The Chaser Report - Sami Shah's Start in Satire | CHANGEMAKERS

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Sami Shah is one of our favourite regular guests on The Chaser Report, so we thought we'd share this incredible interview he did with Amanda Tattersall on the ChangeMakers Podcast about what got him started in satire and why he believes comedy can be used to change what people think.Listen to the full interview with Sami Shah here:https://changemakerspodcast.org/sami-shah-changemaker-chat-news-satire/Find out more about ChangeMakers here:https://changemakerspodcast.org/Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enDonate to Peter Dutton's cyclone bunker here:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report with Charles and Dom. My name is producer Lachlan, and we've got something a little different for you today, listener. Over the years, we've loved having Sammy Shar come on the podcast and tell us how much he hates whichever given state or city at any given moment. However, there's a lot more to Sammy Shah that we don't really get to unpack in a 15-minute news satire segment. which is why we're going to play a little teaser of an interview that Sammy did on another

iconoclast podcast, the ChangeMakers podcast hosted by Amanda Tatazole, where Sammy talks about what got him into stand-up and comedy and news satire at the start. Sammy Shah's podcast, which he does weekly called News Weekly with an A, he tells Amanda how he actually started doing that podcast in something called Second Life, which I'm far too young to know of and how he was inspired to make change through doing satire, which is something that we would definitely never do here. So let's crack into listening to that wonderful interview with Sammy right after this. Hello, Sammy Shah. Welcome to Change Makers.

Thanks for having me. Oh, it is my pleasure. I mean, it's always hilarious having a comedian on a sort of earnest show about social change, but we'll see what we can... Comedians can be honest. In fact, some would say we're too earnest out of time. people don't like it when we are. I know. Well, maybe people are going to react to the earnestness that you bring to this show, or perhaps you'll bring some of the silliness as well. We will soon see. But first, I actually want to ask you, Sammy. I mean, you are a comedian. You also do political satire. And in my books, that's an important form of changemaking. But how would you describe yourself? What kind of change maker are you? Oh, I think it depends on when you ask me.

If you'd asked me this a few years ago, I would have said I'm a change maker in that. I'm making opportunities for other migrants like myself, particularly ones from developing nations, third world countries, places like Pakistan, India, etc., giving them a platform and also making sure that people can see us on television and news and radio and know that there's a place that we can exist as well. I used to think that. Then I got fired from that for not being white enough, so I don't think that anymore. And so now, I think that kind of change maker I am, is the kind that I think deep down I've always been, which is I like pushing the boundaries of what a society decides, can and cannot be joked about by then joking about it.

And for me, that always comes back to a free speech issue in that I am a fervent and passionate believer in free speech. Yeah, okay. Excellent. Well, we are going to get into some of the controversy that you've been whipping up around global issues as we get into the podcast. But before we do that, I actually want to spend a bit of time you sharing with, some of our listeners will go, oh, let me share him all about him. And some of our listeners, we go, oh, yeah. Most people don't know anything. It's fine.

I appreciate that. You have a pretty rich story. Yes, I mean, you are a notable comedian here, but you spent enormous sort of formation time in Pakistan, a little bit of time in the US as well. Can you tell us just a little bit about how, go back as far as is helpful for our listeners and as you're comfortable to sort of explain how you came to be the kind of changemaker that you are. Well, my mother was in great pain as I rushed through her body in 1978. And no, I won't. I'll start a little later than that.

I basically, I've been thinking about this a lot, actually, because I'm doing a PhD these days in New Sattah. And I was trying to figure out where my connection to comedy in New Sattah I came from. I think that's probably the most consistent thing I've done and I'm passionate about my whole life. And it started because I grew up in a Pakistan, which was living under a dictator, a military dictator at the time named Ziaul Haq. And that was a formative year. The first, I think, eight to ten years of my life was under him. And he was extremely censorious. Like, it was a well-known thing.

He wouldn't allow any. There's a very famous story about how he said that no, no one is allowed to publish any criticism of his government. And so the editor of a local news magazine who used to publish an opinion column, editorial column every month in the magazine criticizing his government, she then from that day onwards until the end of his dictatorship published a blank page. And I thought that was such a bold, brave and funny thing to do. And that coupled with there was a TV show on Pakistan television called 50-50. And it was written by these comedians and performers.

