The Chaser Report - How To Lose A Career In 10 Jays | Sammy J

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Charles and Dom are joined by everyone's favourite government coach, play school host, poet, and yoga instructor - SAMMY J!Sammy talks about the response to the death of Barry Humphries, and the difficultly of threading a needle complex issues arise. Cancel him here.Buy tickets to Sammy J's 5 star tour 'Good Hustle'! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And today it is Sammy J. Welcome, sir. Hello. Hello, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for slumming it in podcast land, your breakfast radio presenter in Melbourne, the nation's biggest city. I don't know if it's, well, thank you. Yeah, we will take that one.

I don't have it slumming it. Isn't podcast is like where you get to be yourself. often relax, but the problem is then the other, the radio then takes it out of context and puts your comments on the paper. Isn't that how podcasts work? They feed the mainstream media from the fringes. That's right. Oh, could you say something really controversial just to get listens to us?

I'm all out of controversy this week, boy. Yeah, that's true. So can I ask, have you been cancelled yet? Because over the, well, a couple of days ago, you wrote an article about Barry Humphreys. I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? Well, I mean, it's a great question. Great questions, Charles. And I joked in the article that I would probably get cancelled.

And I didn't necessarily predict I'd be cancelled from all ends of the spectrum. However, the article was my attempt at nuance and balance. So I suppose that's what happened. I should have gone shock jock in one direction. Didn't he use the phrase thread the needle, which is the thing that is literally impossible to do? And the article did thread the needle of paying respect to Barry while also explaining why the comedy festival changed its, the name of its award from the Barry Award. You explained that, threading the needle,

but no one interpreted it in those terms whatsoever. And the great thing was on Twitter. Now, all the Elon Musk's subscriber idiots, their comments are the only ones you see now. So every response to your article was from some idiot in America who loved guns and hates you. It's incredible. And I note that my followers haven't increased,

so I guess they'll come and go. It's not like they're coming to me to stay. But it started genuinely, because Barry Humphreys, as we all know, just died. It was announced Saturday night. On Sunday, I did a posted a little tribute. There's a photo when I got to meet him seven years ago at the comedy festival. He was there for the 30th anniversary. And knowing that he is not very popular with younger comedians for many different reasons, you know, and I know he also, he's incredibly popular with the great majority of Australians, you know. And so I sort of just did a tribute. I said he's done amazing work.

And I said his work's continued by other generations in different ways. And just that single, simple post attracted this barrage of different comments. Some people going, oh, thank you for, you know, paying tribute to Barry. No one else is mentioning it. And other saying, you're a bad ally, Sammy, how dare you? You didn't know these comments about transgender people and stuff. So that in itself taught me that people have such different views about it. And when the whole comedy festival thing blew up, the listeners unfamiliar, the comedy festival changed the name of the Barry Award to the Most Outstanding Show Award four years ago because of his comments about trans people, because I had an insider knowledge, not just of that decision, but also of just knowing

my audience had sort of those very views. Yeah, I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring, make a comment. No regrets, but it's been a little more dramatic than I expected of being. But having won the award yourself, you know, congratulations on that, and also being on the board, like there's no way that any possible scenario or outcome, they're all your fault, Sammy Jay, every single possibility you ought to blame for. It's just me. It's, you know what, genuinely, and I know we all love our politics, I've had, you know,

like, I've been slammed and cancelled on Twitter and stuff for my work before. Like, I did political sketches. I don't need to ask you boys about what the experience is like, having people reacted to political sketches. But that's always easy to skate through because, like, well, someone didn't like a joke. That's fine. This is the first time I actually put myself out there with a real actual comment about real world things.

So it's been a different feeling. But my feeling overwhelmingly has been sort of a curious one of, I feel like I've got to experience what it would be like to be a politician for the first time. And I mean that genuinely because I'm in a place where I've come out and back. act of policy that I was part of like I the name would have changed without with or without me you know it's a big board I was just there representing artists as we're a couple of others but I came out to explain that decision there's stuff that I do know and more stuff that I do know that I can't say in public because it's just like politics there's stuff you know you're aware of more stuff and then

you're having people coming at you and you have to decide which hits to take and just even though if they're not fair you just roll with it and which ones you want to defend and it's all also nothing to do with me you know very umpriz die that's sad he's a he's a legend of the game he was flawed because we're all flawed. That's not a shock either. And he was an old man who had some kind of outdated views. But it's been a whirlwind of experience in that sense. It's weird, isn't it? Because you have to, as humans, accept that contradictory things can be true. Barry Humphreins can be an absolutely brilliant, hilarious comedian. I look back at some of his interviews. They're incredible. He was so good off the cuff. And his comments were absolutely appalling.

