The Chaser Report - QANTAS Tried to Lose Our Bags

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Charles has his QANTARSE merchandise (available at https://chasershop.com/) lost in the most ironic way. 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. Dom Knight and Charles Firth back on the podcast. Charles, welcome back after all. You're touring and gallivading around the country with the war on 2022. Is it good? It's very good.

chaser.com.com.com.u slash live, if you want to buy tickets. Is Gabby Bolt still in it? Gabby Bolt. So this is the worst thing about the tour, right? Is you go along, you do all, like, James and I are out on stage. Like, I'd say 70% of the time, right? Mark comes in and, of course, everyone loves him, right? Yeah, I mean, but you knew that coming in.

Isn't that why you get him? Yeah, yeah. And then Gabby comes out. She got like four or five songs in it, right? So she's actually quite present in the thing. And she also is much better at stagecraft than James will meet. Like, she's been doing it for years. And so she's got this whole personality thing going as well.

And then she comes out, sings these amazingly good songs. And then at the end, right, Mark does all the sort of, please say, you know, put your hands together for Charles Firth, James Devil, Mark, Humphys. And then Gabby comes, is the last one. Gabby Bolt, right. And the whole audience just doubles their, every night. We've had four nights. It doubles their applause. And he goes, yay, Gabby.

Like, she's just a crowd favorite. She's only been there for five. fucking seconds. What the fuck? Charles, this is your role. We've been doing this for seven years. You and James, your role is like the sort of the stodge. Yes. Mark brings a celebrity. Yeah. And Gabby brings a talent.

I mean, this is like when Andrew Hanson joined the chaser. Yes. Everybody knew. We knew when he came in the door that he was better than us at performing. And then music, you know that in comedy, anything set to music is automatically six times as funny. I don't know why that is. It just is. I mean, this is Tim Minchin.

This is Eddie perfect. The only way that she could get more laughs is if at the same time as doing music, it was also, you know, you know what the other thing is. If it was improvised, if it was improvised or set to music, it is automatically six times funny. See, I disagree. I think. To a crowd.

A crowd will applaud ten times hard. Yes, you're right. You just can't do it, Charles. Well, that's why her crowd work, because she does improvise. Like, she goes into the crowd and she, you know, has chats to people all off the cuff. Yeah, but you couldn't get more than 10 minutes of her material. We couldn't afford it. So you're there for the rest of the show.

Anyway, so the point is. That your support, the support act. What we, what I want to do for this, I was going to talk about my business acumen again. But I think we should, first of all, brainstorm some ideas of how to subtly undermine Gabby. so that she doesn't because she's clearly going to succeed like how do we just bring her down a notch and sort of make her feel bad

I mean she's already a young woman from a regional area and even despite that she is still destroying you in a city middle age white man I mean it's impossible let's just acknowledge that from the office like he says maybe we should

subtly go oh so we come off stage especially if we get everyone to Mark won't play ball. He's a generous, kind of colleagues. You decided to do that tonight, did you? Oh, that was the choice. You know, though, is that the way to sort of...

After someone's got twice as much applaud as you? That sounds challenging. I think the only thing you can do is just acknowledge the situation that you're in. Yes. Oh, right in her coattails. Yes, clearly next year you've got to book her in already. Yes. For, it's not the war in 2023.

It's Gabby Bolt. The Gabby Bolt with... Supported by... Supported by... Furth Schleffel and Humphreys or whoever. It doesn't really matter who it is. It could be me. It doesn't even matter.

The Gabby Bolt Show. The Gabby Bolt Show. Geby Bolts Show. Featuring... War on 2023. Yeah. And you just have to basically do a Colonel Tom Parker. You've just got to get her on a deal. Yes.

She can't get out of forever. We should have signed her up for 20 years. I mean, you had her in as an intern. You were exploiting her already. Why didn't I think of that? You could have done a Scientology thing and signed a billion-year contract. That's what they do for all your future lives as well. But it's probably too late.

I mean, she's already seen that in these giant venues that you're playing, probably the biggest venues she's done. Yeah, no, they are. She's getting, so she's going, why would I need Charles in future? Fuck. Okay. You just, this is the same thing you did with Mark Humphries.

You keep doing this. This is the same. And James Schleffel. But also, this is my business acumen. This is, this actually goes to what I wanted to talk about, which is, I think I'm not a very good businessman at heart. No. I just have this spidey sense.

