The Chaser Report - Kate Middleton's Photoshop Fail + Oscars Recap

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Kate Middleton has resurfaced, and Buckingham Palace has executed a photoshop job worse than Channel 9's AI. Plus Charles and Dom bring you a comprehensive recap of the Oscars award ceremony. Or at least they said they would. Listen and see for yourself how that promise pans out. 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. Charles, some extraordinary stories to talk about. Today, the Oscars came out. We've just hot off the press, the latest Oscar winners. The minor news. The minor news.

But all of it swamped by the astonishing revelations. I mean, talk about best special effects, Charles. Putum-ching. The photo of the... What about worst? special effects. Yeah, the princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, a mandatory kill from the Associated Press. I don't remember this ever happening before. Well, no, Diana. Okay, that's how it's going to go down. The photo that the Associated Press said, you cannot publish it because it's clearly

been manipulated by the palace. And can I just say the timing of this photo drop is very suspicious, Don. On a day when Barbie only won one Oscar, it can't be a coincidence. No, exactly. Let's get into it after this. Just briefly, Charles, before we kick off these incredible stories, I just, I have to, I've got to mention this. There's a problem with Apple Podcasts that we need to address, just briefly.

Oh, yeah. We were asking people to do reviews. Someone by the name of Lanny 34 did. Oh, dear. And the review says, thanks. Thanks, Lanny. thanks, only place to get my news better for my mental health that way.

Right. That's quite flattering, isn't it? Well... Does that seem flattering? No, I think that's saying that she doesn't get any proper news from us at all and therefore, because the world's so horrible. Well, that would explain the one star that Lenny gave.

So I'd rather have we just gone down. Oh, no. And I thought Lenny was playing as a compliment that we were like a nice safe space for disseminating things you might want to know about, like Rupert Murdoch being 93 and not really talking about the horrible things in the world to the same extent as say the actual news. Yeah, so you can't give one-star reviews.

We don't want that. So what we need is, is everyone else to go on Apple Podcasts, give us five-star reviews. Yes. You can roast us, you can say much meaner things in that. Yeah. Just the algorithm. Come on. Yeah.

Help us out here. Maybe she wants bad mental health. And so she's giving us a one-star because we're helping her mental health. Or maybe her mental health problems means that she can. can't distinguish between one and five stars. I don't know what's going on. Lanny, I hope you're okay, but thanks for helping us be less okay. Thanks for impacting on my mental health today. Yeah. Lanny. Yeah. Anyway, we have yours to talk about. And the photo drop. I guess we've got to start with the photo drop, don't we? That's the biggest story. Well, this is the biggest story,

but I think they're linked. I think it is definitely. You see a conspiracy theory, don't you? Well, it's definitely the case that they came out. The photo that everyone's talking about was dropped literally about an hour before the Oscars Red Carpet. Right. So it was clearly with the intention of going, okay, we'll release some proof of life of Kate Middleton, but we'll do it in a way which will be swamped by the Oscars, so it won't actually fuel any of the rumours.

Like there's a sort of real PR intention behind what they were doing. Yes, and no one would look at it in great detail. Yes. Nobody would analyse it, you know, microscopically. No. Which I think really shows a deep, lack of understanding of a thing called the internet, Charles, I really do. But also, it shows a deep lack of understanding about the uncanny valley, because even just

a first glance at that photo gives you the sense that it all is not right. And I'm not talking about the Royal Family, I'm just doing about all is not right with that photo. Oh, no, the photo. Quite apart from the major moral issues to the Royal Family. The three children, for instance, look demented. I really worry for their mental health. Look, they're so, they're smiling so broadly.

It looks like they've been told, smile, or your mum will get it. That's the, that's the expression that my daughter makes when I say, if you don't do a nice photo for your cousin's birthday, I'm taking your iPad away for the rest of the year. Yeah, that's right. Or maybe, this is the last time you'll see your mother alive. If she was there at all, who's the woman, Charles, the woman in the centre? Is that, is that Kate Eindleson?

Is it an android, Charles? Is it some sort of waxwork, perhaps, of the Princess of Wales? Is there an AI bot? Now, look at a colleague this morning showed me this photo and said, look at Kate's hands, quite before we get onto the reason that we're called. Kate's hands are weird around the waist of her children. Well, one's blurry and one's not blurry. But look, the most, the kindest explanation I've heard is that this is just a melange,

a montage, a sort of a collage of various different forms. photos that were taken at the same time. Yes. And Kate's just gone post, you know, the nicest photo. You know how Craig used to do that in all our Chaser PR photos? Did he really? Yeah, remember whenever we got the photo shoot back. Oh, he'd insist on a different head being photoshopped.

