The Chaser Report - Thinking Foreword for Christmas

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Charles shares with Dom one of his more embarrassing mistakes of the year, which got printed on thousands of Christmas cards. Plus, because learning from mistakes is one of our strong suits, guess what highly breakable item we started selling again?---Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen 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.

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. And today's episode of The Chaser Report is powered by ants. There are many ants all over the table on which we're recording. So lovely we can do this in power. Charles is just... You're removing our listeners.

It's squashing our listeners. I'll just get one there. There's another one. Bang. Oops. Well, I feel like it wouldn't truly be summer unless. Your table was overrun, one's table was overrun by horrible ants. One's cup runneth over.

I think someone left like one Sultanah, was that what it was? No, one of Hartley's friends left some McDonald's. Actually, you'd think that the ants would probably die or hate McDonald's, isn't it? That's a really interesting scientific story. They'll probably live forever now. They will, yes, they will live forever. Very good. All right.

Well, what are we talking about? So today, look, this is not, like, I know that newer listeners of this podcast would think of me as this very erudite, but also quite competent and I'd say not at all stuff it up type of person. Do you think that's what the newer listeners would do? Yeah, I think so. But older, longer listeners to this podcast, listeners who sort of have been with us for many years now would know that very, very increasingly. Occasionally, from time to time, I launch a line of merchandise and then fuck it up. Yes. Such as our friend mentioned in the weekend edition for subscribers who's listened to more than 8,000 episodes of the podcast in the past 12 months.

He would be. Was it Jack? Is that right? Yeah, Jack would know that merchandise, they're occasional issues. There was a time you decided to order. I think it was mugs. Oh, mugs. Very breakable mugs.

I wasn't even thinking about the mugs. Yes, the mugs. That was a shattering. Disastering Disaster? I think we shattered the first, like literally we got 100 mugs printed and 99 of them got shattered. Yeah. And then we did a reprint. And then most of those got shattered as well, even though we were wrapping them in like state-of-the-art bubble wrap.

Yes. And then the most famous of them, though, is the avocado pool toy. Yes. Which was an elaborate joke on the whole. You can only afford smashed avocado if you're a millennial or younger, which A means they didn't have money to buy an avocado pool toy, and B, that it was a slightly sneering a gift from someone who earns a house. It was horrible.

So anyway, so we'll get on to the latest merchandising disaster, and it must be Christmas coming up. That's what this means. Yes. When Christmas is imminent, Charles loses money on bad merchandising. We'll explain why after this. Okay, so you know how, you know, we've got the chaser, which is great. There are a lot of ants.

But the latest... Okay, okay. The latest, you know, venture that I'm involved in is Wankanomics. Yes, that's the very successful venture. And part of the success of that is that James Schleffel has a real attention to detail, should we say. Is that why the shovel's so good? That's right. You know, the sort of, you know, and just a bit of a classiness around design and stuff like that.

He does. He's very good with aesthetics. He's from Melbourne. I think that's what it is. Yeah. Although originally from Adelaide, I found it the other day. So, that's one to put a pin in front of the time. Anyway. So anyway, for some reason, I got lumped.

I think I said to James, oh, I'm really good at merch. Oh, did you? Right. Let me handle the merch this year. Not a podcast listener then, I'm gathering. For Mankanomics. And so we put out a series of extremely successful Christmas cards, right? Oh, that's right.

A three-pack. There were three different designs. They did really well. Yeah, they did really well. What were the jokes on them? Well, so there were things like, well, I'll show you, you know, there's a green one, which is, I hope you outperform all your Christmas KPI's by EOY, EOY, yeah, yeah. It's TLA, three-letter acronym, very good.

Then we had another one, which was, we wish you an outcomes-focused Christmas and an agile new year. That's very, that's very good. That's really affectionate. And then we had a third one, which just simply reads, have a best in class, value-added Christmas moving forward. Now, Dom, you're reading it on screen. Can you see what the problem is with that card? Yes. What?

He's trying to catch me out. Forward is normally spelled with an R. I'm sorry, with two R's rather than one. It's moving forward. Forward. F-O-W-R-D. Which, to be fair to you, Charles, I think is how Julia Gillard used to pronounce it. Didn't she use it 21 times in her first speech as Prime Minister?

Obviously, that's what I was aiming for, right, when I sort of printed several thousand copies of these. and then sold them all around the world. But the thing is that no, apparently Ford is spelled F-O-R-W-A-R-D. I might add that no bit like these have been on sale for about a month and it is only now like literally a month into selling thousands of them that somebody has pointed out that it's F-O-R-W-A-R-D. To be fair to you, I didn't notice at first and it was only the fact that you told me that there was a problem

that I started turning my proofreading brain on So what do I do? This is a disaster. You register foreword.com and lean into it, I'd say. I lean into it, yes. Because my immediate reaction was, because I don't even know how we'd make good on all the overseas customers. It's a combination of forward and toward.

