The Chaser Report - MORE Offensive Royal Jokes | John Delmenico

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Andrew and Charles are joined by Chaser's Head Royal Commentator John Delmenico for a rundown on the company's backlash to our coverage of Her Majesty's passing. John shares which jokes upset people the most, and which people were most upset. Plus Andrew and Charles fondly reminisce their youth. 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 for Friday the 16th of September. I'm Charles Firth and with me today again is Andrew Hanson. Hello there, Charles Firth, yes. I'm in Melbourne. Which part of the world are you in today? I'm still in L.A.

Ah, yes, good for you. This is my last day, though. I will be heading back over the weekend. Ah, you don't have one of those standby flights, do you like you and I had when we tried to get out of L.A. And it took us about two weeks. Yeah, I remember that. But that was, I mean, that sounds like a disaster. And it was a disaster at the time.

But do you remember how cheap that ticket was? We cost about $4 or something, wasn't it? But then in hotel fees, because we had to book a hotel room every night for the next two. Do you remember that hotel room where... So the first night we tried to get out of L.A., Andrew had come up with a plan to illegally import a whole lot of ice cream into Australia. Do you remember that? Yes, I was a big fan of Ben and Jerry's, but you couldn't get it in Australia back then.

So Andrew had quite rightly clocked that if he checked his bags into the... like, checked it in with a whole lot of cartons of Ben and Jerry's, then it would be like at minus 50 degrees for the next 14 hours and would likely stay frozen. Right. Yeah. So it was, and I was just incredibly nervous because I'd never broken any rule in my life.

And here I was traveling alongside a trafficker of contraband. I should have gone. Should have given it to you. to be my mule my cookie dough mule well I feel like I ate so much ice cream during that trip that I was sort of a mule

90% ice cream anyway but then we got bumped off that flight unexpectedly so we had literally about 16 cartons well you had 16 cartons of ice cream that then was just melting and you I remember you're going

well we're just going to have to eat it all there was no universe in this that it could go to waste it can't you can't waste that stuff that is stuff is frozen meth it's great stuff yeah so we did we managed to eat i think nearly all of it didn't we i think we i think we ate an ungodly amount yeah that i remember i remember that first motel because we never went back to that motel can you remember what was lying on the pillow of that motel that night. I do remember it because luckily, not only did I lie on it, but that pub went in my mouth.

So it is burnt into my memory, yes. Yes. It wasn't as good as the ice cream, I can tell you that. Yeah. So we laid out, it was a very cheap hotel. It was literally about, I think, $20 a night. Yeah, well, it had to be because we had to stay in LA every night for so many nights because we kept getting bumped off these standby flights.

Yeah, and we were already running out of money. Yes. Because what were we, like 19 or 20 years old? I remember that you went and bought some, I don't know why you were hungry after all that ice cream. You went and bought, maybe this was on a different night. You went to a motel, you went, and you bought some Chinese takeaway, but you really wanted a fork, right?

You went to the front office, the reception area of this motel to get a fork. And the guy was eating his noodles And so you asked for a fork And then he just hands you his fork That he was eating the noodles With this dirty Forth Do you remember that?

I don't remember that But what a gloat I'm so glad you told me I actually don't remember that But that does sound very much like What happens In low cost motels in America This is exactly the same

sort of thing that would happen in a sheep I remember another motel it was during that period when we got there and remember the pillows were damp Oh yes It was a one with damp pillows

Yeah How do pillows end up damp Like what What's going on? What's going on? Fluid yeah Why? Why are they Do they have the pubs on them

Or damp Oh It's probably the fork man He probably had a night sweat sleeping in the room the night before. Now, just in case you haven't been across the news in the last couple of weeks, the Queen has died. Oh, God, Charles. Did you know that?

Oh, my God, that's big news. Yeah, it's amazing. And so just after the break, we're going to get John Delmenico, who's one of the chaser interns, to chat through what's been going on in the Chaser newsroom. and recount some of the... Because there's been a little bit of a backlash and we thought this Friday episode might be a nice time

to sort of reflect on the last couple of weeks of coverage. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. So if you want to get rid of those ads, just go to chaser.com.com. You slash podcast and subscribe to our premium version. That's ad-free. And there's also...

We do put extra episodes in. We have them this week because I've been in in LA, but we will put in a bonus hip early next week. So joining us now is John Delmenico.

Hello. Welcome back to the show, John. Hello. How's everything going in Sydney? Sydney is going, like nothing's happening, so it's pretty much as per usual despite the Queen's passing.