Yeah, yeah. He'd go, well, that's the best group shot, but that's the best my shot. So, post. Even then, he was doing the war on waste. He didn't want the other shots to go to waste. No, he didn't want them to go to waste. Good on you. So you think they've just innocently like, and as a parent,

It does make a degree of sense that there would only be one photo where each child was smiling. And maybe that's why it looks so uncanny because they've montaged all the ones where the kids aren't looking like they want to kill their mother. Yeah, but the weird thing is that if you did that, you'd expect to only montage the faces, right? But like one of the, the girl has a, I mean, not that I've looked deeply into this, but I have, and the sleeve of the girl. Princess Charlotte, this is the. Brins a show. Her arm is in an unnatural position. Well, no, no, but the sleeve just ends.

It just sort of, it's not even, I mean, it's so obviously. The little red bit of sleeve, it's badly Photoshop. It's sub-chaser. Oh, yeah. I mean, now does we get AI to help, but back in the day, we used to do a better job than that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, yeah, no, it's, um, and so is this some sort of secret, maybe Kate was only allowed to get a message out that was positive, right? Oh, you think the message is that, yeah, she's done it on purpose.

Yes. And her way of saying all is not right is these sloppy Photoshop drops that got past her captors. Oh, my goodness. Which is, I presume, Camilla. And, like, she's the evil stepmother. Evil stepmother. The wicked stepmother. And she's got, she's done Charles in as well.

Yes. Oh, my God. Because the thing is, in the hours after this, a lot of people didn't see this because, so what happened was that photo was released, they hoped that it would all be swamped by the Oscars. Instead, AP, which is the, you know, Associated Press, AFP, which is the French version of, I think, and Reuters, all issued kill orders. Manituary photo kill?

I'd never even seen. Getty, too. I haven't even seen it before. Which is, like, category five of PR disaster. It means that that agency no longer will trust that source. So now the palace becomes a non-trusted source. You can never issue a photo from that source again. How funny.

And, well, apparently the Prince of Wales, like William took the photo, which means Harry's been right. All these years, Harry's been telling us, he's a manipulator, he punched Harry. But the thing is, so what happened was, though, and this is the thing that nobody's heard about, because there's been the mandatory kill order. It's too controversial. There was a series of other photos that the palace issued that just haven't gone anywhere. There was one of Kate hugging William happily. Oh, really? That wouldn't be plausible.

Kate joyfully holding up a copy of today's newspaper and a sign that reads, Definitely Alive. Really? Yes. Definitely alive. Yes. Oh, you can't believe that. No one believes that anymore.

What do you mean? No, no. This is all just, this is what they've issued. Definitely not, definitely not dead. Definitely not harvested for organs. Another one of Kate at a party holding a sign that reads, The Palace didn't kill Diana. Perfectly happy adjusted family

Which I have no regrets about joining Yeah Another one of Kate on a beach Holding up a sign that reads 9-11 wasn't an inside job Oh my goodness Which is good Like you know

It proves that 9-11 wasn't an inside job Kate and William holding hands with Kate Holding a sign that reads I actually don't mind pegging after a Oh sorry The poor woman Chelsea may have been killed And then But the most

shocking one of all, Dom. Oh my God, the most shocking one of all. Even more shocking than I like pegging after all. There is a photo released by Kensington Palace of Megan standing over Harry's murdered body. What? Harry's been murdered. Wouldn't that be something that they'd want?

Wouldn't that be a good outcome for Brent William? Oh, yeah, wait a minute. Maybe the logic on that. The thing that confuses me about all this, where was the photo taken? They say it was Windsor, right? They say it was Windsor. Yeah. How do we know?

How do we know without any evidence that it wasn't taken on Jeffrey Epstein's Peterfile Island by Prince Andrew? Well, it certainly looks sunny enough. And it certainly, like, there's full bushes, like, in England in March, I can tell you now, it's a pretty shit weather. There's no sun at all. And it looks like it's sort of this bushy, like it's in a forest. It does.

It looks like, Charles, look, there's even something more disturbing that you might not have picked up on that I've just, I've just, just come to hand. I'm going to tell you about it after this. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. By the way, are we going to get to the Oscars? It doesn't look likely, does it? Anyway, the Oscars are there to be talked about. I mean, the Oscars bombed anyway. I mean, Oppenheimer.

Yay! Oh, I wish Jimmy Kimmel had that joke for his very long monologue. Hey, no, no, what is Charles? I don't know whether you... Have you ever used a Google Pixel phone? Where are Apple people here? We don't really use them. Oh, yes, and new feature.

