The Chaser Report - The Anti-Social Social Club

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

As part two of Charles and Dom's ingenious "Doctor's Office" idea, the pair had the brainwave that what they were actually pitching was an Anti-Social Social Club. Between the ambitious fantasy and caviar, there may just be an idea here. Donate now to get in on the ground level. ---Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our country was in deep trouble. Well, I didn't fall. Istanbul. Every week, the world falls apart, and I put it back together again with duct tape, sarcasm, and a swear jar that's long since overflowed. Hi, I'm Sammy Shah, comedian and journalist and journalist and comedian, and welcome to Newsweekly, the podcast where I punch the news in the headlines, Weekly. I break down the weak stories, so you don't have to doomscroll alone. Subscribe to Newsweekly wherever you get your podcast. 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 with Dom and Charles. Charles, you know that last episode we were talking about with the doctor's office? Yes. I can't stop thinking about how actually nice it would be, but also, as discussed previously in a fairly awkward weekend edition, where we actually are genuine point of unfortunate as, I'm missing your birthday party coming up this weekend.

Yes. I'm devastated about it. I had already said yes to an event that I can't in good conscience get out of. But like a lot of my friends are going to be there who I never see anymore because I'm middle-aged. Yes. And it's very frustrating. And it occurred to me that if we actually did that, potentially it could be like that every weekend. Okay.

Now, I feel like we need to give more context to this. Oh, for those who didn't hear that. It's not going to be like, I have to say, to be really honest, your birthday party every weekend is probably a niche offering. What are we actually talking about? So, last episode, or maybe it was a few episodes ago. Yeah, who knows. It's a little while ago. It all blends into one for me now.

We talked about the doctor's, this idea that I had for business. Yeah. We ended up calling the doctor's office. We ended up calling the doctor's office, which is basically the initial idea was somewhere which you can rent for a couple of hours to go and rest during the day and sort of pretend that you're working, but actually, you know, you're in a meeting. or something like that. You're actually just having a sleep, right? And my proposition was that, you know, like,

it would just be a great way to sort of get out of work and also feel of human need that everyone sort of needs. But then Dom pointed out that actually there's a whole lot of other services that this could offer, both sexual and unsexual. We're doing it. That makes it seem totally silly. I was just planning how in Japan there are love hotels. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Which, because to just to explain why that is, A lot of people live with their parents, but also there's paper-thin walls. And if you live with your kids as well, there's no personal space. So hence the need for love hotels. But the point is that after we got off the podcast, the last episode, we couldn't stop talking about it. Yeah. Because actually, and I think the missing part of this whole brilliant idea is that it should actually be, it doesn't have to be a company, does it? Like, it doesn't have to exist to make money.

Because we're not good at that anyway. We could just set it up as a club where you call it the doctor's office. You can go there. It's got fast Wi-Fi, good wine and quiet places where you can go and lie down. Yeah. And then you just only invite non-dick-heads along. Yeah. And everyone pays a bit of money a year and you run a sort of club.

We are going to keep talking about this. Just to be really clear, this episode is, again, only about this idea because we're so happy about it. But to be really clear, if you don't like the idea, A, don't listen, and B, you can't be a member. Ads coming up. But no, so I'm not sure what's like in other states. But in New South Wales, there's all these registered club laws. Yes.

And they did used to have a whole bunch of different kinds of, like, arts clubs and labor clubs. And there was a printing union clubs. Yeah, there were all kinds of union clubs. Yeah, true. The printing union club was particularly good. Because very early on, the printing union got all the graphic designers involved. Oh, nice.

So it was a very bare, it was right opposite where Fairfax used to be in the newspaper. In Plymont. Yeah. And it was in the ugliest building in the world, because it was where all the printers union sort of people hung out. But because all the graphic designers joined the same union, it was extremely stylishly laid out like they had all these beautiful paintings on the wall like the walls were painted by the members so we could do that so you've got you've got artie friends yeah so the thing is what what happened was um yeah there used to be all these clubs but nowadays it's really the rsl

clubs yes which these days are no longer really returned service people yeah there's a few return service people but going on and there's obviously things you know there's anzat club bowls clubs so a club like that footy clubs and where the communal activity is it sleeping I'm not sure but it might actually genuinely be social gatherings well yeah and anti-social gatherings

