are you ready for the next arms convention? Now, I found out this morning, Dom and Gabby, that Loughlin and Sander have decided that they're going to move in together in a share house. So I brought them in, and I've also brought in Alexa, who works with us as well. Whole gang's here. And I just want to vet you two, Sandra and Lachlan, to make sure. Have you ever actually lived in a share house before?

No. We've been inside for the last two years, Charles. I've never lived in a house before. Is this the first time that you've been living out of house? Yes. I'm going to pop my sharehouse cherry with Zandand. Oh, I'd already got sexual. Lachlan, what are you doing? So before you do, I just think maybe we just want to check whether you two are on the same page.

And I'm going to write a little bit of a quiz to see, you know, just some foundational principles, you know, about how one would live together. I just want to point out, before we did this, Charles live with. Almost everyone from the chaser back in the day, I live with the jewels, at the very least. It was very common. So, question one, we'll ask this to say, Zander, right? Yeah. Toothpaste. You share the toothpaste?

Or do you each have your own tube of toothpaste? You definitely wouldn't share toothbrushes. I feel like you potentially could share toothpaste, but it would really be depends what you agreed upon. Lachlan, what do you think? Toothpaste, toothbrush, teeth, all of it's shared. Okay. I love, I love already Xander's hand is on his face. Oh dear, okay.

Question two. Okay, we'll give you this one to Lachlan. You'd go and do the shopping, like the week's groceries and things. Are you going to share it and split it evenly, even if, you know, one person buys more than the other and do it together? Or are you just going to have separate shops and divide up the fridge? Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to all shop together. We're going to just divide it three ways. Zander's allergic to, I think, 30% of everything

will divide Zander's cut by 30% to equate for everything he can't eat. Wow, okay, and keep a spread cheetahs. That's complicated. That will last one shop. Zander, is that, is that your understanding? I think there's things you can share, right? You can definitely share, like, the basics, like milk and stuff like that. There's no point having 20 different liters of milk in the fridge at the one time. Yeah, but...

And anything we want to keep, I'm assuming it's just a label. Yeah. Yeah, cool, there we go. You do it. This is easy. Or you have a shelf each in the fridge, like... Yeah. I'm telling you right now that is not going to last.

It's not going to last, but that's good. Now we get to paying the rent on time. So is there going to be one person in charge of getting all the money from everyone else? I think Loughlin would be the best rent gatherer in the history of the galaxy. As the person who's constantly following up everyone in this Zoom call for their edits, I'm definitely going to be the person who's chasing Xander. And Mark, is our other. roommate. Hi, Mark. Love to have you on the podcast. I'll be following them all up on rent

ruthlessly. Okay. And you're fine with that doing all the work. Oh, well, that's not a lot different to what I got going on now. Okay. Charles, I have an issue with this quiz. I don't think you actually care about Zander and Lockie. I think you're ready to sabotage it right here right now. We know he doesn't care about us. When we asked him for job references, he wrote the exact same thing and we're pretty sure he only just remember to change the names on each of them. Yeah, I was very I had to double-check mine before I submitted it to the real estate agent to make sure I didn't say Zanda Chavani of Letter and then in the first line say Lachlan Hodson.

Okay, so I'm going to ramp up the quiz now a little bit and just make it a little bit more. So box of cereal, do you neatly fold or do you leave it open so that it goes stow? No, but the problem is that the wheat-bix bag isn't big enough to fall down. You just can close the top of the box. Zander, I do actually have to say, I've only lived with you in the office so far. We're going to have to sort out something to do with these oatmeal bowls

you leave all over the place. This is Charles. I think Charles has unwinded me. This is it. This is the end. Yeah, which leads me to my next question, Zander, which is, say you have a Tupperware container that used to contain curry. Do you leave it on your desk for three months?

Or do you clean it up once you've finished it? And answer carefully because your desk is in the next room. To me, right at the moment. Under normal circumstances, you'd clean it up. Under a pandemic, I think it's a good time to conduct a science experiment. Lachlan, do you want to see the Tupperware container that has been in this office for the last three months? Oh, don't do this to me. Oh, no.

That's no longer a container. Oh, no. For reference, we live like 60Ks away from the office. Oh, no. That's a bit moldy, chas. Are you sure it's not getting to your brain? Like the spores The question is not about these two being flatmates

But why on earth did you hire Xander That's disgusting Next question, Zander Is say you're working in an office And do you leave your socks on the ground In the middle of the office all day Or do you not leave your socks on the ground In the middle of the office all day?

Which one? No, they're clean socks Because we bought socks from Kmart once And then left them Underneath Zander's on. I've only been in my car twice, and I already have two pairs of socks in there. Do you have a pair of underwear in there once as well?

Well, that was something else. I feel that this entire segment has descended into complete anarchy and messiness, which is exactly what every sharehouse ever is like. It is Zander bashing, but I will say we don't have to worry too much about it, because if this actually drives a rift between Charles and Zander, in about three-ish months, that container would have grown another Xander, so we're fine. It does explain his origin story. Yes, 2001. There's a box of beastrogging off on the bench. It's nine months later,

Sander popped out. I think no one to share houses, but I think the bigger issue is why you guys want to move out at all. Look, like, I'm turning 29 in a month and I still live my parents and everyone thinks I'm super cool. Like, why do you guys even want to move out? Alexa, can I just ask, what are your thoughts on storing curry and storing socks? I would have to ask my mum. She does all that way. Can I move in with your mum? Yeah, come on. Everyone, everyone join in here. It's great. You get your laundry done. They remind you when to wash your sheets and then you forget and they wash it for you. It's brilliant.