And the way that you, if you photo the moon, then it pretends that it knows what the moon is. The Samsung, no, this is another. So the Samsung one, if you take a photo of the moon, it automatically replaces the real moon through the lens with like an AI moon that looks more realistic than any photo of the moon possibly could. Yes. It's very scary. So maybe the same things happen here. So if you take a photo of Kate Middleton with a Samsung phone, it replaces the corpse with an alight.

version of the Kate Middleton. Okay, that's even scary than the theory I read, which is just that Google, or is it, okay, Google apparently has a feature on the pixel phones where you can just automatically take, it takes a whole bunch of photos automatically and just montage them together through the power of AI.

And it's fair to say that the photo looks so demented in hindsight, chilling, that only an AI could have put it together. Yeah, right. The things like the sleeve being completely wonky, although do we know that her arm isn't really like that? Maybe this is the thing. Maybe she's just got a wrong arm.

Maybe the royal family is so elite that they have access to technologies that, you know, mean that space and time and things like, you know, still being alive. Well, but also like the physics of your sleeve, it doesn't necessarily have to adhere to another dimension. Yeah, exactly. Like, or she just appeared from another dimension for the photo shoot. Well, David Ike might be right. The guy who says that all the prominent figures in the world actually.

shape-shifting lizards from different dimensions. It's entirely possible that they're all, they just popped up in this dimension and Catherine's just been off back in her home dimension. Or maybe Elon Musk is right, and actually the whole thing is a simulation for him. Oh, okay. And that it's just bad resolution on that.

Yeah, nothing's real, except for him. The thing that makes, what an amazing piece of narcissism that is. It's like textbook narcissism, and he's gone around and proudly told people. It's in car as which is... Although that said, Charles, oh, we've got to talk

about that book more but it is fair to say that it does make sense that we would all be trapped in Elon Musk's fantasy where he's the richest man in the world and can impregnate multiple women and make electric cars

and fire rockets at the moon. We are all in the fantasy with the little boy. That's quite strange. Him taking over and destroying Twitter doesn't really fit in with... Oh yeah, no, that was a lot of fuck up. I know, okay.

So the theory is, Charles, if this is the case, If the Google pixel phone did stitch the photos together through AI, that then means that Google has the technology to fabricate the royal family. So we can never trust any image that we ever see of the royal family ever again, which makes me think it's a pity this technology didn't come out before the Queen died, because she'd still be there. Oh, because she'd still be there.

So I don't think King Charles will ever die. We can't believe any photo of him that we see from now on, but they've got the sausage fingers in the algorithm. Right. So it's sort of like, it's like that game, what's it called musical chairs. And William is the last person standing in that he's never going to be allowed to sit on the throne. No. Because it's now, the music's over.

Like, reality has ended. He doesn't need to sit on the throne, though. I mean, he's got pecking to. Well, if he does sit on the throne, he wants, you know, a very rigid middle bit. So we don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on with this photo. We didn't get to the Oscars. Maybe we'll do the Oscars tomorrow.

We can't do the Oscars to do the Oscars now. Like, the Oscars is not going to take up a whole episode. Come on. We're doing the Oscars now. Okay. Well, let's just briefly do the Oscars. Yeah, we're doing the Oscars. I watched a lot of highlights of the Oscars.

Yeah. But they weren't, the problem is Charles that they weren't. I would have rather have been pegged than it was very boring. There was only one good, no, there were two good bits. The I'm Just Ken The I'm Just Ken song It was excellent I mean for fuck sake

She should definitely have won the Oscar over Another Billy Eilich Weepie song She did that Last year she won an Oscar for a weepy song And this was a worse one Isn't the problem that Like that combination with her brother But the, where the production values

It's just so fucking good Oh they're very talented That you like if you're If you actually know something about the craft Because that's what the problem Oh the songwriters are voting for it Yeah the songwriters and the producers of music

voting for it and going, that's just so, just a class of its own. It's like listening to Mozart. Also, they can't, the Oscars voters never want to respect anything that's fun because they're in, they're in fear that everyone will go,

it's just a superficial popcorn factory. With no profanity. So it is from Barbie. Oppenheim was fun. Was it? The kids. Destruction of the world? Oh, okay.

You like the moment where the world could potentially entirely blow up. No, they didn't nominate. Margo, Robbie wasn't nominated. And, um, not. to mention Killers at the Flower Moon. That was just a laugh-a-thon. That cheerful,

a half-beat film about the progressive murder of those age people. Yeah, yeah. That's right, actually. Okay, well, maybe I've got this wrong. I was going to say Barbie was the fun film. But actually, it wasn't, was it? Barbie was the very depressing take on the Patriarch. I didn't watch all of it, but it was very depressing the first bit where, you know, women were in charge.