like I think you gotta have enough room but Charles this is gonna I don't want to kill it should be called the anti-social club the anti-social club yeah the anti-social club that's exactly what it should be called the anti-social social club that's great the anti-social club that is really good the thing is this I don't want to

kill the idea, because this may kill the idea if I say it, but the gentlemen's club in London, where they would, would say the thing is where the either which would go, they'd hang out with their friends. Yes. I mean, they had nothing to do and they were contemptible in all kinds of ways. And the current, we're not talking about the Australian club,

those really exclusive wanky places. No. That are male only. No, no. But the idea of actually having a place where you can go and hang out with your friends, there's something in that. Yes, and it, I mean, I suppose there's the pub, but that's so focused on drinking, that I feel like, and it's such a sort of, like, there's an expectation

that you will engage in commerce while you're there. Yeah, and there's, there are pokies. The nice thing about just being in a place which you sort of co-own with the other members of your club is that there's no expectation on you to do anything. And it's a not-for-profit. Yeah, it's not for profit. And it means you can charge really cheap prices. And the thing that, um, hopefully, the thing that you were mentioning,

after we got off the last episode was that Soho House which was started as a club in London I think There used to be lots of clubs like this So not the old Fusty Gentleman's clubs They were things like the What were the hospital club?

They're all started by the Microsoft guy Paul Allen Yeah yeah They're all these little clubs where kind of crowded people Got together and Radiohead recorded albums in the basement And stuff like that And Soho House is

Is famous in the US Because they had one in L.A which looks out, it's a beautiful... Yeah, and see the Hollywood sign. It looks out over Hollywood. And that's where, if you want to go and do a deal in Hollywood, you used to go to Soho House. And then there's another branch of that over in Malibu,

which looks out over the beach. Yeah, and they're all over the world. And it's literally like, they've got a rule. You're not allowed to do business at the Malibu branch. And they're super VIP. Yeah, and you see all these celebrities hanging out there. But they're very expensive to join. So they're supposedly coming to Sydney soon.

But they were going to go to Melbourne, but the Melbourne one didn't happen. But they were a club. They were a club. They're not a club anymore. They're IPOed. They're just a fucking other business. They're just a way of making money out of it. So that's not what this would be.

No, this is not that. Owned and run by members, like a proper club. Like a proper club. Social club. And, you know, like properly democratic. You know, we could found it and we'd get voted off the board immediately. Yeah. That's okay.

As long as they didn't kick us out. For gross mismanagement. Yeah. Actually, that would be better, though. being kicked off the bull because then you wouldn't have to run it. So we do need people who know how to set this sort of stuff up, and we probably need money from somewhere. But, I mean, if this, the crazily enough, Charles.

I don't think we need, we do, no, no, but the whole point about a club is you just, you pull your funds. Pull your funds, yeah, true. But Charles, if this podcast is to be believed. Yeah. And personally, I don't believe the stats, but this podcast says, let's just be real from him, that there are thousands of people every day who enjoy spending time with us. I don't know why.

We could call it, it could be the antisocial club and its founding members could be the Chaser report podcast listeners. And we could record the podcast at the club. Yes, that's a great idea. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I wish may or may not be an incentive to go. But in the basement you could have a space for, you know,

comedy and performance and podcasts and stuff. You could. You could. That would be lovely. Yes. It would lose money because it would be, you know, an operation in Sydney. But it wouldn't matter if it lost me because that's the whole point of one of these registered clubs. It could be maybe if we,

added a gambling element to it. I mean, Charles... Is there any bigger gamble than listening to this podcast on a given day? Well, you know, like how they usually put in the basement pokies? Oh, yeah, but... You could instead have a little comedian down there. Oh, and that's a... And their job would be to make as much money as a poking machine.

And the way that you do it is you get people to bet whether they could... It's going to be funny. You know, whether they'll laugh. Or whether they'll be cancelled. And it's like laugh for nothing. No, no. But you're going to have a meat raffle, that's, that's, or like a vegetable raffle for the, for the vegans, yeah, we don't want to be a bit. What, but, but also the whole idea of the co-working space.

