The Chaser Report - Poor Man's Kyle & Jackie O | Mark Humphries

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Mark Humphries joins Charles and Dom for the latest insider celebrity gossip. Mark and Charles spill the tea on the celebs they've both played tennis against and hold nothing back. Meanwhile rumours of Mark's poor serve are explained by Humphries himself. Plus the team investigates the longest interview ever recorded. 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 Chaser Report. It is Tuesday the 9th of March, Tom Knight and Charles Firth, back with you, along with drum roll plays, Mr Mark Humphreys, is back on the pod. Hello. Hello. How do you do? And I wrote a press release, Mark, this morning, for our upcoming War on 2022 live show tour.

And I sent it through to James, who's also performing at James Schleffel from the shovel. and he went, oh, this press release is great, except you've left Mark Humphreys out of it. Or is that some sort of clever trick? Well, we've worked out that Mark is actually decreasing ticket sales, but we contractually obliged to use him. Yeah. So we won't tell the audience.

And then just treat my sections as an extended walk on. Yeah, and just apologize each time. Now, unfortunately, Mark Humphrey, now joins us. Yeah, great. The Warren 2222 apology to her. It's because Gabby Bolt is joining us this year. Oh, is she?

Yes. So the whole press release is about how great she is. Yes. The number of awards she's won this year for the best newcomer and best this and best that takes up an entire press release. I bet. There's no room for you. No, exactly.

I need to up my game. Can I mention some tennis trophies I want as a child? That's really all I've got. You'd be good at tennis, you're tall. Well, no. No, we've got a story about it. Look, no, here we go. I am good at tennis.

No. Just a second, let's just throw out of the ads. Some people pay not to get at chaser.com.com. You slash podcast. And some of those people get them anyway, but we're still working on that. Trust us. Anyway, here they are. The Chaser Report.

News you know you can't trust. All right, that's it. Now, tennis and Mark, oh, that's right. The two of you played tennis was. celebrities. You're so connected and favours. I'm just going to sit back and be impressed by your, by your connections. Yes.

So Charles and I occasionally play with, well, we won't say his name, but it's a P. Fitzsimons or a Peter F. A random, one-time band-any wearing pirate of the band. And just because this will make the anecdote sort of easier to understand. Well, you've got to understand about P. Fitzsimon's, sorry, the P. Fitzsimon's is that he is an absolute art. asshole, right? So go on,

on the tennis court, you're mad. You mean, like off the tennis court, lovely, a respected journalist beloved by, you know,

Sydney size, but on the court, yeah. Charles is, because I've played tip footy with him. Oh, right.

And many years ago with him and Andrew Denton. Is he an asshole? He was a bit competitive for a man who weighed as much as two Andrew Dentons

put together. Yeah. Because you used to go into the locker room, like the gym, school gym. Yeah. He's one of those

Jocks. We used to have at our school, Jocks. He would have put you in like a rubbish bin. Horrible people who... Because he's huge. I mean, he's a hulking beast of a man. He is a big man. Intellectually, but also physically.

Yes. Charles is trying to get out of the regular rotation with this appearance. But, so Peter, yes, well, he has been with Peter, and I am a good tennis player. I am a good tennis player. I captained my school. Just wait, wait, wait. Don't let evidence that you've witnessed. So I, but I, you know, I captained my team in, I, I,

school team. Really? All right, Charles. Where did you go to? The physically challenged school for the bad at tennis? Yes, I love watching you work out. How to make that joke without canceling yourself. Actually, watching his braid churn there was quite interesting.

Yeah, even physically challenged was a little bit problematic. Yeah, okay. That's it. So, but then, anyway, I was about 16. I dislocated my knee and that ended my promising. So your problem is your knee, is it? It's a bad knee. Exactly.

That explains my terrible surf. So, anyway, but as it happens, since playing on Peter's court. Because he has his own court, I mean, it's important to notice. Please, I mean, come on. They're not meeting at a council court with Peter Fitzsimons. They're in, the mansion has a tennis court, I believe. Because the thing is, he's never been invited. He's married to Lisa Wilkinson, right.

So they're both fabulously successful people. They are. So their grounds, their mansion has got grounds. Yes, they've got ground. They've got tennis courts, they've got everything. That's it. Well, we were playing on centre court. And if you're listening, you know, thinking what a wank this is,

I'm in your show. I'm here as the ordinary listener. Right? Okay, this isn't me. This is Charles and Mark. It's just, you know, it's just, you know, it's just. You go over to the Fitzsimons Wilkinson Manor. I think this is very relatable.

