The Chaser Report - Sami Shah Fixes the Melbourne Cup

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

After watching the Melbourne Cup, Sami Shah has a few ideas on some changes he’d like to implement to the sport of racing - and maybe all other sports too! Meanwhile Zander is embarking on an odyssey around the Sydney Film Festival. Plus Charles has concerns about a police officer moving into his street. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by Hand Me Down Furniture. What is that stain? Where did it come from and just how much do you insist it's not piss? Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Wednesday, the 3rd of November 2021, Charles Firth, Gabby Bolt and Dom Knight here on a day when history was made in Glasgow at the climate conference, Charles and Gabby. I'm a momentous thing. What happened? What happened? All the world leaders in attendance decided that they didn't like Scott Morrison, every single one of them.

It was a unanimous consensus of the sort that we've never seen in the area of climate or of hating an Australian Prime Minister. Yes. Vindication. It's vindication for the Australian way, isn't it? The Australian way is to be a dick and be disliked. What is the, I mean, diplomatically releasing private text messages between you and another head of state? Is that considered good form? Like, because it didn't, I mean,

because diplomacy goes back to Genghis Khan, right, doesn't it? Well, Genghis didn't have access to SMS records. And the whole thing about Genghis was that he treated, you know, envoys from other tribes and other peoples with great respect. But if they, in any way, broke his diplomatic protocols that he'd set up for sort of dealing with things, he would just murder them. He would just murder the diplomats. And it meant that everyone very quickly gained a lot of respect for the rules of diplomacy, right?

And I'm just wondering, like, would Genghis Khan in this circumstance, you know, like if, say, Morrison had leaked Genghis Khan's text messages, wouldn't Genghis Khan have just murdered Scott Morrison? Well, I think if France was in any way a global power like they think they are, they'd been in big trouble. But, like, clearly what happened here is that the UK, the US and Australia has been, oh, fuck France. But the thing is, like, McCron is, you know, swanning around, like, he's all stylish and French and good looking and the big Craig-like and everything. But, you know, I think he should, I think he should check himself. I think he should just watch himself because you remember that Australia will be a nuclear power in about 40 years time when we get those subs. Well, Macron put it quite well. He was like, we swapped an actual order that was actually building some submarines for you

for a review into a potential of good luck. I did like the suggestion that essentially two months ago, Morrison realised that both Biden and Boris Johnson were going to just shit on him at this climate conference. And he went, how do I get out of this? And he paid the price, which was breaking relations with France and paying $90 billion for a set of submarines that doesn't even exist. And amazingly, the world leaders in Glasgow managed to see through his pitch,

which was, technology will fix it, and that's the Australian way. Because when in the past has technology ever saved anything from being shit in Australia, even our NBN? What about an Australian way to having a functional broadband network? No, they've fucked that up. But you know that Malcolm Turnbull has gone over to COP 26. Yeah. And I think that he's trying to sell everyone on the idea of, you know,

getting rid of their fibre optic network, installing some copper. He's also there to try and invest in green hydrogen, but the real reason is there is to watch Scott Morrison being humiliated on the world stage. Yeah, you would want front tickets, especially if you were Malcolm Turnbull. Yeah, and Malcolm, we're looking forward to having you on the podcast to tell us exactly what it was like. Watching Morrison flounder. I just love that Scott Morrison got up there and he was like, oh, scientists will have to solve this problem.

not politicians. And the funniest thing about that is that scientists have solved the problem. It's just you're just not listening to them. We don't want to listen to the climate scientists. We want to listen to the people who have hypothetical technology that doesn't exist yet. For like 20 years, scientists have been like, hey, hey, it's 1999, letting you know, just found out the earth is heating up. I don't know what you might want to do about that, but you guys are the ones with the money. And everybody in politics went, ah, it'll be right.

And we've just done that for 30 years. But on the bright side yesterday in Glasgow, an amazing thing happened. The leaders that represented land just honed over 85% of the world's forest. They've committed to reversing deforestation by 2030. And I think they did that just because Scott Morrison didn't want them to. So Scott Morrison's saving the planet. So this is great. If we can just really, like if he could state, oh, we don't want net zero by 2030,

then suddenly the whole world will be on board. If not out of dire need, then out of spite. On today's show, Sammy Shah is going to talk us through yesterday's Melbourne Cup Festival of Horse Death. What a great Melbourne Cup it was, too, wasn't it? It's not as though we're recording this before it's happened. We definitely know the result, which was insert later in record. Also, Xander, one of the interns, is, well, he's bought tickets to the Sydney Film Festival