by these comedians, Anwar Maksud, Bushra Ansari, a few, Mohi Nakhhtar, a few others, who were brilliant comedians, absolutely geniuses. And what they did was they realized that you can criticize the government, you can critique society and religion and politics, but you have to do it in metaphor, and you have to do it in analogy. Because people in power don't understand metaphor and analogy. People, religious authorities, they lack the ability to process that. people, you know, Peter Dutton doesn't know what a fucking metaphor is. It is completely, he's a, these are literal people and, um, and I realize that. So they did comedy sketches on television using metaphor and analogy to criticize the government,

but they were, you know, framed as, you know, a household having some kind of financial issue, et cetera. And it was genius. And as a child, I understood that and I connected with that a lot. And so that kind of led me to a appreciation for comedy as a, as a weapon. against authority. And that kind of stuck with me forever. Yeah. And I mean, gosh, it was not for Australians who were used to, I mean, we have a sort of nasty side to our politics too, but it's not really of the same scale of what you grew up with. I mean, how did that political

environment? I mean, yes, it was dictatorship for a period when you were young. It also returned to dictatorship later on, you know, after September 11th, like you were all in with sort of the new vogue, which we've got around in the world now. Like, You got an early taster as to what we're all dealing with. I mean, how did you find that comedy worked for you? You know, as you started, you know, you could see it, the blank pages. You could see its utility. How did you then come to go, oh, I'm going to do this.

This is my voice. I started off in improv comedy. So in Pakistan, after I came back from university in America, I went for four years from 1998 to 2002 where I was exposed to the daily show, for example. I discovered Bill Hicks. He had died already, but I discovered his. comedy on old Napster downloads, you know, audio files, if you remember Napster. And so I kind of got into, when I moved back to Pakistan, I had comedy on the brain.

And there's a comedy improv troupe that started. I joined them. But I realized that what I wanted to do, no one was doing, which was do stand-up comedy, American-style stand-up comedy in Pakistan. And so I went with that. And my first show, I remember, was very Jerry Seinfeld influenced. You know, it was very Seinfeldian, I like to say, in that it was an observational comedy, comedy, friendly. And I thought it was a great show.

I still think I'm proud of it. But I realized that wasn't my voice. My real voice was an angry voice. It was a voice because the second time I was going to do a show a year later, the two days before I did the show, there was a suicide bombing in Pakistan or two or three days. And I was a journalist by then. I was working in the newsrooms of Pakistan. on. And I was standing in the carnage of a suicide bombing, you know, covering the news, covered in blood and body parts. And I had a show in a few days. And I was like, well, I have

to cancel the show. The city of Karachi can't have a comedy show after 130 people have just died in a suicide bombing. And then I got angry because I was like, why the fuck do we have to keep canceling our things? Why do we have to be putting our lives on hold for the terrorists to dictate terms? As I said, I'm not canceling it. And I sent a message out to everyone, you know, saying, hey, the show's still on. If you want to come, you can come. If you don't, I'll refund your tickets. And everyone came. Like, 250 people turned up. And that show, I kind of ended up riffing on stage. I threw out the entire hour I'd written. And it became a show about how angry I was about the world we live in. And that's when I found my voice. That's when I became the comedian I am, I still think to this day, which is, I like talking about the things that have just happened, that are happening and that make me angry.

And I hope make you angry, but I then, through comedy, give you a way of expressing. and dealing with that anger. And with Newsweekly, which started in Pakistan, I know because I read your earlier book, and still exists in Australia. Well, yeah, in a different form. So basically, Newsweekly, it's funny. So in Pakistan at the time,

I wanted to do stand-up comedy, but I couldn't, right? There's no comedy clubs. And I had to write an hour show and then do it once a year. And so I was like, how do I practice this? And at the time, I don't know if you know, second life. I remember. Oh, look, I'm old. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I remember it being a thing briefly. That's why it was crazy when like everyone was like meta, this thing that, you know,

Facebook was launching with an online virtual world and you go into the emojis. I was like, we were cyber fucking on second life as a cyberpunk robot, half human apes. Like 20 years ago, what are you talking about? So second life is an online virtual world. It's not even an MMRP because there's no game to it. It's just a world. And I used to go there and do stand-up comedy. And then I decided, hey, the challenges I need to write new comedy every week. So I came up with a show in Second Life where I had a fake news show with a desk and a news backdrop where I would deliver the news of the week and I called it News Weekly.

With a hilarious pan. Yes, exactly. I was such a genius fan. I got it. Exactly. And then I thought, hey, that's going well. People on Second Life side liking it. They decide paying me Lyndon dollars, which was the currency in Second Life.

life, which ended up, I think it was something, 230 Linden dollars was one U.S. dollars. But at the time, 100 Pakistan rupees was one U.S. dollars. So I ended up making a decent amount of Pakistan Reupupuze in that world. And then I decided I'll do a live version. So I did a live show of Newsweekly. And then I pitched that to the TV channel. I was a news producer at. And they said, let's give it a go.