And it's possible for a human to contain both of those things in a life, right? I'd say that it's impossible for any of us not to have those contradictions, you know? And so, like, you're absolutely right. And that was, yeah, the article that I wrote for the age was an attempt to sort of put both those views forward. But also, his setter relied on playing with those contradictions in humanity. Like, that was, his life's work was a sort of contradiction between. Yeah, well, it's tricky because there were some comments he got kind of cancelled for in America. Where he was, you know, saying some horrible things about sort of Spanish speakers.

But that was clearly in character and meant to be, you know. This is like a whole. We need like a, sorry, to jump in, but like, we need a same as a character here. We need a joke interpreter is what we need with you being a character. But yeah, the trans stuff was, was him speaking personally, I presume. That's the thing. And that was the whole, because I will defend people's right to make jokes about whatever the fuck they want for the rest of my life.

like that is it's not an area, you know, people, and be it on their own head if they misjudge the room and they get the, they lose an audience for it. That's fine. It's free speech. This was a situation where it was comments that genuinely, when I first read them, I was like, well, surely he was in character, it would have been a bit gross. I would have liked it, but it wouldn't have been this. This is one where as far as everyone could tell he was properly as himself saying this stuff that upset, like really upset a whole segment of the comedy festival artist, you know, the audiences who make up the festival. And that's the point I made in the article. I don't subscribe to the idea that changing the award was canceling Barry. That's my thing. I don't think

Barry Humphrey should be cancelled. I think it should be lauded for his work. But also, there was a situation where a whole lot of artists were simply going to boycott the awards, not turn up. And that's dealing with the current modern festival, not a member of a past generation. So yeah, Barry, he was a provocateur. He knew he liked causing trouble. He made those comments. Heaps of time past, he could have clarified. He didn't. So it was just like that was a natural result of that. I don't think it's any more or less than that. I mean, it just makes me think in the end of the day, Sammy, why do you hate it? Barry Humphreys, and why do you hate emerging comedians who just want to find a safe space?

At the same time, how do you hate them both at the same time? Dom, I hate all generations, and I hope the Herald Sun pick that up and put it into a headline. Fantastic, fantastic. That plus working for the ABC, well, let's not go into working for the ABC at this time of should we say evolving ratings, that's a whole other conversation. Does anyone work for the ABC these days, or are we all on temporary work experience contract? But, I mean, these characters, the characters you're bringing out in the show, good hustle,

your kind of greatest hits from the past couple of years. I mean, they were good years for doing satire on the ABC. They might have it be done again, but great innings, I've got to say. I mean, you'll get cancelled for those characters down the track, I'm sure. But for now, we can say they were really good. Hey, thanks. Yeah, no, it was a fun run. I had a good innings doing character work on the ABC, the Thursday night spot.

It was so fun, you know, like three minutes every week. I mean, I could still have a life outside that, but we got to pick a target every week and write about it and then argue with ABC lawyers for the rest of the week, whether we could do it. Good time. Why did we never do things in three minutes? I mean, that's fantastic. It goes viral.

Well, Mark Humphreys, who shares your, Sammy, he complains about, because he does three minutes a fortnight, and he complains about being overworked. Like, you ring him up and ask him to do any other job, and it'll be like, oh, sorry, I've got a sketch coming up on Thursday week. I'm... I've got a...

No, yeah, exactly. I've got a fact check Mark there because I swear sometimes he got away with sketches two minutes or two minutes 30 and I was I was at the stop watch out because we had a minimal contractual obligation for our show because it was like a separate thing in the program which is a three minute show whereas Mike's part of 730 so he had some more flexibility so I will not allow any charges from from Mark about being overworked I think he got to phone it in by less than 30 seconds oh you heard it heard it first Mark's going to cancel you now as well no he can't though, because he'd be canceling himself, because I still get complimented

in the street from Mark's sketches, because everyone thinks we're the same person. That's what I really want to see. I want to see the two nice guy satirists of ABC TV, somehow fighting. What would the weapons be? Compliments? I don't know how you'd... Yeah, pen and a quill or, you know, hair gel, a love of musical theatre. I feel it would be something like, knowing Mark Humphreys, it would be something like

a not very well-done souffle. Like, it would be... Like, is it a cream pie in the face? You get a slightly and perfectly cooked souffle. Yeah, yeah. In your gullet. Do you know, like, he's a real gourmand. He is.