You're not. I mean, having started multiple businesses with you over the years. No, but you're very good at the idea. You're very good at the idea in the enthusiasm and you're a founder. Charles, Lee, what you need to do is just embrace what it is. Someone was telling me about this the other night. The thing about founders is that they're absolutely terrible at detail. Yes, that's me.

Look at Mark Zuckerberg. He's had this great idea for Facebook, stolen from other people. But he built it and he has absolutely no idea what to do and it's a total disaster. Yes. And his big idea is a virtual world, which everyone hates and there aren't any legs. But the idea, the initial idea was good. You're a good founder. It's just that you can't keep it going for longer than about six months.

And I do like being legless. So I share that in common with Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, the history of the chaser, the sad thing is that you actually did, you tried to do this, right? So you started the chaser, you got us all involved. Yes. It started to go well. Yes. You got a bit sick of the rest of us.

I got bored, yeah. I tried to do your own other thing. You tried to set up several other businesses. I won't even, I won't embarrass you by going into the details here. Let's just say that the choices of A, what to start and B, who to start it with weren't always wise. No, exactly. And then at one point you said, I'm just going to do high-level strategy now. I'm going to go do this for 80% of my time.

And that's just you being a founder. Okay. That's the nice way to put it. Okay. We had Fred Shabester and he's the same. He's a founder. Okay. So let me tell you about my.

my latest business, and I think I might have mentioned it once or twice on the podcast. Oh, not the avocados, please. It's the avocados. Oh, God. But, okay, for every, for every, for every, I always say, for every failure, you have a success. Well, but Charles, in your life, that's a sort of founder's law. But in your life, the successes are people who go on to surpass you. Gabby's, Gabby and Mark Hubbard's.

You're amazingly good at finding talent. It's just that then they surpass you. But, to my credit, I have succeeded wildly in merch. Right. Really? Yes. So what happened is I, at the same time I ordered avocados, which arrived, Monsagorah, right? Yep.

And we've sold. And guess how many we've sold? Yeah, if you haven't heard this before, there's a giant inflatable avocados with a, like, a stone that comes out the middle. It's like a floating pool toy. Yes. How many of you sold? Five. And that is despite, actually, Cam was very funny

Because I put out a video And I put quite a lot of effort And quite a lot of money behind this ad on Facebook Just try and sell them And he said, I have never seen the product sell that bad Have you thought about selling them at the live shows? Yeah, no, and we did, we've sold three at the live shows So basically 60% of our sales

Are from people like that. So you're making less than the cost. Cost of transporting this, right, avocado. Shut up. Oh, my God. Anyway, point is, first thing you should know, if you go to chastashop.com, you'll notice that the price has been slashed. All right.

Right. But, and slashed, I would argue, not argue, I would, as Cam keeps pointing out, slash to below cost price, we're losing money on these now. Anyway. I'm at chaser shop.com. Yeah. And, wow, okay, so $59 down to $39. Yeah, there you go. Look, what a bargain.

Okay, anyway, no. Did you really think you get 60 dollars? Shut up, shut up. 60 dollars in this economy. Shut up. It's a really huge avocado. It's like the same size as you. No, it's bigger than you.

We don't even take after pay. Shut up. No, after pay is unsound, isn't it? But so is this. Oh, yeah, maybe, maybe if we... You need Chaser Pay where you can pay it over a hundred years. The Chaser Report.

Now with extra whispers. Anyway, point is, I've got this new product. The thing is, we made these bags, these backpacks, course. And with the Quantarce logo, you know, Quantarce logo, right? And it's, these are $25. They're, yeah, because they're really, they're cheap shit from China, right? And they're good backpacks. Have you seen one?

It looks impressive. $25 is, I mean, that's a reasonable price for a novelty product. Yes, yes. And they have, so it's the Quantas logo and then there's a little. label on it which says all my other bags got lost by the airline, right? Yes. And so the whole idea is that it's a carry-on backpack. And I've been using mine for the last few days.

They're fantastic, right? They're perfect size for grocery shopping. And you find a virgin, they're probably, they love it. Yeah, they love it. Every, like, it's so good. And also, the good thing is that it is carry-on size. You don't have to check it in. You won't be lost, right?

Point is, we put them on sale. We just quietly put them on sale on, like, Friday or something like that. They just immediately sold out. Like, we are literally, there's only about 20 left. That is a total triumph, right? We're basically about to run out of them, right? Amazing. But the funny thing is, I ordered them at the same time as the avocado.

