The Chaser Report - Steve Price Likes Watching Schoolboys | Sami Shah

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Sami Shah joins Dom Knight on The Chaser Report, and for the most part they discuss managing cholesterol and better eating alternatives for ageing. Until they bring up Steve Price and his latest attempt to lower the nation's IQ. Oh no, hope Pricey doesn't write about us in his pompous media column. That would be so sad considering this title is literally Steve's own words. 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, back with you from weeks of doing other work. And Charles isn't here, but we have a considerably better option, to be honest. It's Sammy Shah. Hello, Sammy. Hello, am I basically Brown Charles now?

Like, barrels, I guess. Brown Charles. I think that's so unfair. To your talent. To your talent. I mean, look, I've known Charles for a long time. I think if Charles could have a lot of different skin tones. He'd still have the same flaws.

Yeah. He just wouldn't have gone so far in life. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a lot more patience with his flaws than they're out with mine. Absolutely. How are you? I am aware of my age.

I think it's the best way to put this. So I'm 44 years old. And being a 44-year-old, every year or so, I go and get a check-up done. Just, you know, in my 40s, since my 40s, I've been kind of staying on top of my health. By staying on top of my health, I mean, I get a check-up done, and I do nothing about what the results are. Oh, yes. And so about a year and a half ago, I got a blood test done, and I was told that my cholesterol is exorbitantly high. Like, just shockingly high.

And I was like, oh, absolutely, I should definitely do something about that. And then for a year and a half, I did absolutely. nothing. Like, not even eating one salad. I think it doubled down. I think it went harder. I put butter on the butter. Let's see how far we could push these numbers. Yeah, yeah, basically. It's the only time in my

life that my ratings have gone up. Because it's a score for achievement, really. I mean, if you're going to have bad cholesterol, at least enjoy it. Like, I don't know. How long are we meant to live anyway when you say no to that donut? Having said that Sammy... That's my argument, right? Like, so my partner is, she's healthy and she likes being healthy and she works out and she eats healthy and she has vitamins and all of these things.

And she says to me, don't you want to get healthy and live longer? And I'm like, no, I don't want to live long. Why? I don't want to be a 110 year old man. Oh my, can you imagine the shit, the dumb, cancelable shit I'll be saying then? I'm barely on the verge of like. Oh, my God. I love the notion of an, actually, please do live longer and fix it.

because I want to see grumpy completely disinhibited Sammy Shah. Yeah, and also, I'll also be pooping myself. Yeah, grumpy. That can be part of your stand-up show. Waring adult type of Sami-year-old grumpy pooing Sammy Shah. I mean, that will be very popular. I presume that by that point in the world's evolution, things will have gone full circle and that unless you say something terrible,

people won't even notice. Well, yeah, probably. By that time, look, if I live to be 110, We're looking at basically 19, sorry, 2088. Yeah. It's around the time. Sounds good.

But I think by then anyway, a meteorite would have killed us all. So it's either I die of pooping myself for death at the 8 of 110 on stage or a meteorite kills us. But my point being, like, now I got to eat healthy and get those cholesterol numbers down. So I've been doing salads and I've been doing like just like a lot of green tea and and cillium husk. Do you know what Cidium husk is? Cillium husk.

That sounds like you're the husk of a man. Yeah, I feel that way sometimes. What's Cillium? It's a thing that is apparently made of cilium, which I don't even know what that is, but everyone in India, which I don't know if you know this, but everyone in India has cholesterol.

Just like the whole subcontinent. All right. It's just people with heart disease and cholesterol and everyone has Cillium husk to live longer. They all still die at 65, I don't even think it's working. But either way, I'm not going to have to do this. I mean, this is an argument that I've had with a number of people from South Asia,

who I may or may not be related to by marriage, is the notion that just about any food is improved with the addition of ghee. Yeah, I mean, it tastes better. Yeah, and it does, it tastes amazing. But as someone who's also, you know, at least trying, at least notionally, to not completely destroy my heart, protein 50, I'm kind of a bit of voiding, dripping the liquid butter onto everything that I'm eating. I mean, it's the one concession I do make, but they're like, no, no, it's clarified.

I don't see how that makes it not fatty in some way. And this is the thing, particularly North Indian food. I mean, basically every North Indian curry you have, and that's why I love it so much. It does taste like death on a plate. I mean, butter chicken. It's literally called butter chicken. Yeah. Like, as chicken itself wasn't unhealthy enough, we had to add butter.