And, sorry. Okay, okay. All right. So that's the one. My point is that the In a genuinely fun film It was like very amazing It was a great movie

Very amusing The one thing that they honoured Was the really boring Dower Billy Eilish mental breakdown bit How boring is that That song is from Barbie Oh so Barbie won Barbie won only one Oscar for a sad song

But it wasn't the I'm just Ken song No It was what What am I made for Just just oh I'm so Oh poor Barbie gift Barbie So that's boring The only other good bit of the

Oscars Charles, John Senna. Now, we love a stunt in the Chaser. I was 50 years since someone's streaked stage. Right, yes. And so they got the wrestler turned actor John Cena to go out there with his very sculpted body totally naked. Did you know that streaking isn't streaking when it's part of the run sheet? When it's like a...

Yes, when it's a bit in the show. It's a bit in the show. And he had an envelope in front of his groin too, which is not... That's not how it's supposed to work. And when I had to do time behind bars... Yes. Because, which I did for about 45 minutes, because I filmed people doing a nude run. Yes.

They didn't have a fucking envelope in front of their dealing. I had to look at Julian and Andrew Hanson's crotches. I'd look at it through a viewfinder and recorded. You should have looked through through your new Google phone. It would have made them into sculpted wonderful people. Oh, whatever. Okay, so what else is there to say about the Oscars? I mean, it was so predictable.

Oppenheimer won. Yeah, serious film. No, Jimmy Kimmel had a good line about Donald Trump. Isn't it past your jail time? That was very funny. That was because halfway through the Oscars, Trump went on a huge rant on Truth Social, showing his, yes again,

his massive, you know, the person and ultimately problems which should rule him out for president. And yeah, Kimmel slagged him off during the show, which was pretty enjoyable. Like he kind of in real time. Yeah, Robert Downey Jr. gave quite a funny speech.

That was about it. Chris Hemsworth was there looking hot. It was just very predictable and boring. Nothing much happened. You know, I never. thought I'd say this, but where was the slap? Yes. Where was Will Smith? They made a massive mistake banning that guy for 10 years.

So I should bring him back and get him to slap. Like at some point during the next year's ceremony, Will Smith will slap somebody. We don't know who it's going to be. It could happen at any time. He just emerged and slap. Like, that would be compelling television. I'm just surprised that

you're surprised that the Oscars were dull. Yeah, actually. That's kind of fair. Like, it's, they're so self-aware that even, like, it's now mandatory that at every award show beginning, hosts will make some comment about how incredibly long it's going to be. Just fucking

shorten it. Yes. Oh, yes. Just have a split screen with all the awards being given at once. Yes. In about five minutes. Then do some comedy and music. And I reckon, you just up the stakes. That's what they do in Hollywood all the time. Just up the stakes. Like, if you go over your speaking

limit time, you die. Will Smith. Oh, you get punched in the face. Yes. Either all. That's how you do it. You could electric hit the stage. So it's either long and entertaining or short and unviolent. You could. You could. Also, I'd like to see Jimmy Kimmel with more at stake.

Like, he did a perfectly competent job. Yes. I don't want competent. I want a raise his edge. Like, there should be lions. Lions. Like Siegfried and Roy. If too many jokes got bomb, open the lion.

Open the lions, catch it. You know, they'd be. There could be a shark's tank, couldn't it? They could be suspended above a shark's tank. And the floor suddenly disappeared. That would be a fan. Literally the Oscars jumping the shark. You know what we should do?

We should write a satire of the Oscars about, like a sort of squid game meets the Oscars. Yes. And we'd win every Oscar because there's nothing that the Oscars vote is like more than movies about movies. Yeah, movies about movies. And it would be a dark satire and they'd have to show they read on the joke. It would have to involve dreary matters of the human condition. It would, yeah, yeah.

And someone really attractive putting on makeup in order to look really unattractive. Yep, definitely. Although not Bradley Cooper. No, no. Margot Robbie maybe could win an Oscar for debarbifying herself next time round. That's what the voters wanted to see. Well, Emma Stone got the best actress for that. This hasn't been the most comprehensive Oscars' rap,

but I think we've gotten to the heart of the piece. More sharks, more slaps, potentially bombs. Yep. More jeopardy, in other words, is what you're saying. Yeah, that's right. That's what we want. I mean, all we need to do, Charles, to make the Oscars more exciting is tell the Israeli military

that there are Palestinian children on the site. Yep, and then... And then... Boom. Anything could happen. Our Gehry is from Ride. We are part of the Aconiclass Network.

We will have a more structured episode tomorrow. It's just because we're so shocked by the photo. Yeah. We're just shocked by the photo. Yeah. Catch you then.