You play tennis on centre court, yeah, and. I get so nervous. Peter, because of Peter's personality. Mm. um you know personality because if you let him down are you his doubles partner? Well that's like he often puts me as his partner and so I don't want to let him down

and he thought because you were the tallest yeah exactly that you'd because Peter's the kind of guy who you'd have four people and he'd go well I'm the best so I'm going to put the second best in my team that's that's how he would approach I imagine just knowing fits a little bit not on mansion visiting terms but I've

you know I've met him but this like but when I have to when it's my turn to serve and this is a very Mark Humphrey's reference here but I become like Hyacinth Bucket's neighbor Elizabeth whenever Hyacinth comes around and she can't, she can't control holding the cup of coffee, I don't know, a cup of tea, and she's got the, you know what I'm talking about? I think it's pronounced it, but yeah, sure, but keeping up appearances for all the young Chaser fans. Anyway, and so I get very nervous with the serve, and I just, I can't do it.

I've just lost my yips. Yeah, I've lost my service game. You get the Fitz Yips. Yeah, that's right. At the Fitzhyman's residence, I lose. And actually, I mean, this is. Well, the last time. we played, didn't he get you to do it under-ar?

Well, he's trying to come up with other strategies for me. But it's just like, the problem is it's just who's physically on the court with me. Okay, so there's the three of you. But I've heard a story about who the fourth person is. And I would think that the fourth person, as I understand it, would even things up a bit by not being dissimilar in a sporting context to Peter Fitzsimons. No, it's Craig. Craig is one of the most competitive people I've ever seen on a sporting.

Surely the two of them cancel each other out there. There was Craig Mellowed. Oh, no, he's good. No, you're right. I remember playing tennis with Craig and his brother and being similar. I mean, whichever one I was partnered with regularly swore at me if I ate the ball into the net. The thing about Craig's brother is he grew up with Craig.

Yeah, well, exactly. And Craig, especially used to be an absolute asshole on the level of a sort of Peter Fitzsimons thing, right? So the two of you are the more, I can't believe I'm saying this, to the more normal and humble members of the quartet. No, but the thing that I used to do to Garth, which is Craig's brother, is I used to pretend that I was, you know, like an asshole.

You used to channel that. I would channel Craig, and I'd actually say, oh, you know, that was good, sir, but it wasn't quite as good as Craig, Craig, right? Because I knew he had a thing about his brother. And his game would crumble Mark Humphrey's style. And I, even though he was vastly superior at tennis to me, I would always win.

Does Mark need to then channel a bit of fits? Do you need to maybe put the bandana on, metaphorically speaking? I want to see you be an asshole. That's probably it. Yeah. But what made me laugh was that there was one day where he messaged me and said, oh, you know, tennis is afternoon, can you make it? And I either couldn't or wouldn't because of my most recent experience of service game.

And I was so glad that I didn't because when I later saw a photo of who I would have been playing against, It was Todd Woodbridge. Like, you know, what is this? But also it says something about Fitz, the idea of just like, I can play against Todd Woodbridge. The annoying thing is he probably could. Because he probably would have, like, within seconds of Woodbridge getting up, this is the man who's won many, many grand slams for the younger listeners, right?

He's one of the best doubles players of all time. With Fitz, I presume if 30 seconds later, he'd just be, you know, foot faulting every service. I think that's right. Fitz has an extraordinary serve. Like when he's concentrating, it's sort of unplayable. It's nasty, yeah, that's it. He's won 16 grand slams.

And Fitz is like, yeah, okay, you can cut. The Prime Minister has played there. I haven't played against him. How has this not been televised? Yeah, I know, exactly. I would have thought that'd be... This is like the legend circuit all in Mossman. The Chaser Report.

Now with Extra Whispers. I just feel that there comes a certain level of fame where you just lose awareness of how these kinds of stories come over. I'm not saying you guys are at that point. I'm just saying it's worth bearing it. You think this is like a poor man's Kyle and Jackie O. You know, like descriptions of tennis with the stars. But as I was saying to Steve Liebman,

should we make this the paying episode? I don't know. I don't know if we should release this publicly into the wild. Right, so, okay, so what's the point of the story? Do you need a little bit of... Well, I actually, this is embarrassing, but I'll learn up to it. It was so affected by the kind of the torment of that experience that there was one game where I actually went and I had a tennis lesson

before I went to Fitz's house. I actually went and I said to the tennis coach, I just wanted to do my serve. Can you just, can we just work on my serve for an hour? So I paid $100 or whatever it was before. before going to Fitzhitz's house, just so I was psychologically prepared. And did it help? A little bit.