or something. That's nice. He's going to, like, 30-odd movies, so I'm not quite sure how his employment's going to go next two weeks. Anyway, it's all coming up right after we have. to Rebecca Dana-Muno in the Chaser Newsroom in just a moment. Hunters across Australia are in shock after a surprising turn of events at the Melbourne Cup. The bookie's favourite, Master of Wine,

was the last to get euthanised, which means anyone who bet on explosive jack to die first received a 43-1 payout. In response to being called a liar by Emmanuel Macron, Scott Morrison has decided to put prove his trustworthiness by leaking private text messages to the media. The PM hoped the text messages that vaguely show how Macron was worried that Morrison might back out of the agreement just before he backed out of the agreement would prove his

point that he isn't a liar. Elon Musk has announced a challenge to the UN. The tech billionaire will offer $8 billion to the UN on the grounds that they can provide a costed transparent plan on exactly how. the money would solve world hunger. If the UN fails to provide an adequate plan, the Tesla CEO will continue selling luxury autonomous vehicles to end world hunger. That's the latest headlines from The Chaser Newsroom. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno. This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by hand-me-down furniture.

Because yeah, that cheap bedside table that you've chaotically painted millennial pink and put resin on totally looks expensive. Good job on the upcycling. Well, we recorded this conversation yesterday moments after the race that stopped the nation, Stop the Nation, the Melbourne Cup, and Sammy Shara is on the line from Melbourne to tell us all about the big race. Hello, Sammy. Oh, it's been so exciting, John. I cannot believe so.

Liberal MP, Tim Smith is a finalist. He would have been the winner, of course, but as you know, he hurt himself along the way. He got drunk and fell off the track, and so Matthew Guy had to shoot him at the back of the head. and now it looks like the winning horse is Scott Morrison Stex that's the one that's come out in front of everyone else has really been a close neck and neck kind of race just remarkable and as always

every Melbourne Cup amazing beautiful sights you know like the very rich assholes getting drunk in stupid dresses the very rich assholes getting drunk and throwing up in bins while wearing hats with dumb shit on them and the very rich assholes who work for you know Channel 10 and Channel 9

and all the other TV show channels who have done nothing in their lives except be reality TV contestants, all kind of schmoozing. Hopefully it will end the way all Melbourne Cups have where everyone who ever attended will then be put down like the dumb fox that they are. I'm very excited for this.

I, of course, as you know, as a fan of horse sausages, look forward to the Melbourne Cup every year. So who was your money on, Sammy? My money was on myself, actually. I always, I say, never bet against yourself. and I took part, I raced along with all the other horses. I put a small man on my back and he whipped my bottom. We did in the privacy of my own home,

the way I like to fulfil all my fetishes, but still, I feel like I came out ahead. Rain, rains or no rain? Wait, are you talking about the weather? Are we talking about like the rains around my mouth with the thing? Oh, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, are you BDS-Ming without rains? Why, what is even the point of this entire exercise?

Absolutely. You shouldn't kink shame, Well, we watched the race in the office in the now traditional 2021 way of watching the Melbourne Cup, which is that we only figured out where it was streaming nowadays and how to connect to it after it had finished. Yes, we were literally looking for it. I was trying to re-download the Channel 7 Sport Air. And then realised that he'd gone to Channel 9.

Oh, really? It used to be on Channel 7, right downside 9. And then Dom went, oh, it's over. Yeah, I found the page, and it had the incredibly badly spelled horse that had won. But I don't know, I'm not as into it. these days since it became basically an annual horse murdering contest. Have we become too woke

Sammy? I mean look here's the thing. I will speak as someone who, and this might not be known about me, acted in probably the only movie made about horse racing since the movie Black Beauty came out. Ride like a girl, if you have seen that film,

which is about Michelle Payne, a woman who wanted to also ride horses because why shouldn't all genders and sexes be allowed to write a poor beast to its death I was actually a played a surgeon in that so some might assume that I am pro horse racing but actually

I'm just pro people falling down and getting hurt and I think hoping one of the jockeys will be crushed under the way to the horse but that is yet to happen so look here's what I figure I figure horse racing the Melbourne Cup should have the exact same rules as squid game the same way I think

the bachelorette should have the same rules as Squid game is if you lose, you get shot in front of everyone else. And until that happens, I will keep promoting this, hoping that it'll finally change, you know, the rules will change to fulfill my dreams, which is just seeing people shot to death on live television. I feel like that's really just where society needs to go at this point. I think, Sammy, you were there for one of my first ever comedy songs on Dan Illich's podcast, A Rational Fear, where my theory, which I still hold a year later, that we should just race

the drunk spectators. I don't understand why we're racing horses. at all. Stick all the drunk people in the pens and then tell them where to go. That'd be hilarious. Stick around at the Melbourne Cup long enough. And because I was briefly working for the ABC until they corrected that mistake, I had to cover the Melbourne Cup for the ABC a few times. You stick around when at closing time, you know, when everyone has to go home. And you actually see that. They rush towards the car park and the trains and the Uber's, but it's still very much just people in high heels and three-piece suits covered in their own vomit.