Exactly. And that's a mild one. I mean, there's some of the ones that I've had in Pakistani as well, like, which is, you know, I mean, just like your biryani and stuff. But you're, we have a thing called Halim or Nihari. Nehari is just like, you know, meat that's been stewed for ages. You can, you can slice the oil that's clarified and, and congealed on top before you even get to the food itself. And when you eat it, you're just actively hurting. It's probably a part of the sensory experience. It's like going to one of those, um, restaurants, you know, who's that chef with the big glasses who's always coming on master chef and stuff and he does all weird sciencey stuff? Heston Blumenthal. Yeah. You're like you go to a Heson Blumenthal restaurant and you put on headphones and then the spray mist in your

face. It's like fun, yeah. Exactly. It's supposed to be a sensory experience. Pakistani foods like that. The sensory experience is your chest hurts, you start groaning, you lose feeling in your lower body and then you continue eating it. Like that's how I've grown up. My parents were here right now.

My mom was like, oh, you need more fruit in your diet and would make me fruit salad, by which I mean she takes some fruit, chop it up, and then put it in basically drown it in cream, full cream with a mountain of sugar. And then I'm wondering why my cholesterol numbers are so high. But I must say I respect that because at least the food is delicious. I mean, imagine being American. Imagine being American and having like shit donuts, like crispy cream and stuff, which is just basically a trans fat on a body.

bowl. I don't think they're sponsor it. Sorry, let's hope that I don't. And the food, like, burgers. I remember the first I went to America and I ordered like a diner burger. And I was like, oh my God, this is going to change my life. I've just heard about these diners. I sat down there in like a kind of a Laminx table for my cacao and all that. I was so excited and just ready to be overwhelmed by this amazing experience. I ordered the coffee. The coffee was shit filter coffee. No, it's the worst. Yeah. American coffee is terrific. It was a dried piece of meat, between two buns and it was enormous but there was nothing else

I could have ordered a cheeseburger and had a piece of melted cheese there wasn't even salad like they don't fuck around with that stuff in America they have breakfast with pancakes on the same plate as eggs and bacon like if you're gonna die of heart disease at least eat good food well I mean that's basically so how I've been living my life so far right

like this Viking approach to just eating whatever grazes in front of me and then thinking I'll pay the dividends later, well, now the taxman is here to collect. So now I've got to eat healthy food, Dom, and it sucks. I hate being old. That sounds terrible. Remember being young?

That was awesome. Let's do that again. Oh, that was good. I've wasted it. I completely wasted it all. The sensation that I've had that most felt like that was I once went to, when I was in Beijing, there's a little bit of a travel brag here, but I went to this hidden away Peking Duck restaurant, or Beijing Duck, as they call it these days.

Right. You know, more sensitive. Beijing duck restaurant And it was in like a Houtong's laneways It was very atmospheric I had to kind of go to this little back And I must have had

fully 15 pieces of roast duck Good Lord In pancake In the pancakes With scallions and the hoistens And I remember I honestly felt Something really wrong

With my body walking out of there And I remember I did not feel like My arterial blood supply Was going to continue But if I dropped dead at least I would have gotten to eat 15 pieces of peaking duck like compare that to

I don't know like a fucking hostess cake or some shit yeah or any candy like candy shit compared to that I don't want I have no sweet tooth I wouldn't want to die for candy I don't care I don't care about that yeah I would

I'd rather die covered in lamb ribs and and I don't know if you've ever had goat liver but that thing is amazing. I haven't. No, I haven't had got it. That's like a weird,

like we don't eat enough like liver and testicles in Australia. It really is a delicious thing. That's a, that's a comedy show title for 2023. Semi Sharring, we don't eat enough testicles. I would see that.

It tastes amazing. It's really sad. You know you're the dominant species on the planet with another animal's testicles are part of your cuisine, you know? Is that what my, my idiotic British ancestors,

is that, do they call that like sweet? bread or sweet meats or something? Yeah, they give it the most euphemistic name. No, no, you're chowing down on animal balls. Yeah. And I know, no shame in them. They taste good.

Just eat them. Have, you know, have them. Just call them what that. Call them testicles. Yeah. We call them kapore in Pakistan. They're so good. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, anyway, so now I got to do this. And anyway, I'm doing it for six weeks. And then after that, they're going to test my cholesterol again. And if the cholesterol number is down, then I just keep eating healthy. If it isn't down, then I, uh, I just start taking medication for it. How do you want to be remembered?