So for two years, I had a new satire TV show that I wrote, produced, edited, hosted, did everything myself, except for the camera work. And it went on air and it was, you know, it was mildly successful until it got cancelled because I made fun of the owner's uncle who was also the Pakistani ambassador of the United States of America at the time. And so he didn't like my jokes and so they had to cancel the show. Excellent. This seems, it feels like a, you know, a theme. Oh, it's a big theme in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We like that attitude here, though. So you're in. Do you? I think Australians. Oh, no, no, Australia. I just mean in this podcast. Oh, yeah, great, great. Australians say they're anti-authoritarian and suck up all the time.

Don't get me wrong. Australians are larking until the boss tells them to shut up and then they shut the fuck up. And then they become the mini cop and then they... Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But I think this idea, I sort of, before we start talking about, I guess your journey to Australia, which also is filled with richness, because you've been here a long time now and I think we'll have learnt a lot from this, I can sense that you've learnt a lot from this bridge

and have a lot to teach us about this bridge of coming from a place like Pakistan onto a place like Australia. But I actually also think that just your formation in, just want to lift up, I guess, that the idea of comedy is as an elixir or a medicine that can help us handle the horror of living in this world. That sounds like really something very important for us to lift up about what you do and who you are.

Well, I think there's a few things comedy does. The first thing obviously is entertain. It's entertainment. And like all entertainment, that means it's a distraction from the grind and the miseries of real life. Like, that's an essential part of comedy. And many comedians do that.

I discovered something when I first came to... In Pakistan, I discovered that new satire comedy, particularly, can be a release valve for the anger and the frustration and the bitterness and the resentments and the powerlessness that you feel in a world that's out to get you. If we talk about and address it, you know, one of the big things I did was, for example, it's a bit that's never worked in Australia, but I used to work in Pakistan, where I talked about being molested as a child. And child molestation is a very common thing in Pakistan.

Everyone's been molested as a child. It's, you know, all my friends have. We've all had some random uncle or religious teacher or shopkeeper or teacher, you know, whatever. And it's funny. In Australia, when you say child molestation and molest to a child, everyone goes, oh, really? And they go hush and they go quiet. And all of a sudden, you know, you're thinking of Catholic priests and stuff like that. And people are lighting candles.

But in Pakistan, it's a taken for granted thing. It just happened to all of us. But no one talked about it openly. So in my stand-up, I talked about it. I talked about my experience, and I made fun of it, and I talked about how it all happens to all of us, and I made fun of that. And it was a huge laugh. It was a massive laugh. It was one of the first bits I ever had, which people would quote back to me later.

And so, like, there was this thing of, hey, we can talk about things that other people can't talk about in comedy. The other thing is when I came to Australia, I started doing comedy about the refugee boat people issue, right? Because that's in 2012 when I moved here, that was a big topic. for three, four years. It's been a big topic for a long time. Well, it's kind of out of the news cycle now. It doesn't really come up. But, you know, back then, it was a massive thing.

You know, the whole Julie Gillard, when I arrived, Julie Gillard was just introducing the whole Nauru and the offshore retention thing again. And then Tony Ably became prime minister because Australians are fucking stupid and things got worse. And so I started talking about that in stand up. And I started trying to reframe the. arguments. One of the big ones was, hey, these bad people are coming here. And I was like, no, the bad people are there are staying where they are because they want. They're not leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan because now they're in charge there. They don't want to fucking

come here and be miserable working at a gas station. They're in charge. The good guys are the ones coming here. They're the ones who are escaping there. That's why you want them. And a lot of people said they'd never heard of it that way. They never framed, heard it framed that way. So I realize that comedy can be used as a tool to sneak in information. You know, it's like giving your child vegetables where you make a burger but you hide the veggies inside the burger and inside the burger meat. And so that is the same thing with comedy. And I really started doing that a lot. And I still believe it now that if you do it, if you just tell someone stop doing that, they're not going to. But if you convince them through stand-up comedy or

comedy or literature or fiction even, you're more likely to create change. I've had my opinion changed about things more by fiction and comedy than by anyone. yelling at me, which I think the left never understood in Australia. Yeah, it's so didactic, right? The idea that I'm going to persuade you to do something. Well, all just scare me. Like the whole thing Yeah, where the most types of politics do that.

Yeah, and it's like, if you say this, then you're cancelled. If you do this, then you're done for, don't you dare say this. People are just going to say it. They just won't say it around you now. That's all. But you have to convince people, and I think comedy is good for that. There you go. Some pretty big revelations

from Sammy there. And if you want to listen to more of that interview. There's a link to the rest of that ChangeMakers podcast episode in the description of this episode. So go and click that and give them a follow and listen to the rest of the episode and then all of the other episodes because I'm a shill for the iconoclast network, which this podcast is part of and Charles and Dom will be with you after the weekend. Bye.