The Chaser Report - Mark Humphries' Mystery Illness

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

In their quest to find someone having a crappier time than they are in lockdown, Charles and Dom chat to Mark Humphries who is not only in lockdown, but has something wrong with his face. Also, Gabbi might be Kevin Rudd's best friend, Aleksa has some questions about all these weird Pfizer meetings, and Rebecca De Unamuno has news. 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 the Chaser Report for Tuesday, the 13th of July. Now, Charles, we tried to get Kevin Rudd on the show, but he was too busy running Australia's vaccine rollout to come on. Which, frankly, I think, you know, you've got to think about priorities here. What is more important doing publicity or getting the vaccines? And I think Scott Morrison has his priorities correctly. He just does the publicity.

he does the photo ops. Kevin Rudd, meanwhile, he won't even turn up on our show. What's the whole point of Kevin Rudd? All he's going to be doing is getting the vaccines for us. I mean, arguably, he's a better Prime Minister now than he has been at any point since the GFC. But we do have a bit of a scoop dom because we actually have a close personal friend of Kevin Rudd on our staff. We do. Gabby Bolt, one of our wonderful interns, I think he's basically besties with Kevin.

Hello, Gabby. Hello. We've got to stop pressing this narrative that I'm remotely best friends with Kevin Rudd. What do you mean? We've interacted like twice. Yeah, yeah, you're friends. You've interacted twice. By K Rudd standards, you're basically on his personal staff.

No, no. Does he follow you on Twitter? He follows me on TikTok. For a while there, I was the only person he followed. How is he on TikTok? He is on TikTok. He's got some great TikTok videos. Why are you the first person?

This is fast. Well, the thing that was happening this time last year was the Murdoch Royal Commission petition, and I felt really strongly about it. And so I made this really crap rap song trying to encourage my small following at the time to sign the petition. And he took notice of it on Twitter, and he shared it. And he said, oh, great video, Gabby. I wasn't game enough to duet this time. And so, of course, I took that to mean that there'd be a next time.

and so I wrote him another song which was like a ballad and I left a space for him to sing his own name I just wanted him to say his own name he didn't even have to sing I just thought that was the easiest way of getting him to interact and yeah he did he duetted me on TikTok So you have sung a duet with Kevin Rudd I wrote a song for him that he then sang on yes

and he did quite the ad-libs to be honest Look I think we need to have a listen to this Can we just roll a bit of this audio The Murdoch Monopoly is tragic Diversity in media is gone Peace go. But with your help maybe, we'll bring it back and see to finally write the journalistic wrong.

So if you want fairness in the media, don't act like a stick in the mug. No more whining, no more bitching, sign here for a royal commission, Cincinnati. I'm Kevin Rush. That's fantastic. Where were you when he was PM?

He would still be PM with you polishing his image on social. I actually have a funny story about where I was when he was PM. So I went to a couple of political rallies with my mum when I was a kid. I didn't know that they were political rallies at the time. And so I got a badge from a Kevin 07 rally and I took it to school for show and tell the next week. And then I got sent home for imparting political ideology onto the kids. I was like in year four. Were you, did you take any phone calls with Pfizer executives over the week?

Were you on the Zoom? I'd give anything to be in that Zoom room. I just want to see if it was as serious as it sounds or if it was a bit more like, how are you going? Well, because Kevin Rudd has, he's got kind of two modes, doesn't he? He's got the mode where he uses the very long weird words, no one understand. But then he's got the private, these Chinese ratfuckers are trying ratfuckus mode. I want that in the Zoom with Pfizer. Yeah, I want Handball Kev.

I want Kev to just get on the Zoom and be like, hey guys. Handball match, prize, Pfizer vaccines for the whole nation. See, that's good negotiation technique. And everyone can't say no to a handball game. Even the least sporty person, i.e. myself, would not say no to a handball match. Done. Well, you heard it here first. We've got the scoop.

Gabby Bolt has solved Australia's vaccine crisis. That is Gabby Bolt best friend of Kevin Rudd. I'm not his best friend. You've got to stop saying that. Thanks, Gabby. Coming up on the show, we are talking. talking to Mark Humphreys, who is definitely having a worse time of lockdown than anyone else. That and lots more coming up. But first of all, let's go to Rebecca Dana-Muno in the Chaser

newsroom. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berrigalian has today denied claims that the government put politics over listening to health experts when responding to COVID. The Premier explained that the government has always listened to experts and that all their decisions were based on the best medical advice from spin doctors. News broadcaster Peter Creadlin has today slammed Kevin Rudd over the bungled vaccine rollout after the former Prime Minister stepped in to secure an extra million doses of Pfizer. Sky said it was completely unacceptable that Rudd had taken this long to secure the supply before pointing out he still has done nothing to fix hotel quarantine and calling for him

to resign. And the federal government has today taken action in the fight against COVID by releasing an ad shaming people who can't get a vaccine for not getting vaccinated. The campaign will also see the government shame workers for not staying home before refusing to give any of them jobkeeper so they can stay in their homes. I'm Rebecca Dana Muno for The Chase of Report. This episode is brought to you by Fitness versus Sydney. It's not a full lockdown which means our world-class gyms are still open for business.