Oh. What would we say on the special commemorative edition of the podcast in about a year? I think I can't believe he killed so many people in the last few moments before he died. It would be an interesting one where it's like there was no evidence that he was a maniac until just moments before his death. Actually, that's not a bad. I mean, if you're going to write, I know you're writing a lot of fiction these days. Imagining what you would do with the new. that you had like a wake to live

I reckon you'd spend that week you'd spend that week very very impressively I feel yeah yeah well no I think it'd be embarrassing for like anyone else would go I don't know they'd go to like travel the world or whatever for me it would largely be reading comic books

eating great foods and I guess spending time with my family or whatever the hell I'm supposed to do there It wouldn't rain death on particular people I think if you're going to go out out, from what you've been saying over the years, you'd probably take a few people with you. I think everyone who I hate knows I hate them. That's the one thing you can say.

There's not very much complimentary you can say about me. One thing you can definitely say is I have never shied away from telling people I dislike that I dislike them. And I think that that can be my legacy. I'm down with that. If the cholesterol makes my arteries harden and I drop dead, at least I would drop dead knowing that my enemies know I hate them. I don't have any enemies, but when I do acquire some next, I shall definitely tell them. The Chaser Report Now with Extra Whispers

You know what's going to happen to you Is you're going to die in Queensland I can just tell You probably won't even intend to You'll probably just be flying Somewhere else And we're forced landing in Queensland And the plane won't land

They won't know where the runway is Are you think the Queenslanders will kill me Or it'll be an accidental death I'm saying it will Fate will No I think they'll kill you because that would be a bit more heroic. I think just what will happen is, unfortunately, ironically,

you'll die in the place you hate the most. You know how the queen died in Scotland and a lot of people are like, oh, she planned it. She loved Scotland. Oh, did she? I had no idea. And so Scottish people, most of them just want to get rid of the queen. But those who don't were like, oh,

she managed that have spent that much time here and arguably her ancestors oppressed our ancestors and took over this place. But gosh, she died here. She chose to exit. And I must say, for me, speaking someone with a bit of Scottish ancestry in the mix, it's a good place to die. I don't know if it's a good place to eat.

That's Scottish food. How is Scottish food? Well, they deep fry stuff, so they've got that in common. I've heard the Mars bars being deep fried is a thing there. That is a thing. But also, it's a lot of it. I mean, Scottish cuisine is a little bit of a contradiction in terms from what I was saying. There's obviously haggis.

It's where you get a sheep's stomach and put stuff in it. I haven't eaten much. much of it. There's short bread. I mean, short bread is really, there's one of those foods when you eat it, you just go, fuck, that was a waste of calories. Okay, so I'm going to ask you listen, to kind of add on to your question. If you have one week left you live, and in that one week, you can only have one cuisine. Oh, that's a great question. Right. If I really wanted to go out with it, it just didn't matter. I think probably Thai. I think I think I go to Thai food. Really? I really love Thai food, particularly because I could have all those coconut milky

curries and barbecued meats and all that stuff and just who gives you shit all the sticky rice coconut rice yeah yeah yeah tie desserts are the most excellently calerific things around that wouldn't be bad i mean indian food i like i like japanese food a lot but i wouldn't eat oh it's too healthy to eat for my final week i don't think yeah not for the final week i think my final week would probably be well pakistani i love of course that's a given but i think the italian i think the italian oh it's pretty just load up on the pastas and the hot sauce And the spices and, yeah, it's great. Except people like you who have chitty cholesterol, aren't you supposed to have Mediterranean diets?

Like, shouldn't you do this now? Yeah. So I started doing, I started doing a lot of like, like, cuss-coose and quinoa and, and there's some really good stuff. And there's good, like, Middle Eastern recipes for salads that are great. And yeah, but I mean, none of it tastes as good as key. I mean, I'm meant to order salads, I think. I should, and I just never do. There's almost never the case where I go to.

any restaurant and think oh it's a salad day and I did there was a period where I did want to eat salad a lot and the salad that I settled on was the Thai beef salad okay

where there's beef in it's not a salad surely yeah that's more about the beef than the salad yeah you know what my life hack that I've anyone else who wants to lose weight the life hack I have discovered that really helps you not lose weight so I lose lower your cholesterol and just eat hellier

if you're going to eat lots of salads and hate yourself doing them get hot sauces. I have invested in phenomenal hot sources, and capsicium, which is in hot sources, is actually good for cholesterol. So I just drown any salad with hot sources, and it becomes way more edible.

I can't quite imagine lettuce with hot sauce, but maybe I should try it out. Avocado and toast with hot sauce has become my breakfast now. So this is how I'm surviving this. That sounds like a genuinely useful tip, which is not really what's intended in this. No, not at all. I've let everyone down.

