The Chaser Report - Not again, Melbourne! | Sami Shah

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

As Melbourne’s new Covid cluster mounts, Charles and Dom talk to Sami Shah who tries to put a happy spin on it all. Also, Craig explains how to get onto talkback radio, and you can win a car. Sort of. Featuring all the Chaser news headlines you know you can’t trust, with Rebecca De Unamuno. 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 third daily edition of The Chaser Report. We're still going three days into this crazy venture, Charles. Why did we agree to do this, Dom? Because we want to bring the people all of the bad news that happens right across the world every single day. We're actually really across Melbourne. That is true. This is a very bad day for Melbourne, indeed.

But a good day for mask sellers in Melbourne, Charles. That's right. They're breathing a sigh released this morning. that they will definitely be able to get rid of their stockpiles of masks this winter. We're heading to Melbourne, in fact, with comedian Sammy Schar to find out what's going on, and we're going to give you the chance to win a car, Charles. Conditions apply. But let's first of all head to Rebecca Day and Muno in the Chaser Global International News Headquarters.

Which is not in Melbourne, thank you. Introverts across Melbourne are celebrating after another four COVID cases were uncovered yesterday. Meanwhile, Premier Dan Andrews has thrown himself down. stairs again to avoid having to shepherd Melbourne through yet another lockdown. Scott Morrison has responded to criticism he hasn't changed workplace rules in Parliament House even after several serious incidents. The Prime Minister claimed it had been difficult to table new policies due to all the tables being covered in come. Water Minister Keith Pitt has announced that the mouse plague ravaging rural New South Wales

is now officially under control. Mr Pitt said his policy of stealing water from the Murray-Darling Basin has caused all the mice to die from dehydration. That's the latest news for The Chaser Report. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. The biggest story in the country right now is Melbourne. There's been another outbreak. Hotel quarantine involved again at a bunch of new restrictions.

So let's head to the streets of Melbourne, where our good friend Sammy Shah, broadcaster, comedian and expert on lockdowns is getting ready to find out what's going to happen. Hi, Sammy. Hi, how are you doing? Thanks so much, Dom. It's very, very serious over here. We've had several cases yet again, and the city is, of course, as you understand, rejoicing in this moment. Finally, we have returned to being able to find excuses to not having to socialize with idiots and morons.

once again, have we share spaces with the general Hoy-Poloi in public areas. We can finally stay home, you know, put on our trackies, maybe dye our hair blonde once again or pink if you really want to go adventurous and generally go back to living the way we Melbourneians love to live. So what you're saying is you miss the lockdown days of last year? Charles, I got an invite yesterday for my friend's 53rd birthday party. No adult should celebrate their 53rd birthday. It's a useless year.

It's a nothing year. The only reason he had the audacity to even consider having a party, which then requires me having to find a presents to give this idiot on his birthday, is because there hadn't been a lockdown scare in a while. And he's realized, or he's forgotten rather, that life is too valuable to waste on stupid shit. But also, Sammy, it's a good reminder. But as a 53-year-old, you'd be going to a party full of unvaccinated boomers. I mean, that is a potentially deadly event.

I mean, yes. Look, we very much are thinning the herd here in Victoria. We've taken very seriously with regards to the vaccine not being something that we want to do. We want to, don't want to bother with. We find it's just better overall if we face the growing population problems in Victoria, particularly with regards to traffic in Melbourne, by just letting people die and mass. Have you made preparations? Have you stocked up on toilet paper yet, Sammy? Well, what I found is the trick is not to waste your time stocking up on toilet paper.

You let your neighbours stock up on toilet paper. And then on day three, when they grow a little bit complacent, you break in at night and take their toilet paper. It just works out better for everyone involved. There's less wastage I find. And it's just, you know, it's me just contributing as best I can. We've had reports this morning that in Brighton, and all the shops have run out of bidetis. So there's been a huge run on bidetis.

Yeah, and it's, you know, the Japanese toilets are being imported and mass at this point. We're really taking this to the next level when it comes to keeping our anus clean doing lockdown. If there's one thing, if there's one thing we've discovered, you know, is especially if you're in couples, after day three or day four of lockdown, boredom sets in, and you just start eating ass.

So you might as well, you know, make sure it's done that on a hygienic level. Now Sammy, masks are part of the rules Because we know Melbourne's men are the best dressed in the country What designer are you wearing? Yes, the problem is we grew complacent Like I said, we let go of even the quality masks We'd accumulate it So now I need to go and find myself a new designer mask

Preferably one made in a developing nation by a child That you know, when you put it on You can actually hear his screams of, you know, for desperate cries for freedom Now it's only a smallish outbreak at the moment a lot of the cases are related so far, but we know that in Melbourne, within a couple of weeks, this will have snowballed into a massive lockdown.