Okay, Zanda, sorry, something's come up. I'm going to have to move in with Alexa instead. I've been renting for six years like a chump. I'm coming to live with Alexa. I want my team clean. It's so much better. And you won't have any of these conflicts because it's no one else's role apart from my mum's and dad. Oh, of course.

Can you take a family of three? Yeah, come on. Everyone joined me. I have a nice little chaser house. This is The Chaser Report. Wait, wait, no, no. Yep, hang on. That's wrong.

That is wrong. Because we've actually changed our name. We are now the Hamish and Andy podcast. Australia's number one podcast. And number two, those fuck us. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, we wanted to get some more listeners. And Cam, our editor at the Chaser,

actually suggested a really good method. and it involved just changing our name to the Hamish and Andy podcast. Cam Smith, welcome to our podcast, the Hamish and Andy podcast. How are you, Hamish? I'm doing quite well. So what is going on? Why have we done this? So we had a bit of a campaign to drum up more listeners on the podcast,

which so far has involved us buying a potentially stolen car and getting one of the interns banned from St Mary's Cathedral. But for some straight reason, we haven't seen much of a bump in the numbers from those two. Oh dear. Yeah. So we had a re-look at the podcast. charts and as you mentioned right up there at the top next to all the serial killers is our good friends hamish and Andy now we had a bit of a brainstorm about what we could do to try and leach

off their success and we decided to just ask them but when we went to message we noticed the website is gone and now what appears to have happened was they hadn't renewed the domain name oh yes and if I was a less ethical person at this stage I might see an opportunity here Because if someone hasn't re-registered their domain name, that just means any good for nothing can swoop in and claim it for themselves. Oh, yeah. So that's exactly what we did. So we are now the proud owners of hamish and Andy.com. Hamish and Andy Podcast.com.

I think Hamish and Andy, the owners of hamishandri.com. But we own Hamish and Andy podcast. It's the off-brand Hamish and Andy podcast. We're the ALDI of Hamish and Andes. And so how did you decide that? that Dom would be Andy. Andy is much better looking. He's taller.

He's stated supermodels. I mean, for you, I'm much taller and better looking than you, Charles. Yeah, but Hamish is the funny one. That doesn't make any sense either. I'm Hamish. It definitely wasn't just whoever came up in the Google Resorts first. So,

okay, so what are we going to do from here? How can we now, how does this then lead to more listeners for this shot? Well, that's a very good question because, I mean, if people are hearing this,

They've already heard the podcast. So this isn't really drumming up any more people. Yeah, there are a few problems. I mean, Hamish and Andy are well known for being best friends. That's a problem, step one. Charles and I have hated each other since high school. And they're also known for their lovable endearing pranks that are very, very funny, but in no way threatening

and involve things like chip packets. It's not very off, for it. So how are we going to do that? Well, I had a bit of a number crunch looking at their numbers when I was like, how well are we doing compared to them? And I realized we don't really need to do. that much at all because if just one percent of Hamish and Andy's listeners get fooled by this and end up listening to our podcast, we will have doubled our listeners.

That's great. I love it. Have you seen they've got that other podcast? So not only have they had number one, they've also got number two with the remembering project, where all they do is they go and look at their old radio shows and listen back to them and laugh at them. Maybe we need a podcast where we listen to old Hamish Nandy episodes. Remembering, Remembering, English Nandy.

No, yeah, we should listen to old episodes of Remembering. The Remembering Project. That's right. All right. It had been a hard day. I was kicking back with my first glass of scotch. I had enough at tantalizing voluptuous desk. When the phone rang, it was the senator. He had a job for you. I have a job for you. He wanted me to look into the most heinous crimes he'd ever seen.

Good God, that sounds horrific. I hung up the phone and apologize to that desk. Stay right there, Toots. you later. I hit the streets. First stop was a seedy joint infested with snowflakes and sewer rats, the ABC head office. It was the kind of place where tweets were cheap, and retweets were even cheaper. Even the health minister could find himself like in a BBW cum-thumster 69 tweet here. The senator told me he was here I'd find a woke brigade that was aiming to undermine the government by legitimately reporting on stories of public interest. The sissy low-life

scum. They had to be stamped out and stamped out quick. I sat in the foyer and logged down to Twitter. I looked through the likes. My God. It was worse than the senator had said. The number of mildly amusing quips that softly rid the government was stomach churning. And even worse, they'd been occasionally liked by someone at the ABC. A tweet from the shovel.

Another from Ben Jenkins. These weren't just anyone. These were Australia's most obscure comedians. It was clearly an underground movement. Then I saw it. Nothing in my two hours of Twitter scrolling and prepared me for this. What was I looking at? Was it satire?

Was it ironic? Was it even meant to be a joke? Someone, an on-air personality, had tweeted that the NBN was a bit sluggish. I gave him a quick left-right-click, goodnight, and reported him to the senator. This guy's going to be tweeting through a straw. You know you never solved mysteries in this town. Every time he put down a tweet, there's another one around the corner. All a man can do is lean back on his desk and have a wank. Forget about it. It's Twitter Town.

Well, I can't believe there's only one more best-of episode to go tomorrow, Christmas Eve episode, with some more clips, Charles and Alex. I mean, who knew we had enough to get this far out in the week, frankly. I'm glad we only chose a five-day Advent calendar. This was much easier. All right, Huggier's from Red Microphones. We're part of the A-Cast, Creator Network, and tomorrow, I'm going to die, apparently, on the...

At least some people will think that I did. It's coming up tomorrow. Catch you then.