I just feel, I feel you've changed Sammy. I want to talk to... How so? Because, because, look, it used to be you'd come out guns blazing

with Scott Morrison or something at the start of the podcast. Yeah. And I saw you writing on social media the other day. I just don't want to, I just don't want to get caught up in sort of outrage of the day

type conversation anymore. And I just, it just had this degree of maturity about it. Yeah, it's quite disgusting. I'll be very honest. like you were like, I've got stories to write and stuff. I just thought, what's happened to

Sammy Shah? Is he soft or boring or both? I don't know. You know what's happened? My drafts folder is filled with a thousand half written angry tweets which I, like right now, Stephen Price, you know Steve Price from the project. You know, the project that no one knows what the fuck that show is.

So Stephen Price or is it Steve Price? Steve. I think Stephen, I call him Stephen because he probably doesn't like it. All right, okay. Stephen Price has written an article about how the AFLW is terrible and watching an AFLW game is always disappointing because no one

they knows how to play. And I wrote there's a tweet in my drafts folder, which is the exact wording that he used to describe the AFLW, you know, I think he said something along the lines of like, you know, if you watch an AFLW game, you'll walk away disappointed because it's worse than watching children play.

And I wrote, if you spend five minutes with Stephen Price, you'll walk away disappointed because it's worse than watching a bowl of shit. And then I didn't tweet it because a part of me goes what who cares what am i why am i putting anger out into the ether when i can use it to channel that towards creative pursuits as opposed to wasting it on twitter that's a very good point i mean this is the same thing jared henderson's media watchdog uh which is the the most the most verbose cry for help i think i've ever come

across yeah that's a column that he writes for the we've all agreed it's a serial killer's rant is what that is it's not if you it's not healthy like when you read that you you don't go, this is a well-adjusted human being. If you take the first letter of every sentence, it will actually tell you the locations of all the bodies that Jared Henderson has been slowly liquefying over decades and he goes back to have sex with every now and then. I can't endorse that simply because I just can't imagine

you remember of actually doing anything other than just whining on the couch. Yeah, true. He probably gets his wife to kill the bodies. He has no upper body strength. I've met the wife. She's way more capable and competent. as a human being than he is. I just,

well, this is a good way to make media watchdog. I was just going to say that I used to be quite in joy because every time I've made media watchdog over the years, it was for a joke that he didn't understand

was a joke. It was a joke that he took literally or I was being sarcastic or something and he just completely missed the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now it's just not having to read another word that Geron Henderson writes feels like a good investment.

And if he writes about this mention, firstly, he can sue you. but yeah um yeah it's just life is too short to to to read things even if you get angry because we used to love getting angry on social media it's not healthy yeah yeah that's it part of it is I think for me it became this thing of like okay I'm this people whose opinion I used to respect who are now disrespect because of seeing how dumb they are on social media and I'm like I don't why am I doing this why am I spending time myself I've been a contributor to the worst

excesses of social media for decades I have given so much free labor to social media. It's absolutely ridiculous. And I'm like, I could have been writing a book in all this time. So that's what I'm trying to do. Eat salads and write fucking books. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands of words we've wasted on Twitter? Yeah.

And in my case, I have written novels and proven that I don't have much to offer in that department either. But nevertheless, even that would have been better than all the tweets. Yeah. You know how Facebook tends to resurface your old Facebook status updates? Yeah, that's embarrassing sometimes. Every single thought that I ever published on Facebook before I met my wife was essentially a cry for help. There's nothing.

And I read them all back. It's me trying to be cheerful and project success and happiness, which I did not have at all. Yes. And I just, I want to erase them. I want to obliterate them all from the face of the earth. Yeah. That's what I'll do in my final week, Sammy. I'll go back through my social media and just scrub that shit.

I like that. And I'll probably don't delete all these podcasts too. I'm like, should I delete all my old tweets? And I'm like, no, I don't want to pretend like I'm better than I am. I will own my, you know, the ABC wanted me to delete all my old tweets when I was working there. And I was like, no, if anyone wants to cancel me or whatever, I'll own up to who I am. I don't care. Like, I'd much rather own my own excesses and weaknesses than pretend like they didn't exist.

One of my favorite things about Twitter is that at one point, the Library of Congress decided to archive the whole Twitter. So you wouldn't have been able to leave that. You couldn't have deleted it all. It would have been there forever. But in the end, they just went, oh, too hard. Yeah. And I think, given that I learnt this week that they have 1,800 flutes in their collection,

it just goes to show us. It's not that they didn't have the room, is that they just went, actually, this has no value. Let it die with this generation. Even a badly played flute still puts music out into the world. What exactly am I tweets putting out in the world? That's a good question, Sammy.

Thank you for joining us. I hope you survive until the next episode. Our gears from Road, we're part of the Acast Creator Network. And Sammy's podcast is News Weekly, W-E-E-A-K-L-Y. You should subscribe to that if you haven't already. Thank you.