Our state-of-the-art machines are ready where the online. pushing, pulling or super-spreaded. And sign up for our daily COVID classes that will have you panting for months. As this lockdown drags on, Charles and I have been trying to find people whose lives are worse than ours to cheer us up. Yesterday we got Jenna Owen from the feed on

to talk about her life in hotel quarantine. And it turned out that was much more enjoyable than our lives. That backfired a bit, didn't it, Charles? Yes, it totally backfired. So, we thought we can't go wrong if we get Mark Humphreys on the line. Yes, of 730, of course, the author of On Politics and Stuff with Evan Williams, which is out now, which you should be gone by.

Hello, Mark. Hello, guys. I'm glad that, yes, when you need someone whose life is worse than yours, you think, Mark Humphreys, he's the guy for us. But you're right. You are absolutely right. My life is worse than yours at the moment. so I'm here to cheer you up with that news

because I've been diagnosed with something guys yes yes because I can see you we've got a video link and you don't look well let me lean into the camera what is that I'm sorry that the viewers of 730 can't see this because frankly where I leave sales I'd have some probing questions

about your eye sir rightly so yes so I experienced some sharp stabbing pains in my face a couple of days ago and went to the whole hospital about that and they they were very reassuring they came back and said we don't know what's wrong with you um so they said could could could could be your sinuses uh could be a tear duct issue so

here's some nasal spray here's some eye drops and let's see how you go so then a couple of days passed and then i woke up this morning and basically one half of my face i look like i look like aran ecart in the second half of the dark night you know so one half of my face is just um completely it's just a big rash one eye is completely bloodshot and half closed so I went to the doctor today

and it turns out that I have does anyone want to take a guess? It can make a fun it could make a fun game of this based on those using the web MDs we've got here what do you think this is COVID of the eye COVID of the eye it is in a sense

I've got shingles oh no so it's just like sort of adult chicken pox, yes. Mumps or something. Chicken pox, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so, well, yeah, so my understanding is that chicken pox apparently, I think

chicken pox sort of stays, even once you've had it, and you think it's gone, it sort of lives in your spine waiting to come back under the right circumstances. And so apparently stress is a great cause for bringing back, bringing

this on, but I can't see what would be stressful about living in Sydney and this day and age. I I can't think of anything. So it is COVID of the eye. It's spinal COVID of the eye. So, yeah, so that's exciting. And is there, is there a cure?

Well, I've been given some wonderful generic medicine that I'm holding up here. So Vaclavir, it will be my friend for the next seven days. And also, yes, and something, they've also given me painkillers for the, because it causes a sort of tingling sensation. So sort of, my face just sort of feels quite sparkly. in a... No, but thank you, Mark, for getting shingles. That really has...

Well, let's put a little... Let's lift it your spirit. An extra step in my footsteps. The problem is, Charles, that when Mark gets better, and he has the medication to get better, he's still going to be Australia's most prominent satirists. Is there any possibility that the shingles won't go away and you won't be able to do 730 anymore

and we could take your job? I'll put in a good word for you. I think I've had a good run. Yes, if you enjoy being compared to Clark and Door week on week, you'll welcome. On the bright side mark, 50% of your face is still looking very handsome in that. Oh my gosh. If you just shoot me from this one angle, my God. But I think I remembered hearing that about like Tom Hanks that apparently like all of his comedy films,

the posters are his face from one side and all of his drama films opposed to his face from the other side. He's got a drama side on a comedy side. Well, you've got a comedy side and a disaster movie side. Your Clark and Door are all in one. Oh, man. But speaking of criticizing appearances, one thing I want a recent lockdown project for myself, which no one cared about, but I'm going to plug it anyway because I put a lot of work into it. Have you guys listened to Obama's memoir?