Yes, it's actually, yes, it's not a mistake. It's a new bit of jargon. It's a McKinsey-style. Yes. It's new. You need the next Wankanomics book. needs to be just called forward. Forward, yes, moving forward.

That's right. Okay. Yes, and I come up with a whole management style technique about leaning into your mistakes. Because you can copyright forward. I mean, this is a LinkedIn post, isn't it? This is a LinkedIn post. I stuffed up my 2025 supply chain.

Here's how it. And I reinvented management theory for the next decade. A lot? Okay. No, that's good. I don't feel too bad at all. Think of it as your North East Star. Yes.

You've done the North Star already. That's done. That's the North East Star. And I think, look, in fairness, I think with the state of education in both England and Australia, which are the two places we're selling, no one's going to pick up the typo anyway. It seems unlikely. Yeah, it's sort of, they stopped teaching spelling, well, back when we were kids. Yeah, it's actually their fault.

We were the last generation to learn. Like Jack, who's 13, our. top listener, he wouldn't know how to spell. He wouldn't know. He doesn't even know how to spell Jack. What was the number? It was 8,000 and something minutes on the Spotify Raps. His parents got in touch quite concerned.

He clearly doesn't have any time. You've got to pay a small amount of money to listen to that one. And I really enjoy that episode. But for those, the slightly broader audience who don't pay, if any of you can prove that you've chalked up more than that, we'll send you a really badly designed poorly spelt Christmas card. No, it's really nicely elegantly designed. The design is beautiful.

It's a really nice font. You can marvel at Charles's... No, no, it was James who came up with the design. Oh, of course. It's just a bit of font. Okay. So you email a podcast at chaser.com. com with the screen cap of your Spotify, it wrapped.

Yeah. And if you change it in Photoshop, we'll know, because Charles is a master of graphic design as we've been learned it. Okay. So, well, that's my disaster, but I feel like... Is there Chaser merch? No. We've given up on a chaser.

It's a merch. Well, no. It's hard to do with your burgeoning international empire. No, what, it's a lesson in procrastination, Dom, which is in about, I reckon it was like March or April. I said to John, John, we need to have a meeting about merchandise. And then maybe two weeks ago, he emails me and says, so are we going to do any merchandise? It was like, like, I don't know, like, there's no. Like, I reckon I've gone through my entire life occasionally procrastinating on things.

like most things, right. But I reckon I have become better at it. Oh, for sure. Over the course of my life. Because previously I might have procrastinated and then in about August or September going, oh, fuck, we've got to organise this business. But to leave it. That's what you normally do.

And that's when you pull out the avocado. Yes. It's kind of like going, which inflatables haven't sold. What's the quickest thing to get over here from China? Yeah. But no. Yeah. But so on the,

Bright side, Christmas 2026. There's never been a better time to do next year, because Christmas will come around again. The only thing I'd say is we do have old merchandise on sale, and it seems to be selling quite well. Like, we've got this teetail about the housing crisis, which is literally five years old.

Timeless. Timeless. But it's timeless because actually the housing crisis, thank God, hasn't... Yeah, isn't that a relief for you? And then... If nobody else. Our 2023 Christmas cards are selling like hot cakes at the moment, because They feature people like Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce.

Oh, yes. Both of which just, and I think Albo, all the boom is still around. Nothing changes. Well, I mean, my, I was going to get my book into the Chaser store to make sure I got lots of sales. Yes. The book that I did last Christmas. Oh, Trumpopedia. No, no, the dictionary of terrible ideas.

Oh, right. And that I completely failed to do that. Was that the year before, whenever that book was. Yeah. I totally stuffed up. I think it was 12 months ago. Totally stuffed up getting the merch done on that. Well, that's very chaser shop style.

It's on brand. Yeah, yeah. The Chaser report. More news. Less often. So, all right, we'll go and buy old merchandise. But will they get it in time for Christmas if they order now? Well, I mean, yes.

Christmas 3,26. Well, it depends how you define time. It depends how you can find Christmas. I mean, are we doing Russian Christmas? And will they get it? I mean, people, in a sense, people got the money. mug. They received pieces of the mug, but they could have glued together if they'd wanted a mug. So you know, with Wankanomics, we also decided to do mugs for some strange reason, right?

So I, but we got them out of Latvia because I went, okay, we're going to, we're going to do this properly. We're going to get ones that come with proper, but environmentally sound packaging. You're doing environmental supply chain management. So they're all packed in this extraordinary. So I ordered one just to make sure, like it's a prototype. And they're printed really nicely. They look great. And they come in this very elaborate one piece of cardboard box that folds origami style into this, like...

Oh, that sounds good. This wonderful skeleton around the mug, right? It sounds very Johnny Ives to me. Yes, yes. And yes, it's exactly like that. It's like pulling, unboxing an Apple product type thing. But we're still getting people, like every day we get it three or four people emailing in with photographs of broken mugs.

from England. I'm just thinking that maybe mugs aren't the go. The people who are the mugs are the ones who sell mugs. That's my mantra. And you won't learn that in business school. You've learned a lot, haven't you? No, well, I just think, we've never done Chaser report. Merch.