Yeah, right. But my understanding is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been talking to my parents occasionally, you know, from over here. And apparently the only topic on the news

ever, he's just the queen like this half an hour how do you get rolling updates on the queen being dead like nothing changes like surely it's like a one minute story well so here's the thing Charles

you're really overestimating how much story they're putting into these stories right there was a breakfast TV ABC News breakfast at one point had Michael Roland standing outside of Buckingham Palace at night going nothing's happened for the last six hours while the family's been asleep

but then not just going to a different story, just doing nothing for a few hours because the royal family was asleep. Right. It was gripping footage, I thought, of the sleeping royals. I mean, you're dissing it, John. I found the whole... I stayed up for that.

But what are the ratings like? Surely no one's watching it. Like, the only one who hasn't done rolling coverage was Media Watch, who has criticised the rolling coverage and pointed to the fact that, from Saturday onwards the ratings have been going down

because everyone's sick of the rolling coverage. Oh, my goodness. Well, you know, John, who's guilty of some of this I saw on Twitter, Dommy. Now, he's not with us on the podcast today, but Dom Knight, who's been hosting the afternoons program on ABC Radio Sydney, he tweeted that he was devoting an entire show

to pubs in New South Wales that are called the Royal. Oh my God That's investigated We're going to have to ask him about it When he comes back to the podcast So what did you uncover Donnie About the Royal Tubbs

Oh the angles are desperate Now Well I know I'm getting people knocking on my bloody door here Because I live in Kingsville In Melbourne Did you see the one about the person Who loved corgis

We're going to do Yeah we're going to do An episode next week Of people who've once had a royal related crossword puzzle clue presented to them. I think we should, yes. And I wouldn't stop there. I would also interview anybody who's eaten those biscuits that are called royals.

Royals, yes. They need to be grilled. I think you guys are going the wrong angle with this because ABC recently did one that was somebody who likes corgis. No, did they? So no connection to royals themselves. They just like corgis and therefore are similar to the queen in one way. and therefore she would get an interview.

Well, if anybody drinks gin. So you can go that whole round as well. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes, because she used to drink gin for breakfast. Well, actually, it's funny, because I have, in honour of the Queen, being drinking gin for breakfast as well. Good for you. Actually, well before she died.

That's very respectful of your child to prepare for her impending death in that way. So I, a few days ago, somebody, ABC Radio in Melbourne contacted me saying they were trying to work out how to cover the Queen's Dead and they asked me to come on and talk on the topic of what topic would you be able to talk on non-stop so that's

meta coverage of her sort of non-stop it's not like there's anything else going on the news though Charles they have to keep everything on going forever with the Queen So you were on ABC Radio Melbourne, Charles, for how long? How long did you talk non-stop in the end when you went on? Oh, for about five minutes, and then I couldn't be bothered anymore.

Oh, so you hung up on the non-stop. Really? No, it was just like what are the things that you would, what would you be able to talk non-stop on? Like, my answer was cricket. I'd happily talk about cricket forever. Yeah, okay. Do you have any passions, Andrew? No, you know me.

No passions, no passion. I mean, no, look, I could. I could talk nonstop about Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Ben and Jerry's ice cream. I could probably talk nonstop about the flavors that I've experienced over the years and what I'm hoping for in the future. Well, we'll cross live to you. Oh, yes.

I remember eating a pint of wavy gravy, Ben and Jerry's back in 1999. That was an experience. I could talk at great length about that. but I won't John what are you what do you like talking nonstop about this is a terrible topic

you can see why I hung up after five minutes anyway so John what we wanted you to talk about on this podcast today is the chaser has been right in the ticket discovery and you as the senior royal correspondent for the chaser

have been up to your eyeballs in good angles you you came up with the best headline and I think I've seen so far, which is the... Because the Queen's death happened on Are You Okay Day? What was your headline? Well, it was while she was...

It was like when they announced that she was resting and comfortable, we put out a tweet that said, Are you okay day not going well at the palace? She's great. That did cause a little bit of controversy there. Yes. I'm not sure how. Well, it got the Daily Mail.

It got the news.com. You got Daily Mail, all the news copy outlets, the Ladd Bible were furious. Like, they were uncharacteristically furious. They used the word seething. Ladd Bible were. Do they seed about that? I didn't think Ladd Bible was the most

sort of morally upstanding and woke account. It was really bizarre because usually they love our stuff. I think they're British, though, aren't they? Oh, yeah. I mean, Lab Bible, Australia got upset, which is the bigger. Which is weirdly the bigger brand internationally. Is it really?

Ladd Bible does well in Australia. Ladd Bible Australia does well overseas. It's like one of the top Facebook pages overseas, but in Australia doesn't do very well. Which might have been why they really played into it. But it also became the story that like News Corp just threw into articles to try to get people angry and staying on the websites. It's good.