I feel that's within the fact that we are largely the exact same person. Our differences are that I'm sort of, I feel more like a street fighter, and he's more like, you know, wearing the top hat. I'm the Jean Valjean to his Javert, if you like. He would enjoy that. That's a word he'll, you know, he'll appreciate it. Yeah, he'll love the musical. The report, news you can't trust.

Have you thought of doing a show together? That would be a massive mind fuck, I think, if you actually work together in some way. We've thrown the idea around, you know, where we're young enough that there's many years. So like we both said, we'd love to. But I'd love to, I think you'd have to agree to it, like, as a two-hour brainstorm to begin with all parties are okay to walk away at the end. Because you never know, working with people you love and admire, it can be great in theory and trickier in practice, particularly when you're both, you know, as all performance are.

your own strong creative vision and all that. And I imagine, because presumably it would be a musical, like a Broadway-style musical. And I suspect that your funders would not accept the five-minute running time of the musical. It would be a bold pitch, but the way things are going with the TikTok generation. I mean, if you've lost people's attention span in three seconds, it's all over. So I think we could do it. Are you on the TikTok? I've got a limp, flaccid little account that I'd.

drop, I was sort of created it, you know, because the ABC wanted me to, and I drop in it now then, like I'm literally like an absent grandfather who pops his head and gets confused by all the words and runs away. So I guess now I could just claim it's a, it's a security sort of, I'm just patriotically staying off it. But really, I just didn't get a following and it hurts me. That's sad. That's right. Have you got it? I don't. I signed up for one and they never use it. I went viral on the TikTok a few weeks ago. How do you do it? To the extent that my sons saw me on TikTok. not because they follow me, but because it got served to them because the algorithm.

Did they briefly respect you? Yes, they totally did. Wow. Was it like, were you like dad picking nose in car park or were you doing, was it for your own actual work? No, yeah, it was for, we're doing a show called Wankanomics and we did, it was just a bit from our show, which was all about how, you know, how to, how to speak in, in the modern office. And it was all about how you turn a... What you do is you speak like a wanker

by turning a noun into a verb so, you know, idea becomes ideate. And then you turn that new verb back into a noun, so ideate becomes ideation. Then you turn it back, that verb back into a noun, so ideation becomes ideationing. And then you turn it into a seven-word cluster fuck, so an all-hands blue sky ideationing session.

And... That is the best thing you've ever written, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Because it is... I've heard every... of that from idiots that I know in the corporate world. Wow. But it's also true. It's

true. That's how it works. And now you're an influencer. Now you can let go of this podcast business and just start cashing in. He's an ideationer. He's what he is. So you're burning off the characters, good hustles touring. It's a long list of dates. I read through them. Sydney 5 and

6th of May. Newcastle 11th, Brisbane, 12th, 13th, Perth, 19th, Adelaide 20th. Canber 26th of May and Hobart 27th of May. You're going everywhere, is this is, are you doing a Barry Humphreys, ironically, and retiring the characters only to unretire the year later because you don't have anything better? I mean, that's what he did with Edna, isn't it? I mean, John Farnham's the reference I'd use in this week, but yeah, well, time will tell, of course. No, this genuinely is, five years of doing the sketches every week. It was so much fun, but it got to the point where it was less fun because, you know,

the characters, you know, the government coach is one of my characters. I got to, like, gate crash parliament when Malcolm Trimble was being nice. by Scott Morrison. I was standing at the gates of Yarra Lumler when Scott Morrison was calling the election. Heaps of the fun, but it was meant to be one sketch. It was one joke five years ago. It went on. It was fun, but I just had a genuine creative sense that if I don't kill these characters

off, get them all on their knees and put a bullet in their head, I won't do new stuff. And that's a sort of lame, sincere artistic answer, but it's true. I want to push myself out there and see what comes the next. Maybe nothing. Maybe I've peaked. Maybe I'm cancelled forever. But I thought doing a tour and calling the goodbye tour is the best way of forcing myself to commit. While knowing that the cliche is that you just bring them back.

anyway. Well, I mean, you know, if the people demand it. Because a lot of, I guess a lot of, particularly during the lockdown, we all enjoyed the Hook Turnistan, Melbourne stuff. How is it traveling? How's the city coping now that it's number one? I mean, do people still either ridiculously love or ridiculously hate Dan Andrews? Is that still a thing that people calm down? Great question. So Dan's romped at home in the election last year. So in that sense, you know, the, the, Murdoch Press, as he's becoming more and more apparent, it has less power than they think because

it was a huge win. They haven't even cancelled you for the horrible things you said about Barry Humphrey. It's a bit shady. I know. I'm the new Dan Andrews. But we've been doing Hook Turnistan on stage, the character who just loves being locked down so much. He just loves that he salutes the president, Dan Andrews. And it's only been in Melbourne, so it's bought the house down.