just racing against the wind. It's a beautiful sight. That's where the real betting should happen. That's what I want to say. It would take away the tragedy from, you know, when they bring out the green curtain. Everyone would cheer. Oh, absolutely.

As you were saying before, I mean, we need a rule where if the horse goes downside is the jockey. Yeah, I, the fact that that has not happened. I mean, look, if you, you know, I'm sure that happened in Saudi Arabia or Iraq, you remember, if you remember when Saddam Hussein's sons

were in charge of sports in Iraq, They basically killed the entire Rocky football team because they didn't win in Olympics. I feel like that's the rule we should have for all sports. And if you're not going to do that, then stop playing them. You know, go all in or stop chickening around. But on the drunken steepball chase thing, I'm just thinking that every McDonald's drive-thru around the country now has a sign in the window that says you may not come through this drive-thru unless you're in a vehicle.

And I'd like to think you could have the Melbourne Cup at a series of drive-thrus with pedestrian just going through, stumbling around, getting given burgers as they went through, and most of them would fall over and die, but it'd be very entertaining. Absolutely. Now, that's a good idea. I also want to point out that the greatest joy of this episode so far has been watching the sheer shock and horror on Gabby's face every time I say something new, because now I'm just doing this to get a reaction out of her.

And yes, clearly killing human beings is where Gabby draws the line, and I'm pushing that as far as I can go. Oh, not at all. No, I'm fine with killing people. I just think whole teams are a bit of a stretch because there's always one good person on a whole team. Yeah, but, you know, there's always innocent bystanders in every mass casualty event.

Oh, true. Yeah. But if you did, if you made it individual, I feel like you would get the best out of a team. You know, like David Warner needs to sharpen his focus in his betting. If he knew that the whole team was going to die. Yeah. then I don't know whether he'd care.

But if it's just about him dying, then I feel like he might get back into form quicker. Charles, the Romans had a thing called decimation, right? But to motivate the Roman legionaries from retreating during a battle, they would kill every 10th legionary. That's the word decimation comes from decimate, which it means 10. And I feel like that would have been, yes, a cricket team has 11 players in it. And if you kill one hour of every 10th, then it's a bit, you know, you come down to 10 and the next time you're stuck.

But I feel like you're right. It sharpens the senses. If it was good enough for the Romans, it is good enough for every sport. And one out of every 10 jockeys being shot, you know, at the end of the race, I think is a very, very good way of motivating the other jockeys to whip themselves a little bit more. Except that, that's what already happens. Every time there's a Melbourne cup, 10% of the horses die, and yet they still keep coming back. Look at how motivated the horses are. It's working on them.

They're running their asses off. Today's episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by hand-me-down furniture. Retro is in. But, you know, only fun, expensive 70s, pieces, not a broken mid-2003-tchester drawers, sort of doubt. Today in Sydney people are doing something that I haven't done for a very long time. It's a strange, old-fashioned thing. People are watching movies at the Sydney Film Festival.

And among them is Zander, who signed it to an insane. program of watching movies. Hello, Zanda. Hello, I like to think of it a bit more than just watching movies, right? We had the Melbourne Cup yesterday and we had the grand finals a month ago, but for me, the Sydney Film Festival, the premiere sporting event of the year. Right, so you go and watch movies, not for the pleasure of watching the beautiful art, but just to score points and rack up another movie that you've seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So think like the city to serve, a style marathon.

Right. Zanda, you're the man who listens to the podcast in four-time speed. Are you sitting in the cinema, watching a movie, but also watching something on your phone and your iPad at the same time? No, because that's sacrilegious, you know. Oh, so our podcast can be consumed in that, right, okay. Well, it's all about artistic intent, right? Like, you know, but the point being is, is the goal this year is to see 36 different

films over 11 days. That's a lot of films. I can't help just suspecting that you're going to be at the centre of some sort of COVID super spreader, you know, sort of event. But, yeah, if you, if you have, if you pick up COVID at any point, you're going to spread it to so many people. And they're all old at the Sydney Film Festival. They're all 90-year-olds. Yeah. I'd probably be responsible for mass death.