So we're on like crypto. There's like crypto articles that mention what the Chaser said and all this stuff. NewsCorp even did an article trying to figure out who at the Chaser wrote that. Headline. The Chaser writers writes about crypto for Murdoch. So I suspect it actually, it was probably one of our writers who was anonymously also attacking his own work. That night was really weird because, like, so it was the night of Gabby's last show of her debut run of her, like, tour. So we were all out to go drink with Gabby

about celebrating her successful tour You mean Gabby Bolt? Of course. I mean, Gabby, you know, if people don't know Gabby. Yeah, she's forgotten who she is. She used to host this show and then went off to do better things. Yeah, she suddenly did. Internationally.

This is a very international. Yeah, we all decided we weren't going to work. Sorry? We all decided we weren't going to work that night and we were just going to have fun. And then at like 10.30, we looked at our phones and saw the breaking news that they were flying the royals out. And so instead, we all just immediately started coming up with as many jokes as we could

and then picking a few of them to put a line. The traditional chaser response, which is, quick, someone's dying, let's make jokes about it. Yeah, we also went through all of our old jokes to see which ones would not be too offensive if we repurposed them. Oh, how many did you have to discard for offensiveness? John because I don't know I mean I'm not involved in this

in this sort of online staff so do you have a do you have a bank of really tasteless jokes that you can sift through do you ready to go

the one that we were unsure about was an article that we ran last year that I wrote called Charles offers to put the queen

out of her misery oh and you thought a photo of him holding up a pillow to her face which we thought if we re-ran that that might upset

people if she's actually so we decided not to which goes against what the media was saying about us actively trying to offend Yeah no we're just wanting Because we could have gotten worse That's what we're

Our only crime is comedy Yeah But there was a brilliant headline And I don't know who came up with it I don't know whether it was your cam But the Prince Andrew one yesterday Which is Because we were reporting on this podcast

a few days ago that Prince Andrew has been given the responsibility of looking after all of the Queen's corgis right and and so you ran with the headline what was the headline Prince Andrew to take the Queen's corgis due to his vast experience

with grooming which is a good gag that is a solid gag very solid very solid thank you I was hoping the Daily Mail would pick that one up but they didn't well I mean they're probably less worried that they've moved on to Megan now

Andrew, to be fair, as they would be about you offending the Queen. You clearly haven't read the articles. Both Daily Mail and News.comity, you said that took specific offence to Charles making a joke about Prince Andrew being a pedophile. Oh, they didn't like that. Yeah, they didn't like that. And didn't one of them say, you can't publish those allegations or something?

There was some weird thing where they thought it was too offensive to publish the complete. true allegations that he was Yahoo said it was too offensive to publish Charles's response to the questions

about why he made a joke about Prince Andrew I can actually read out my response to them which was look all I'll say is that we're devastated here at the chase

to see a life cut short like this our thoughts and prayers with the family at this time and in particular to all the 16 year olds whose job it is

to consult Prince Andrew and they didn't like that that seems very harsh of them It feels like. Mind you, the journalist, then, he claimed it was unpublishable, but he did say, ha, ha, ha, ha, I doff my proverbial hat, sir. Oh.

He was a British journalist, then. It was a UK journalist. Yes, he was a British journalist who also happened to be a 16-year-old boy pretending to be a gender. Sort of the lils of somebody pretending to be an adult. the chaser report news you can't trust my favorite coverage of it was in the australians like media like media wrap up or the week whatever it was very strange because clearly some people on that team are fans of ours and so they were like there was a part where they referenced a joke that um gabby made months ago that the chaser interns are all maybe living in Charles's basement

and forced to stay there. Really? But they ran that as an actual allegation. Oh, that's great. You know that that can now be put on Wikipedia because that allegation has now been appeared in the mainstream press. Yes, it's a reference. It's a reference.

That can now be added to Wikipedia. They also very methodically tried to come up with who their main suspects were for who came up with the jokes like are you okay they oh really did they where they they were like oh the chaser interns exist

but then they didn't we were the they didn't actually come up with whether and why it wasn't us they just said it probably wasn't us what but then they were like actually if you had to guess which three people that they came down to

and couldn't pick between who would you guess well it'll be yeah who's got the reputation for being the bad boy of Chaser. But it's also who wrote this. Do you know who wrote this article? Because some of them have beef.

Someone shared, you know. Yeah. This guy very clearly has a beef with Chris. Oh, he has beef in Chris. Oh, yeah. Well, that makes sense. Because Chris would write something offensive. Well, yeah, yeah.

Because he's very funny. Quite possibly be Chris. Because they also laid out their thinking for each of the years. Okay, so Chris. It's very detailed, isn't it? Yeah, this is. I mean, they obviously don't know. None of us write.