No. So I listened to the audiobook of it, and I noticed that on multiple occasions, he would introduce someone that he worked with and describe them as, balding he would always just emphasize that they were balding i saw this on your social media yes that's it and i thought this is very odd thing to do and i asked i put a call out on twitter and said does he want to have like an e-book version of this where they can search a word for me and this person helped me out and found that the word balding appears five times in abama's memoir and so i've done this super cut of obama introducing like friends like people they actually worked with but always just

with balding and bespectacled or like short and prematurely balding he was 38 by then but looked older stocky and slightly balding he's just he's a bitch he's a completely horrible person anyway so I thought oh this will go gangbusses no one cares but that's my lockdown

That is so helpful because that proves to me that not only are you having a miserable time that Barack Obama probably the best human on the planet is also just a jerk So thank you for dragging the best president of our lifetime down to our level. Exactly. It was about time. Thank you very much, Mike.

All the best for the recovery, except from Charles, who wishes... This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by Home and Away. Don't miss the shocking season finale where Sarah finds her dogs hit and run killer. And John's cousin recovers from his speedboat accident with a vengeance. Who's the secret man that Cheryl's been seeing behind Jackson's back? Find out on Over the Way. Big story today, as we heard at the start of the show, of course, the Pfizer vaccine rollout botched as it is, whether or not Kevin Rudd's meeting with the Pfizer executives actually

did anything to try and speed things up. And one of our interns, Alex has got some thoughts on this. Hi, Alexa. Hey, hey. Yeah, so we've had a bit of news recently. ABC article came out saying senior business figures turn to former PM Kevin Rudd to intervene in bringing forward Australia's Pfizer vaccine supply. I mean, straight off the bat, anything that starts with senior business figures is an

immediate red flag for me. I don't know about you guys. Senior business figures is how you describe the people behind, I don't know, the Atlantic slave trade or the opium wars or fossil fuel lobby, you know, as a rule of thumb there, they're bad news. But also, it wasn't, just thinking about it, wasn't Trump, a senior business figure? Exactly. Jeff Bezos, the biggest fuckwit of our entire era, is a.

senior business figure. Well, Alan Bond. I mean, there's a lot of people who end up in prison. Christopher Skies. One of the theories that I heard was that it was Therese. It was like, his wife just thought,

oh, yeah? Get Kevin on it. She's very rich. She's the brains of the family, frankly. But yeah, according to the article, there were 40 million doses scheduled for the end of 2021,

which is apparently four months later than other countries managed to secure it. So we wanted to bring it forward. And essentially, Scomo was incompetent and right. meets with the Pfizer chief and pretty much says you can bring the doses forward but Scott Morrison needs to get off his ask and talk to Pfizer I don't know this there's something inherently weird about this story so far it's true it's not often that

Kevin Rudd is the model of efficiency when it comes to prime ministers it's not really this bag apparently according to the senior business figures Pfizer was complaining that the Australian government was rude dismissive and penny pinching they were grumpy that they only spoke to relatively junior bureaucrats and they expressed their astonishment that the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, had not directly spoken to Pfizer. I don't know. I mean, like you guys probably have more experience dealing with large companies than me. Do they legitimately have these kinds of self-esteem issues? Is this like a common thing? The main way we deal, we've dealt historically with large companies is by going to their

foyers and getting kicked out of them, Alex. I'm not sure we know much wrong about it than you do. Isn't the point that they're all corrupt, right? Like, it's not like AstraZeneca is the height of, you know, probity or anything like that. It's just that they were pissed off that Estrazenica had, you know, didn't one of the senior staff at EstraZeneca was in the PM's office and stuff like that. And fires that didn't have anyone in the PM's office. So that's what they were jealous about. They were jealous about the access.

That's a classic bad relationship dynamic. The Prime Minister was talking to other multinational corporations behind their back. It was a naughty. I mean, there's sort of, there's a rom-com in it, I think. Oh, definitely. that's at least the way it unfolds. But I mean, from Pfizer's point of view, I'm just confused because like, why on earth would you want to talk to Scott Morrison?

That's the, that's a weird. He's the last person I want to negotiate with. You can imagine the junior bureaucrat saying, no, no, no, you've got it good. We're preventing you from talking to Scott Morrison. On the other side, you got Pfizer. He's a company that about a decade ago had to pay $1.3 billion in a lawsuit

because they knew about the negative cardiovascular side effects of their best-selling painkillers, but hid the information from the public. I just confused, like, how do you offend a company like that? How do you make them feel neglected, make them feel bad? I just... Well, it's like a mob boss. I've got to show some respect.