We have Dan Andrews or a version of Dan Andrews in the form of my co-star James Pender coming out on stage in his North Face jacket and locking the theatre down and people love it. I'm about to find out, like, next week, Sydney's first cab off the rain, whether it travels. I hope it does. Otherwise, we have to explain the joke a bit more,

but hopefully people still understand that Melbourne went through some shit. I think the North Face, you might need a Gladys reference in there, maybe. Anyone who's ever bumped into anyone from Victoria does actually know about the lockdown. It's been explained to them for hours and hours and hours. You don't understand.

You don't understand. I know you would then had a lockdown. but you don't understand. You don't understand what it's like to have to talk to people who've been through it. And the North Face Jackson. Just to stay away from Melbourne. That was weird, the North Face Jacket thing like that. I don't know what the thing, was there thinking.

Surely he did focus groups on that. Was it, was the garment like, like I could be locked out in the wilderness? He did a focus group on a jacket dog. Of course he did. In the middle of a pandemic. Maybe it's like aspirational or something. They worked out. That's the sort of bloke that most people are going to be.

Ford the North Face brand of jacket. Yeah. I mean, I've got it free as an influencer, right? Isn't it just because Melbourne has fucked weather? Oh, is that one? So he had to bug up. Could have been actually, like him doing press conferences outside in winter

was just really, really chilling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what it was. It's so jarring. I work in the ABC, so I'm just, you know, not allowed to mention brands alone wear them. So he's just, like, like, he's a complete embrace of a brand like that. I was just like, oh, full credit, good on you, Dan. I mean, you've got to choose a brand.

Well, I mean, I must say, Joe Biden with the wayfarers thing. You can't tell me he's paying for his raybans at this point. Like, he must have a truck of that stuff. Or is it bad for a brand to have someone as old and uncool as Joe Biden constantly wearing your product? I mean, that's tough. And it's dangerous for a brand to associate themselves to someone

in case that all goes wrong. You know what I'm saying? Maybe. What we should do is we should start wearing brands. Yes. And get them to pay us to stop wearing those brands. That's a very good idea. Yeah.

I was quite shocked. Tim Minchin. I'm a big fan of he just asked on on Instagram can I just get some Pink Doc Martins you really wanted Pink Doc Martins and they rushed them to him

within six hours And I just That's just that's beneath you Tim Minchin Isn't that? I saw that And it was such like Such a flex

Such a boss move Like oh six hours Like oh here they are They're here But I mean Florida if you got it You know Have you ever

I know you work for the ABC At the moment But if you were to leave the ABC Would you start doing that sort of thing Do you think you've got the The juice at this point My first time like filling in on for ABC four years ago before I started working the breakfast shift, I was just

filling in. Because I had no idea really about the ABC's editorial policies. I wrote some poem about a thermos. It was a cold day and I had like a thermos with me, like with coffee or something in it. I didn't even realize thermos is a brand. I thought it was a thing, but not thermos is an actual brand. So I did like a 90 second poem about a thermos and how warm and great it was. And then thermos sent me like a box of stuff to the office. Oh no. And I was like, dude, what's this the matter? It's like, what's going on? I said, I did a thermos poem. Basically, I started my career with cash for comments accidentally. That's fantastic.

Why have I never done that in all my shifts on the ABC? I don't have Sammy Jay's imprimatur. Yeah, that's true. Or because you've read the training module that possibly. Sammy, look, congrats on all the years of playground politics and all the laughs and of managing to have an ABC program that seemed to be sustainable somehow because it was three minutes long, no more and no less. People should go and see good hustle because this is the last chance to see these.

beloved characters until Sammy brings it back in 2024. Yeah, yeah, given a, I promise you at least two years. But no, it's fun. It's heaps of characters. James Pender, who many of your listeners will know, he's fantastic on stage as well. We've got a cheeky cameo from the Prime Minister, which is awesome. And it's been really fun. It's a nice way

to say goodbye. Surely you've also got Peter Dutton for editorial balance. Peter Dutton is on stage as well. I won't explain in what capacity. Got a bunch of tickets, baby. Very, very good. Thank you, Sammy. Thanks for being with us. Cheers, boys. Our Gehers from Ride with part of the Iconiclast Network. Thank you.