I mean, it's all written by the Chaser interns now, isn't it? I mean, I don't think anyone from the TV series writes any of the material, so they don't know what they're on about. Exactly. It was written by Jared Henry. Oh, Jared, yes. And the poor old Jared, he wouldn't know. Well, he probably thought Julian wrote them. Yes, he doesn't like Julian much, I don't think. Weirdly, the thinking of who he doesn't like, who clearly he doesn't like, were the ones, it was like part of how he was like, or so it wasn't. Ah, okay. Oh. The three names that he finalized on was it was either you Charles, you Andrew or Dom.

They're the three least likely people to have written any of this. I wonder why he thought... It's very odd. Yeah, but the reason why I think he must have the actual problem with Chris is that his reasoning for why he thinks it wasn't Chris is that Chris is irrelevant. That was the only thing he said is that Chris is irrelevant, therefore it wasn't here. Poor old, Gerard, he doesn't realise that nearly all of the TV shows, like about 70% of the script was written by Chris.

but it just goes to show Jared has never known what he's on about but I like yeah instead of say ringing us up and asking who wrote that gag I know no he's never done that which you could totally do like you could easily do that

Twitter and I would say John Delmenico who came up with that excellent gag and he wouldn't have to theorise yeah well like also weirdly the fact that like one of the people he rules out is Cam Smith, the

digital editor and social media manager. Who edits everything you do, John. At least Jared knows Cam exists though. At least he knows that much. I mean, Jared's... I feel a bit sorry of him because I think he

has an unhealthy obsession with the Chaser. I mean, the amount that he's written about the Chaser brand over the years is an unhealthy amount for anybody to write. He recently called, like a few months ago he called Charles, a middle-aged man who should stop with a childish stunts. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. As he's headlined. Oh, right. Well, to be fair, Jared was saying the same 12 years ago about all of this as well. And he's probably quite accurate. Yeah, yeah, I know, quite fair. I agree with pretty much everything Jared writes

except for the factually untrue stuff. Where does he write this stuff? What publication? It's at the Australian. There's this, like, weekly media wrap. That's like their answer to Media Watch. And it's really long. Yes, it's so long and dull.

Like it's like 15 pages of just someone rambling about exclusively the ABC and the chaser. It has achieved the impossible and made gossip, a gossip column boring. He has the most boring gossip. Yes, it's so long-winded, it's extraordinary. Poor old, I remember poor old Julian once was stuck in an email conversation back and forth with Jared.

It was one of the only. It's perhaps the only time that Gerard actually contacted one of us. And we were we were weeping with boredom, I remember, in the office at some of these lengthy emails that Gerard was sending to Julian. They went for pages and pages and pages. And eventually Julian just sent back a one word reply that said unsubscribe. Oh, that's very good. That's very good.

Well, John, so are you going to be live tweeting the royal funeral of whatever it's called on the 22nd? Or are you going to take the day off because it's a public holiday? Like, how do we, what's the employment situation there? See, I kind of want to say I'm going to live tweet it, but then I'm also realizing nothing's going to happen. Yeah. Like in my head, Ben Robert Smith being there means he might kick over a coffin and push it off a cliff. But, like, that's not going to happen. They're all just going to stand there and be boring.

Like, I think the only interesting thing could be if the FBI shows up because that's somewhere they know Andrew will be. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Surely they'll arrest a few people who say accurate things at them. There'll be a few. They won't like that. They definitely won't like that.

Like, there's any, especially if there's any non-white people who are, you know, using this time to inappropriately talk about the monarchy, which we shouldn't be talked about at a time when the monarchy. is front of mind in everybody in the entire world's brain and I love the people who are saying we shouldn't politicise the queen even though she's the head of our political system

she literally the actual head of our political system she embodies politics she's above politics because she's literally on top of all the politics I think it's not too late though for the Queen to make a sort of James Bond you only live twice-style escape from the coffin.

I'm kind of hoping that, you know, without, I'm going to nobody noticing while people are distracted, she's going to leap out of the coffin, hopefully wearing scuba gear and, you know, dart off across the English Channel to further adventures.

I will watch the funeral just in case that happens. We can always hope. I'll be disappointed if it doesn't. Keep up the good work, John. And have a good week. weekend. Yeah, it'll be fun. I'm sure, because my best part is

they also get to read all the news because of my job. So I'll get the exciting thing of what we've done wrong or what Megan has done. That is bizarre. We should get Megan on the podcast. And fight her on. To respond to critics.

Yeah, we will. Can you do that, John? Yeah. I'll try, but a recent hit piece I literally just read is that she horrifically and disrespectfully paused her podcast until after all the funeral stuff's done

as to and like news corp is very mad that she has done that well that's right that's the only reason we've kept this podcast going is out of respect for the queen it's so respectful

to be doing this right now yeah I mean we should probably make some extra episodes out of respect shouldn't we I mean if just to show True contrition and respect. Yes. We should be podcasting more frequently.

It's what she would have wanted. She would have wanted her. Our Gear is from Road. We're part of the Ocast Creative Network. We'll catch you next week.