Do you know why we only just put them on sale just like last weekend? Did they not come or did you just not get around to it? It was the most ironic piece of merchandise. I've ever happened, which is it got lost in the mail, these Qantas things. We shipped them out from China. And so last Friday I was going, where the fuck are they, right? I ring the distributor, I ring the person in China. And they go, oh, we've done the tracking.

And then we ring it, Australia Post. And they go, oh, no, they're on their way back to China. Right. We thought that it was all over. Like, they'd literally been lost, you know, Qantas style in the mail. It's a hilarious, sorry. Your thing that says, I was lost in transit. Yes, was lost in transit.

But Australia Post, because what had happened is the Chinese distributor had put the address label as Lane Cove. That was the only thing, right? Which, by the way, is a suburb. It's quite a live suburb. It's a very large suburb of Sydney. So it's Charles Firth, Lane Cove, right? Which is where our warehouse is.

And so, unsurprisingly, Australia Post had sort of got this box and gone, all of these boxes and gone, we don't know where. Don't they know who you are? And then it'd been, it's been a couple of weeks just, rocketing around Australia Post, literally going to every warehouse in Sydney or the sorting facilities, going, what are we going to do with it? That's so funny. It then ended up back at the distributors, like the Chinese distributors warehouse, right?

Which is, I have never been to Australia. So I then ran out there at the end of last week to go and grab them, right? And there was literally, so you enter this warehouse, it's a massive warehouse. It's like the size of, I don't know, what an Amazon warehouse would be. Or a Quanta's hangar for one of the ground of flights without maintaining properly. And there are, there's no shelves. It's just boxes on the ground, like for, you know, hundreds of metres, right?

And they're all just sort of, and I'd say, oh, this is my tracking number. It's like a 35 digit tracking number, like 3, 4, RP, 1, 2, 8, 9, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said to the guy, I need, I've got three boxes to pick up of this tracking number, and he goes, okay. And then he just takes me. And he just finds the boxes. strewn, like literally halfway into the wares. He just goes, that's them.

He's going, what is happening? Is rain man running these wares? Like, how does he... Anyway, point is, we got them. And they're now sold out. Did you hire this guy? And they almost cover the cost of the avocado. Did you hire this guy to come and run your distribution?

Sure. No, but I think he was the guy who labeled Lane Cove. Maybe he just knew, like he knows where. in Lane Cove to go, like if he gave it to him and it was labelled Lane Cove, he would, uh, he'd be able to deliver it. Charles, it's a very simple solution to this, right? Okay. This is, this is the thing.

I just want to cut through all that we've said. Yeah. The obvious thing to do, yes. Is that instead of you thinking up the merchandise, yes. Mark Humphreys and Gabby Bolt should be thinking up the manager. You just need to step back. Yes, yes, yes.

Let the people who are successes, you just sold a t-shirt with Mark Humphrey's face on it. Yes. Or Gabby Bolt. Or just a t-shirt saying I watched Gabby Bolt before she was famous. Yes. What a great idea! And that would really sell. Probably you'd have to give her much of the percentage, but it's still be worth it.

You just need to write on there, Kate, co-tails now. What we do, don't tell Gabby. What we'll do is we'll get the name rights to Gabby. Yes, just get Gabby Bolt name right. Yeah. And then we sell the fucking merch that's it. I mean, who owns Gabbybolt.com? Well, we do now.

I mean, you do seem like a kind of exploitative sexist pig, but you'll be a very rich exploitative sexist pig. Join the pantheon of founders. You know what all the founders are doing. They're all spending hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to live forever. That's a really interesting place to take this conversation. The metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse, is based on the idea that by the time he dies, he wants to be able to upload his brain or download his brain, no, upload his brain into the

metaverse and he will need friends there. And that's why he's building out the metaverse so that it's just not him. So we all have to put up with this because he has this stupid idea that a digital version of himself is in some way going to in any way meaningfully survive beyond this life. Yes. But haven't you seen the Netflix series upload? No. Yeah, which explores these moral issues, you know.

Half-hour comedic sitcom format. Charles, for fuck's sake, the next time you come across some, Gabby Bolt, just fucking buy the right to upload it to the met of us! Our Gears and Road were part of the A-Cast Credit Network, and we now own the virtual life rights to Gabby Bolt. Go and see The War on 2022. You've also put up with Charles and James for 70% of the show, but there are good people in it too.

Fuck you. I'm sure it's good. Like, if you average it all out. It's good. Gabby's very good. Yeah, she's. Thank you.