How will you cope if that happens again? I think the general plan so far is just outright panic. It's just completely pants shitting, you know, punching the walls, screaming into pillows, that kind of panic. And, you know, it's been a while since we've had

those feelings come out. A lot of Melbourneians have been repressing their emotions for the last few months. and so it's good. You know, we've all built up new relationships. We've built up new emotional connections with people to just have those cut off severed once again and to be able to just go back to screaming at your cats

and staring at a wall for several months on end. It's something that, you know, I really feel we need once again to come to terms with our own mortality. Well, if it does happen, I look forward to a whole new raft of Melbourne Comedy Festival shows about the lockdown next year. It's just we're just going to recycle the material from last year. It's just all grist for the meal now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tammy Shah, good luck. I hope things, well, I hope things get worse so we can keep talking to you about it. I've got nothing else going on, Charles. Thanks, mate. You're listening to The Chaser Report. Come in. Thanks for applying to work with us here at the LNP. Your application looked super promising. We just want to ask you a couple of questions if that's okay.

All right, okay, yep. So in the event that you're successful, you'll obviously receive benefits such as sick leave, annual leave. Oh, yeah, actually, I wanted to ask about that. Is it two weeks, four weeks? Oh, it's usually just when things get a bit rough. We'll just tell you to fuck off for a bit. It's as long as you like, really. Okay. What was that? Oh, sorry, we were just testing how well you deal with photo ops.

I mean, I'd be better if I knew they were happening. Oh, they're always happening, but you are right. Can we get a Sharky's jersey in here? Sharkies, I don't really... How do you feel about the environment? Yeah, well, you know, I think we could probably work on investing in renewable. Work? That's not usually how things go around here. No, but you ask me...

I've addressed that. No, but you ask the question. Yes, and I've addressed it. But you ask me the question. Have you got a history of sexual assault? God, no, no, not at all. I mean, if you do, we've got a guy for that. You've got a guy for the...

Jesus. You know, I don't really think I want this job. anymore. Well, that's fair enough. Fair enough. But before you go, we'll pay you $200,000 a year for the rest of your life. You get a company car, tax deductible flights, and basically all you have to do is ignore your personal ethics and show up.

Do I get to drink at work? Oh yeah, there's a bar downstairs. I'll see you on Monday. See you on Monday. The Chaser Report. Now with Extra Whispers. So Craig Roocastles just joined us for a strategy meeting. Like any podcast not run by Hamish and Andy, we need more listeners.

Cam Smith is the editor of the Chaser website. He's got some big ideas about. how to get these listeners. Hello, Cap. Yeah, so we were looking at the subscriber's numbers yesterday. And by that, he means he was actually looking at the two subscribers, like you're looking them in the eye. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's a very good way to put it, because we're currently outranked, I think, by about three economics podcasts, about four self-health podcasts, including the guy that was, last I heard was strapped to a bed in a Russian hospital and a coma because he was addicted to tranquilizers. That does sound like good content.

Yeah. And also, Charles. New Avenue. And also the Maddie John's podcast, which, nothing against the guy, but we've got a bit of a clip of his podcast here. Let's just have a quick listen. We're just cabby.

Yeah. Did it all with the public every day for long hours, sharing opinions, you're probably arguing your point. Was that for you a good grounding for talk about radio, you reckon? Oh, you know, a second. He sounded slightly drunk. I mean, Charles was already doing that for the podcast. How can we compete with him?

this cam yeah well i think i think we could all agree though that we should be able to do better than him like that's that should be the baseline so i was thinking how do we get our subscriber numbers up and i thought oh the obvious method is i don't know if you guys know this but a daily telegraph terrible subscriber numbers technically like 10 000 people buy their paper but the way they do it is they claim they have millions of subscribers because they say those 10 000 subscribers all have friends and all of them of course naturally also read the paper when they leave it on the table at work or over their shoulder on the bus. I was thinking, okay, we could use this.

This is a great idea. Are you going to ask me to leave this podcast on a train? Because I don't know how to do that. Well, even a small fraction of our listeners got on the phone to, like, Ray Hadley's show and started playing the podcast down the phone onto him. Technically, we've then got the largest podcast in Australia. So you want our listeners to do stuff to promote the podcast. Exactly that.

Yeah, yeah. So our challenge to the listeners is exactly that. to go out there and try and get the words, I think subscribe to the Chaser report. Right, yeah, yep. Out there in any form of media, any way they possibly can. Oh, so they don't have to play the podcast. They just have to say subscribe to the Chaser podcast.

Yeah, we don't want them listening. We don't want people hearing the podcast. That would demote it. This is, well, because I used to do this for Chaser Pranks in the past. I had to get up really early and call up Alan Jones and get on his show. And we once convinced him that we were going to try and tilt Australia to sort of the problem with water and that kind of thing. That's right.

It's very hard. It takes a bit of time. You're kind of got to sit on hold a bit and you've got to convince you. You've got to have something else that you say you're going to think. You've got to think about what do they want from the caller first? So what did you say when you got on algorithms? Something I think I was going, oh, yeah, I like hanging out in public toilets too or something like that.

I can't remember what it was at the time. But, yeah, so you got to have something to get on there initially. And then you've got to have a figure out how you're going to sneak in that particular part about what is it again? Subscribe to the Chaser report. I mean, we did this for our radio show a few years ago, and the concept was you had to get on to Ray Hadley's show with the phrase, and you had to use the phrase bum rainbows.