So you'd need a few different spaces. You'd need, yeah. I think the naps are important. I think the naps are the most important. Got to have naps. Yeah, so, and that's just, like, nice bedding. Who, who does the cleaning? You got to have a, oh, that's, that's tough.

Is it just, can you, can you get away with sofas? Could we get one of those, um, cheap, you know, like, you know how, you know how. you know, people who are young get paid like a quarter as much as normal people. Do you want Peter Dutton-style opairs? Yeah, you get sort of, oh yeah, people on visas that are really contingent on... They could sleep in the game. Over night between midnight and 8 and 1. That's the way to do it.

Yeah, this is the way to be opairs. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, because you can't... They're not, they're not, because it's a club, it's not employing anyone. They're just special members who they're, who sort of like, have a slave-style relationship. Okay. Work in progress as to how this actually works.

But you'd need the space, you'd need the podcast recording space. It feels a little bit like 13-story tree house, but what the hell? No, that's right. You need a place to chat for chats. Yep. I have got a lot of sofas.

I think there needs to be a fireplace. Like, I feel like if it's a roaring fireplace. If it's a club, don't you need to have a cigar room with a fireplace? I mean, you'd have a gas fireplace. And a billions table. Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Yeah. And some leather chairs.

And we get the gas fireplace sponsored by some sort of terrible fossil fuel company. So they would pay for that. Marketing. Okay. All right. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often.

So you've got the social space, or maybe a couple of different kinds, like different rooms adjoined. Yeah, yeah. Sleeping and then, I think, co-working, do we have? Is there a, do you want the fast internet and? Well, you definitely. Definitely. I think you need fast internet throughout. Yeah, but better we have. Is the fourth level, like, actually, you can go and do, because we want to...

But you need a trampoline room or something. Oh, so a fifth floor for just, um, frivolity. Or a shark eating, no. This is very three-hap. A shark eating tank. A man-eating shark tank. I don't mind having a little swimming pool. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah. But not with sharks. Not with sharks. Okay. I mean, depending on if someone gets in who's not a member. But, um, no, maybe we could have a back-up. up shark and then it's the release the shark is there food it would need to be food could you get like deliveries well i think this is the thing where you want it somewhat professionally staffed

don't you like you can't because you know what you could do you have if you're a member of an exclusive club you don't want to clean up house yourself you've got to sort of don't you want to have this in a place why don't we get matt moran or somewhat like isn't he a bit sort of on the outer was he the one who was or no george calabaris yeah No, he seems to keep bouncing up. But some disgraced chef to be involved. A disgrace chef. So what we need, Charles, is a building.

And we blackmail the chef into doing it for free by saying, we've got more dirt on you. Okay, what I was thinking was you need to find somewhere in the inner city. Let's be honest, we're talking about Sydney here. Sorry, everyone else. But we can have a branch. It's got to have harbour views. Okay, you just killed the idea. But if you imagine somewhere in sort of city, free and, I don't know, Chinatown or something,

an old building that's not used for. much. Yes. That's near really good takeaway restaurants. So you could get like really good dumplings brought from the shop across the road. Would that work? And put in plastic containers so they're soggy. No.

They come bring the bloody plates over, wouldn't they? No, I think you want to enslave a chef, like blackmail a chef. I think that I think you want it to be classy. I feel like you're not, you're not dreaming big enough. No, but the problem, the place, I am dreaming big. I do because I actually want this to exist. It's not a sort of Bain Marie. style club.

This is a, this is a hub of views. So it's much better than say the Qantas Lounge. Oh yeah, it's Caviar Canapes on arrival. Oh my God, Charles.

What's what's happened to you? It's moored on tap. This is sounding like the chairman's lounge now. But, okay. Yeah, it's our chairman's lounge. That's what it is. It's the anti-social club.

That's a very good one. And what we do is the way we pay for it is we wield political influence. So the way we pay for it is not to actually make it make financial sense on paper, we do the whole quantistrict and just say, well, you can invite Tom. You can be invited. Oh no, but then you'd have to invite politicians to be. Yeah, that doesn't sound

idea. No, what you'd have is you'd have a full store and all the dickheads who wield influence would think that they're getting into the club and they'd all interact with themselves. There'd be a lift. There'd be a lift. They'd be a lift. That's good. That's good. That's good. That's the anti-anti-social club. Yeah, and then they all think that they're at the real club, but actually on the floor above is where the action really happens.