Yeah, but then think of the story. That then creates more opportunities for films in. the future that's documentary worthy so this recording is evidence exactly and it shows that he was foreworned and indifferent to this risk so how on earth do you see 36 movies in 11 days well i've got a spreadsheet that's that's the place you start because oh that's fun it all started months ago where i thought it was in the middle of lockdown and i had a whole lot of money from the government right and i was like what am i going to spend this on you know i hadn't decided to move out of home yet so i still at home i had a whole superfluous amount of money and i saw the sydney film festival

was coming up in August. And so you thought, let's give the money back to the New South Wales government. Yeah, let's give the money back to the New South Wales government, right? And so I essentially went and bought six youth passes, so which meant I got like 30 tickets, right, which is less than the amount of films I'm seeing now. And then essentially I thought, this is going to be great, this is going to be funny, I'll see 30 films, it's going to be a great adventure, and it'll be fun. And then obviously lockdown happens, and then the Sydney Film Festival gets pushed back to

November and so it comes to a few weeks ago and I'm like oh shit I have to work out the 30 different films I'm seeing otherwise I'm wasting money it's like $380 right you can't just piss this away no um and then it gets to 9 a.m one morning right and that's when they haven't released the films yet so the morning I can buy tickets is the morning I'm first seeing the films that I'm going to watch so you bought the 30 tickets before you even knew what was on Yes. What if there's like an Adam Sandler retrospective? That would be incredible.

What about Eddie Murphy's later works? But that was the roll of the dice, right? I didn't know what I was going to get. And so I wake up in the morning, I get on the website, and then I have to create this spreadsheet because of the end of the day, you can't be in two places of the one time, you know? That's true.

Oh, right, yes, of course. And there's also there's the distance between the different cinemas. I've been to a lot of film festival things, and there's often the hustle. You've got to run from, say, the state theatre down to event, cinemas or whatever is. It's quite a kind of steeple chase. See, here I was thinking that the Sydney Film Festival, and your segment about the Sydney Film Festival, would be about films.

No. No, it's about logistics, it's about spreadsheets, it's about getting to and from the films. I mean, I've got to say, Zandar, in terms of your personal growth, this is good. It's good organisation. I've never been this organised in my life, and I'm not joking. I was less organised during my HSC. And this is scheduled down to the minute, right? Like tonight, I have two films back to back

because, unfortunately, the freaks of the Sydney art world bought tickets to the opening night and they were gone straight away. There was just no tickets to the opening night left and I only got to it about half an hour after it opened. So I'm seeing two films back to back. However, they're on different sides of the city. Uh-oh.

At 6 o'clock, I'm supposed to be at the Hayden Orpheum and then at like 815, I'm supposed to be at event cinemas on John Street. Sandy, you don't know Sydney very well, do you? No, it's just... It's not just across the city. It's like literally the suburbs away. Yes.

Yeah. That's just not going to happen. Like, this is going to be a story of Zander got killed in a traffic accident on his way to No, it's going to happen. Because remember, they've got ads, they've got all the lengthy pre-roll. Do they have ads? No, they don't have ads. don't have ads.

No, but they still have pre-wrote. No, they don't. It's a film festival. No. Yes. What they do have, what's going to save your ars, Sander,

is that a lot of these movies have incredibly long and sometimes tedious Q&As with the filmmakers before. Yeah. Well, they just get everyone up to do a little speech and whatever,

and that'll buy you 10 minutes. Yes. So, um, big first night. Big first night. So what are you seeing? Or do you not know the names?

No, I've got, why don't we talk about the films in this segment. All right. We should focus on the first night. Film one and film two. All right.

Tonight we've got the Eyes of Tammy Faye and King Richard. So one of them is about the William's sister's father. And the other one is about US televangelists. Oh, Tammy Faye Baker, they both sound quite interesting. Oh, they'll be interesting. Yeah. And then tomorrow night, I have the Justice of Bunny King, which is a New Zealand film. And then Tertain, which is this massive French horror movie that's very popular at the moment.

And then also a Polish film tomorrow morning called Apples. How good is you? Polish. Oh, it's okay. Do they have subtitles? No, you've got to, yeah. They do, yeah. And how, what proportion of the 36% a nerdy picks?

Oh, only two. Because that's the whole thing. They don't actually have to rate them because it's a festival. Yeah, they're all are. So they can have anything. They get around the classification laws. Yeah, so there's only two nerdy ones. One's called Pleasure.