You've got to go and kiss the ring. And Morrison didn't go and pay a difference like that scene from the Godfather. Morrison didn't come to him on his father's birthday and promise a favour. But it is, it is concerning, isn't it, that the well-being of all of us is dependent on these absolute fuck-knuckles? The thing is, I personally don't really think. think it's a rom-com. I think there are other things outside of this other than hurting the big company's feelings. I think they want certain commercial concessions. If you look into Rudd's

letter that he wrote to Skomo, he writes, speaking on my own initiative, I floated the possibility of Australia, perhaps seeking a large scale advance order of Pfizer's 2022 vaccine booster, which is still under development. So the idea is, like, we buy this huge order of vaccine boosters, and then maybe FISA will negotiate with us about bringing the date sooner. So, yeah, so, I mean, it's sort of standard Aussie business practice, isn't it? It's like you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. It's basically not any bigger than you'd find at Paddy's Markets on a Saturday morning. You know, you buy these aging mandarines, and I'll buy some of your fish.

It is strange, isn't it? But the thing that I find most surprising about this whole biff with Pfizer is that they're the people who make Viagra. So how the hell was Barnaby Joyce not already in bed with them? Exactly. That's probably the biggest hole in this story so far, actually.

Have you got a problem that needs fixing but you really don't have the time? Is an entire nation calling for your blood because you bungled a big project? Maybe you've already solved a problem but want somebody else to take the credit. Then why not call Kev repairs?

Oh no, I missed my bus. Not to worry, I've just called the CEO of the bus company and they've turned the bus around. Wow, thanks, Kevin Ride. You're welcome. Got a zip. Oh no, I was already running late and now my bus has turned around for some reason. Not to worry, I've had you fired from your job, so you no longer need to be at that meeting. Oh, um, I actually kind of needed that job. You can thank me later. Oh no, the country's vaccine rule that's been delayed because I put all my eggs in one basket and

ordered the wrong vaccine. Not a problem. I've just had a meeting with the CEO of Pfizer, and he agreed to double the supply. So I've saved the day again. Wow. But didn't the government already have that agreement in place? Uh, got a zip. Kev repairs. The number one cause and solution to all life's problems. Charles, just before we go, a great little story from the year. UK. Apparently over there, the Treasury, the UK Treasury had this weird thing where over a hundred phones were wiped because of pin resets. In other words, the people who had the

phones and used them forgot their pins. So the entire phone got wiped. All the text messages got lost. All the data got lost and had to start again. This even affected the guy who runs the department, the permanent secretary Tom Scholar. How weird is it that the people who were in charge of remembering numbers, forgot their pins. Well, I mean, numbers are very, especially if you work in the treasury, number is a very slippery concept. I don't know whether you remember here last year, you know, the Australian Treasury misplaced $60 billion.

So, I mean, I think it's completely acceptable that they have no sense of things. But the strange thing is, I don't know whether you saw in that story that, do you know what the pin number that they forgot was. I've got it here. Oh, I can see why they forgot it. It was one, two, three,

four. That's very hard to remember. There's a link to Australia too, because there's this story about Green Sill Capital, you know, the... Yes, yes. Run by the Queensland guy, went broke, huge belly up. And apparently David Cameron had been

texting them all, the former PM, trying to get their support, because he was on the board whatever. So what an accident that all the texts got wiped. All the texts got wiped from those phones. Oh, so it was sort of like, it was the British equivalent of the tractor ran over my iPhone story that we had here. Speaking of which, Charles, uh, is there any way we can set up the chases mobile phones so that whenever we get sued for defamation, they automatically reset. Ooh, I like that. That's a very good idea. Hold on. I'll just have to remember my pin to his phone. What was it now? I know it started with the,

What was it? Wasn't it our, like, net profit for last year? Oh, right. Okay, here we go. Zero, zero, zero, zero. Yep, I'm in. There's lots of more stories at chaser.com. Are you around the clock?

Follow us on all the socials and please give us a five-star review. Yes. What's the code phrase, Charles, for today? The code phrase for today is... Mark Humphreys has shingles. Tell everyone. Mark Humphreys has shingles. How embarrassing.

Yeah, okay, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. And you could give the shingles review. For me, it's five-star performance by the shingles. Definitely. Five rashes, five stars. We normally mention the Melbourne Podcast Festival gig here.

It's becoming more unlikely by the day. But, look, Hope Springs Eternal 1st of August at the podcast festival. We're notionally meant to be there. So my, if you are buying tickets to the Melbourne podcast festival, what I would do is spend the 30 bucks to buy a ticket to the Chaser Report thing and then spend another 30 bucks betting against it from happening. It's called hedging It's very good idea

Hedge your bet And you'll make money Our gears from road microphones And we're part of the ACAST Creative Network Catch you tomorrow See ya