I'm thinking a bumper sticker that says my other podcast is the rest is history. Or something like that. Oh, I like that. Yes. I can't believe we haven't changed the name of the podcast to The Rest is Chaser yet. We did one episode called that. And it was our most successful episode ever. They're doing like, they're doing like the rest is festival.

And we could say, in the UK, we could say to them, look, the rest is chaser really should be on your bill. Should be on the bill. Because you can't actually trade. I don't know. Maybe we could send a legal precedent for whether or not you can sue. Because we would be semi-passing off. If they trademark the rest is, I don't know.

Surely they have. I probably have. Gary Lennox is not a full. The rest is copyrighted. Yeah. I think. Our IP podcast. I like the idea of, like, because remember Triple M in the 1980s used to have those

Triple-M rocks, and then you can get your... Triple M rocks. Rocks, Glebe, whatever. And they just had your suburb. Triple M never rocked the inner west of Sydney. That's big glit. So should we do ones where you can localise the stick up? Yeah, I yeah, definitely do it at a far, far more SKUs.

That's the way to do it. The Chaser report, rocks. You know, wherever, is it rocks? No, intellectualizers. Triple M rocks. Oh, yeah. Patronizers. Yeah, patronise.

The Chase Report. Your Honourises Adelaide, I think that's... Yeah, okay. That works. I feel like that's not quite the... No, it wouldn't... I mean, it would be accurate. Cover? Like, the Chaser Report?

Covers. Now covering. Yeah, yeah. Breaking... Oh, now mocking glebe? Now mocking glebe. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

If anyone's got a better wording, yeah, again... Podcast at chaser.com.com. That can be for Christmas 2026. Yes, that's right. Because apparently there's this thing called podcasting. or something, I don't know. Have you heard of podcasting? Anyway, no, we haven't managed to do that yet.

We haven't done, there's a lot of things we haven't done. But we're still here. And apologies for the last few days, by the way. Life got very much in the way in all kinds of ways. We were quite jet-lacked. We only missed Monday's Eve. We missed two, I think. Possibly three.

Yeah, a few. But they're daily. I mean, for heaven's sake, there's 1,200 episodes. Go back. Yeah, I feel like maybe we need to just dial it down and get two bigger episodes a week. And then... Yeah, look, we'll. And then a weekend.

We'll have a think about what to do in the new year. But the point is, the rest is chaser. But we're going to just be broadcasting all the way through, aren't we? We're not going to stop for school holidays. I thought we said we were. I'm joking. You should have been your face.

I just looked horrified. No, we'll figure it out. And then we're back in 2026. Bigger. Bigger and better than ever. Better, brighter. More, more. More, more.

And with video. That's the other thing. Oh yeah, yeah. Actually, with the video, we've got the first batch of video coming out this week. Oh, that's good. Yeah. That's good. So Dylan, who was editing our podcast, has been editing up a whole of video highlights. Well, if we want to do video next year, that gives me about six weeks to lose about 10 kilos. So just to look good on camera. You know how it is. Oh, yeah, yeah. The camera adds pounds. I think we just use filters, don't. Do we? Is that a thing? Yeah. All right. Can I use a the bulimia filter? A digital avatar of myself. Yeah. Okay.

You go, oh my God, Dublin looks so similar to George Clooney. Yeah. Look, there's a lot of news happening in the world. Yeah. Fair to say, we haven't really addressed it in detail in this episode. No, but we do have, just a tease for tomorrow's episode, I have the most wonderful statement from the British Labor Party to share with you time. Oh, good. Yeah, let's go out on that.

It's all about how, it's all about migrants and how the British Labor government views migrants. It's going to be a wonderful episode. We are recording. It's all right. That's not the right window. We are still recording. No, Charles just showed me his laptop. It just had nothing recording. Yeah. I was quite stressed. No, it is clearly recording. Thank God. Wouldn't it wanted a word of this one to go down the digital tubes? Okay. We're part of the Icona class network. Catch you tomorrow. Hang on. What's the other word from the British Labor Party?

Oh, shall I read it out? Yeah, give us a teaser. Oh, so your blood boils. Okay. Here's the British Labor Party. We'll talk about this. So the home office put out an X or a tweet. A twat. Over the weekend. Britain welcomes migrants who contribute to our economy and society. Isn't that nice?

High earners, entrepreneurs and skilled frontline workers like NHS staff will be fast-tracked to settlement. Rewarding those who give, not take. It honestly says that. Oh, they don't like the takers. They don't like the takers. The British Labor Party. They don't like the takers. want the entrepreneurs. That's a good working class labour value. But if that's the sentiment,

the high earners and the entrepreneurs, that's who we want. If we want the highly competent to migrate, well, how on earth did the English cricket team get visas to come into Australia? Yeah, you're right. Or they take wickets. Oh no, yeah. They don't. They don't take wickets. Well, that's why. They give us wickets. They give us victories. All right. There you go. Iconicles network, etc. Bye.