And we just thought it was impossible and that they'd shut it. But it turned out that the whole of his operation moved to taking messages and calling people back specifically because of us doing the bum rainbows thing, and we basically ruined their talk back for a couple of weeks. Oh, so that might be the case that they actually. actually asked to call you back. But again, then you just have to be ready to do that. You've got to give them your mobile number.

And what are they going to do with it later? They can't do anything with it. So you're fine. So that's all right. So that's not bad. But surely there are things that people can do other than getting on Ray Hadley. Surely we want people to do anything they can do to get subscribed to the Taster Report out there in the community.

We did test this concept ourselves this week. Can we grab Loughlin for a moment to tell us about his successes or failures? Do you want to just give us a very quick explanation? of your Catholic church thing. Lachlan. Lockland, the intern, what did you do? We thought that it would be funny to try and film a sketch

inside of St. Mary's Cathedral. Am I allowed to name the Cathedral? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We tried to actually do a bit inside of St. Mary's Cathedral where whilst inside of a confession box I rather loudly said, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,

for I have not subscribed to the Chaser report. Yes, okay, good, good. Good. How did that go? How did the priest respond to that? Yeah. How many Hail Marys did you get? He's like, well, it's lucky you didn't, hadn't already subscribed as a Chase report, because then there's more Hail Marys. No, see, unfortunately, what ended up happening was I got into the box and I heard no response. So I started to falsely assume that it was actually a just a prayer box.

So I thought, yep, brilliant, I can film the stunt and get this over and done with. get my lines out walk out of the box I see the guys filming and we sort of go okay cool we can head out now and then as we start walking past the pews

I have about two security guards and a priest come up to me and sort of go hey what's going on in there so it turns out that they're not completely confidential as we thought

so you violated the sect three of your own confession they asked me what were you doing in there and I just told him oh you know just didn't they force you didn't they take

footage from you and actually force you to delete the footage? Yeah, yeah, they did. They grabbed the phone and they... It was really heavy-handed. It was far more heavy-handed than, say, their approach to pedophile. I mean, I can't imagine, why would the priests be good at deleting footage? Some strange, Lachlan. And you being a young, good-looking man

in the box, you know, what happened here? So it was funny, as they grabbed me, I ended up having to speak with one of the higher fathers in the church. Yeah, right. And he said, do you have any idea how disreservation for what you've done. This is one of the most disrespectful things you can do in this building. And in my head, I thought, I mean, is that really true?

George Bell used to work here. I mean, I see what they said was then all you need to do, just move to another parish and you'll be fine. Two tips, firstly, never say anything in your head. Say it out loud. Secondly, never give me your fucking footage. That was what I said, yeah. He had to go to confessional to admit that he'd deleted

the footies. So the worst part is I'm not allowed to go back there and apologise because I'm banned from the building. Although, to be fair, you're now the safest young man in Australia. Anyway, so let's get Cam back now. Thanks, Loughlin. Thank you, Loughlin. Thank you, Loughlin.

It's a bit, Cam. People can go and do whatever they want. You've got to be legal. Or if it's not legal, it's on you. Because we didn't say be illegal. But it's basically the most high-profile thing to promote. the Chaser podcast, what did they win, Cam? Well, initially we thought money, but then someone very sensibly pointed out that would

probably bankrupt us. So we got on Gumtree and we're looking for prizes and we thought maybe a car would be a good prize and we found a really nice one actually. It looked amazing, but then we looked at the description and what did it say, Charles? It was a... Well, it didn't have any keys. Oh, that's good. No, no, that's good that they're safer.

And also lower fuel consumption. is a good car. Suggest that they also don't have the deeds to the car, don't you think? The prize may be that you get to steal the car. Let's just say it's a really hot car. Yeah, yeah, this is great. I like this. Let's, for legal purposes, be quite vague about what the prize is.

And there is a way of submitting what you've done to the Chaser website, is there not? Yeah, you can just go into the menu on the Chaser website and there will be something there if you want to submit it, or you can put it on social media with the hashtag Chaser Report, I guess. Or you can just Google Charles. I'm pretty sure his phone number is the top result. Just give me a call. 0419-282-188. It's this real number.

The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Well, Charles, it's almost time to go. But before we do, I just want to take a moment to just say how bad I feel for everyone in Melbourne. It's just awful that they're in this situation again. Although it does answer the question for once and for all, which city is better. Sydney or Melbourne. That is a very good point. I think we can all agree.

Sydney wins. We are properly on Apple Podcasts now, so please go there and leave us a five-star untrue review so that our contract gets renewed and the bosses are happy. Don't do that. Why? Because then we'll have to have our contract renewed. The whole reason they want you to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast

is because then it'll keep going. But if we do that, we have to keep getting up at 4 a.m. to do this bloody podcast. Oh, yeah, don't leave us a five-star review. I already go home and see my child. There's more news at chaser.com today. You can follow us on all the socials.

Our gear is from road microphones, and we're part of the ACAST to create a network. Catch you tomorrow at 4 a.m. Great. See ya.