Not hugely. What you needed is a sports psychologist. Yeah. It's not about your serve. It's about the feelings I have about Peter Fitzs. What you said to do is get some cutouts of Peter Fitzsimons and place them in like in the corners of the service box and just practice hitting again and again knocking them over. But also. With a fast serve.

Yeah. But also like I think you need to get some cardboard. cutouts and place them around your house. It's sort of exposure therapy. So you stop being so... Well, you know what else you could do that would actually help? If you go to any city other than Sydney in the world, where Peter Fitzsimars is not really that big of a deal.

With all due respect to the man, like in Melbourne, like he's probably the Eddie McGuire, the closest thing we got to Eddie McGuire in Sydney, but in Melbourne, they would barely know who he was. He's a former wallaby, right? Sure. He wouldn't be recognised in the streets, in Chapel Street. Okay, all right.

Well, I'll go into hiding for a while in Melbourne. Go and play him in a court in Melbourne. Things might be a bit different. That's your town. People know Mark Humphries in Melbourne. Sure. Please. So, yeah, so anyway, that's my Peter Fitzsimund's story.

And, yeah, he puts the fear of God into me. And the thing is now, you know, and he'll tell people now, I was at a bastille. This is again out of touch. I was at a Bastille Day event with Peter Fitzsimis. And he introduces me to people now. This is Mark Humphrey's a terrible service game. But isn't Peter likely to become the first president of Australia? Because that's why he's part of the head of the Australian Republican movement.

Is that why we don't have a republic yet? He's terrified. Everyone else in the team would be having problems with their work. Wouldn't they be traumatized? Should we get him on the phone? Yes, I think let's do that. I think he's probably writing seven books at the moment, though. He's very busy.

So he's got a deadline of 30,000 words today, but plus a daily column. I mean, I don't know. How does he do it? I don't know. Well, there were the books I know, a team of researchers. Oh, true. Talks about it. It's very impressive.

Yeah. But the thing I love about Benefit Simon, the thing that I enjoy most of all, this happened before I started working at the radio station in the ABC in Sydney, is it that year before, he and Richard Glover set the world record for the longest interview. And it went for 24 hours, 24 straight hours in a box in the foyer at the ABBA. and I just think what a perfect choice of subject. Glover only asked two questions. Yeah, that's right.

You've basically got an hour per book and then probably another 10 hours on the wallabies or whatever. But he wouldn't have needed to say anything. If you did that today, probably three hours of it would be about your service. Is that available as a podcast? That's a very good question.

I should request that, shouldn't I? That's Australia's Frost Nixon, isn't it? It's like this iconic meeting of minds. Speaking of which, that was actually brought up at the, I was at, there was a celebration for the ABC's 90th, there was another celebration of the ABC's 90th anniversary. There's been a few. Yeah, that's right.

And it was a sort of a dinner hosted by Ida Butros and the prime minister was in attendance, but that was mentioned as one of, I think it might have even been in Albanese's speech for the reference to, you know, one of the iconic moments of the ABC. I read a transcript and it reminded me that this incredibly self-indulgent thing had happened to three or our interview. Is it that much of an achievement to interview someone for 24 hours?

Look, it seemed like it then. Do you know why? Why? Because that was before podcasts. Right. Whereas now, I mean, every Joe Rogan is three hours long. Joe Rogan could easily do 24 hours. But also, like, every chaser report podcast, I know we only go for about 20 minutes,

but it feels like 24 hours. Should we break the record? Yeah, I think we should. Let's see what the record is now. Mark, you've got the next 24 hours for. I think so clearly. I just spent 24 hours on a Sydney train just trying to get in here. Signal failure at Millston's point.

Taramara to Central took me two hours. I'm not happy about it. Anyway, yeah, 24-hour, okay, Chase the Broadcast, let's do it. Okay, well, so go on. What books have you read recently, Mark? Well, we're going to talk about the Midwinter Bowl? Oh, yeah, okay. Well, should we do that?

How many minutes have we got here, John? So just a quick update, the glove of Fitzsimons record has been broken by Barnabakta Niroola and Ung Finja Sherpa in Nepal. In Nepal, 25 hours and 26 minutes is all that they managed. So not much longer. But they did it at altitude. That's true. They did it at altitude.

So we've been going for 15 minutes. So I guess it's 23 hours, 45 minutes to go. Sure. But what a 15 minutes, Simon. Can you imagine what the rest of it would be? Do we have to do it today? Because we haven't prepped. No, we also need, don't we need to write like 10 books each

for you to achieve the record? That's right. Aggies from Road. We're part of the Acast. Created our work, we'll catch you next time. This has been a short one. See ya. Ironically, even that we talked about the longest interview in history.

Goodbye.