Could we, could we actually, could we ally with a business that just makes a stupid amount of money so that the other floors wouldn't need to work? Like, could we combine with some hedge fund or something that could basically write off, it wouldn't bother them that the downstairs floors lost $10 million a year or something. Because all they want is the influence from the... They can control the influence of floor. Yes. And then one or two of the people who work there, if they're nice, can actually be members.

And what we do is we illegally rig the entire, you know, important influences VIP floor with microphones. So they've got, the hedge fund has all the side information that they can trade on. So for them, it's just a complete no brain. It just makes money. I mean, to make this happen, we only need one billionaire. And we probably hook it up to an hour. We cut the hedge fund out. We hook that floor up to an AI and get it to trade on the information.

Automatically. Just to record all the conversations. Yes. And email it around. Well, no, no, not email it around. Just trade. Just make the money. Just directly go to the trade.

Yeah. Yeah. So somewhere between the flights of fancy and the caviar is an actual idea. I think the only social pub is a brilliant name. I think the only thing that's going to kill this is low ambition. I think we shoot for the minute. Just to be, just to explain, this is the same with every Charles's idea. You've got to upscale it.

Yeah, you've got to ups, no, because no one wants to join a club, which is like. It's got to be really good. Bain Marie. No, it's got to be really good. It's true. It's got to be in a very good building. It's got to be genuinely nice. It's got to be up on Macquarie Street.

Like, it's got to, you know, like those old buildings of doctor's offices and things of that. I mean, but that's such a boring part of town. It is a boring part. I think it should be in Chinatown. Get it on a warehouse. But it is a complete myth, Dom, that that's where there's good dining. Like, Chinatown is fucking shit. Like, if you want a good dining option in Chinatown, go to Auburn.

Yeah, you're Burwood. I know that. Yeah, but there's no restaurants left in Chinatown. That's where the warehouses are. That's where the big spaces are. That's what I'm saying. Anyway. And I suppose the point is if you...

If you own a building... If you own a building and you blackmail a chef, you can get them to... But if you own a building... building listening, podcast at chaser. Oh, yeah. You know, if you actually help make this happen, I mean, you can be a founding member. Maybe the opera house. If anyone owns the opera house, that would be good.

We all do. Well, perfect. We'll set out about our club there. No, customs house would be good. Yep. What about, is it, what about governor? Where does the governor used to? Because she, didn't she move out?

No, no, she's still there. Yeah, she's in the botanic garden. But we get government house, whatever it's called. Yeah, we, that's a good space. You can, you can try to get government house. You might find the police unhappy. Or you could make her remember. The governor should be into that, perhaps.

Step one's finding the right space. Yep, that's all right. And once we've done that, dot, dot, dot, succeed. All right, we should definitely register the antisocial club as a domain or something. That's right. What's the first thing to do is get the online assets. Okay, well, I mean, it's as good as done, really, isn't it? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, so we need lawyers who can explain. explaining how to register clubs work. And look, I've just done a brief spreadsheet to sort of work out how much it's going to cost. And if everyone can just put in like $700,000 a year, we can really get this flying. No, Charles, it's just $700,000 in the first year. Ah, right. Yes. Oh, no, that's what we should definitely do.

We have a really massive joining fee, which we waive because we're the founders for us. But everyone else just pays $700,000 up front. and then just a yearly fee of like a hundred bucks. They're after. They're after. Good. You see what I mean? If you got the 700 grand and you want to play, you're going to get in touch.

I couldn't be more confident that this will be in place by Christmas. And isn't this nice that you will have been listening? You were there. You were there when this idea got paid. But in all seriousness, I mean, your 50th is coming up. Yeah. 40th. My 50th is in about, what, 15, 16 months?

We ended it up. Up and running by then, place. Okay, that's good. And it's on Australia Day, my birthday, as previously discussed. Yeah. So what a fantastic way to completely forget what day it is. We're part of the Iconiclass Network, soon to be a member of the Anti-Social Club.