Is that because they sold out too fast for your book? Because we all know why the film festival is popular. Well, this is, okay, pleasure is a introspective look at the US porn industry. A young woman strives for success in agency in LA's lucrative and ruthless porn industry in Swedish director, Ninya's Thiberg's bold and meticulously observed debut. I mean, well done for challenging the Swedish film stereotypes there, sir. I'm sure you'll meticulously observe that one. Well, there's, well, you've got to get some interesting choices.

Once you're 30 films in, and you see, I kept adding movies because, like everyone, kept recommending more, Sydney Morning Herald would publish an article. So the list keeps getting longer, longer, longer, right? And so I set a rule for myself, I had to see every film in competition. So Zanda, do you get a prize for this? Because I assume you'll be the sort of, you'll be the person who sees the most films of this festival. Is there a prize that they give to the person who sees the most? I remember they're being like a challenge in the past.

Well, I'm not too sure. And if there's not one, they definitely will be. Yeah, right. But you presumably, are you getting to go to the closing, Night Gala? Have you been invited to the closing night? No. I should be, should not. Yes. And you got all these tickets you paid for these tickets? You don't understand

working in media Zan. I didn't get press passes. You got to, yeah. You have to get yourself into the closing night gala. Because I'm seeing that many movies, right? There's some days that I'm going from watching a documentary about Sesame Street straight into a French rom-com.

So Zanda, this is your challenge is to get into the closing night gala without getting official sanction from the film festival. Because I've only ever been to the Sydney Film Festival once and it was to see the final film of the festival and then we all went to the closing night gala. So, um, so it's after the final film. Yeah, it's a big piss up. I went to one with, um, Jerome Clement from Fire of the Concords once. It was very good. Yeah, I went to one with, uh, Richard Roxburgh and Miranda Otto. This sounds incredible. We were literally on the bus together. They were chatting on the

bus. All right. That's the goal. Yeah. 36 films and a gala. Yeah, and a gala. Today's episode of the Chaser Report is brought to you by Hand Me Down Furniture. Oh, for fuck's sake. Before we go, I just want to relate a bit of a disaster that is going to befall both Dom and me. What? Halos. No, that's already happened. It was just puzzled on that.

No, no. Earlier today, well, I was just sort of at my house and Dom was hanging around one of our neighbor's houses. And it looked very suspicious. he actually looked like he was under arrest. I was going on. There was a police officer. Because there was a police officer standing and Dom was, you know, his usual glum face.

So it looked like he'd got into trouble. If you want to see that glum face, by the way, just Google Dominic Knight arrest and you'll see a picture of me looking incredibly glum as I am arrested from many years ago with the chaser. It was a bit like that. And actually it turns out there is a house that's for rent just up the street from us. And Charles and I don't live together. We live very near each other. Just to be clear.

And Dom, I think it was just having a sticky beak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, but this police officer is really keen on getting in the house. He's the only applicant, too. He's going to move in, right? And so I pass and go, oh, you know, no illegal activity is here. Just thinking about all the jokes we have. And it's going to be a disaster.

We're going to have a policeman in our complex. Like, you know, we've got these sort of apartment complex. We're going to be living next to the fuzz. You're looking at this all wrong. Because it's not just a cop. It's a neighbour. There's two ways this could go. You're charming.

You're a charming man, Charles. All you have to do is charm a little extra. Just charm the cop. And then you can start getting away with stuff. He can give us access to all the drugs that he gets. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Which will be much higher quality. Because as Kings Cross in the 90s, he would become your new dealer.

And also, presumably, you know, if other neighbours get a bit annoying, he can legally work out a way to knock them off and stuff. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This is, I like the thinking. So how do we work out whether he's a bent cop or not? I mean, I think the best way to approach this would be not to talk about it on the podcast. He's this and gets upset.

Or you could just, you know, take a cake around. And I feel like you can tell a lot about a person, by the way, they receive a cake, you know? Or some brownies, some special brownies. Oh, yeah. Or give him something in a brown paper bag and see how familiar he feels within his hand. Oh, it's just some muffins we baked. I like it. Cheeky Claire.

So we can keep going without murdering and stuff like that. Yeah. And as long as it's not during his work times, it'll be fine. It'll be a test of your charisma. I mean, before you know it, your house will become the evidence stash, I reckon. Yes. We can be the storeroom. There you go.

Okay. That's how you do it. You've got to view it as a win, Charles, because this is now tenet in evidence. Agies from road microphones are part of the ACAST. Creator Network. Catch you tomorrow. See you. Unless Charles gets arrested first.

Wee-woo, wee-woo.