The Chaser Report - Tripping Down Memoir-y Lane | Shaun Micallef

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Shaun Micallef decides that after 30 years of making legendary Australian TV that it's time for him to join Charles, Dom, and Gabbi on The Chaser Report. Shaun has released an auto-biography called "Tripping Over Myself" and it's available for purchase in bookstores now. Please be better than us and read it before you meet Shaun yourselves. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gattie Goodland. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome, and welcome with Sean McAuliffe. Sean, welcome. Thank you. So, the first time I've been here. I'm so sorry that your career is now at a point where you've got to do podcasts. So my deepest sympathies.

I'm happy to do it. I've done them before. I did, I've done at least three. I reckon I've done three podcasts. Oh, my, where he's fourth podcaster, right? That's incredibly exciting. Fourth time's a charm. That's the same.

That's right. Now, actually, I was interested, Dom, you and I've met many times. Yes. Down and probably on John Fein Show. John Fein Show, possibly the only time I met before. But no, look, that was a great, that was a couple of times actually we did the Fein Show. That was a good show.

We're old friends. Old friends. And Gabby and I have worked on, she was a writer for Matt as Hell. Yeah. Absolutely. We met by email. We did. We met exclusively over email and one phone call.

And Charles, I met once in my life, and that was 25 years ago. when he fucking stole our loggie. Oh, what? We were up, news tape he was up for a logi. Yes. You might remember this. And we were removed from the list, apparently, because somebody in our cast had decided to do a television show

on Channel 10 called Talking About Your Generation. They said, they pulled it, they pulled it, leaving only Firth's special American documentary. Mr Firth goes to Washington. So he won the, he won our Logie. No, no, no, no, hang on, he didn't win the Logie. He just got it. He just took it.

Yeah, I just got it. Do you have a loki? We've got several of your loggies. The Chaser won two loggies. Charles, Mr. One, back to Washington, was lucky to be. Well, it wasn't really winning a loggie. It was more sort of not, not winning a loggia.

Yeah, he didn't lose. Yeah, that's right. He hadn't committed some crime for SBS. Anyway, congratulations. Thank you. Well done. It's nice. Actually, we did meet several years later.

at the Wayside Chapel. Oh, yes, we did too. Yes. And... We were praying together. Sure. I believe that. I remember you at the time

were talking very enthusiastically about this new show that you were about to put to air. Which one? It was called the former PM or something. The XPM. That's a better than a better name. The former PM.

And I didn't quite realise that you'd already sort of done us. Oh, no. Is this one of the things where you gave me? advice? I thought you were riffing. I thought you were riffing an idea and I was going, that's a terrible idea.

And then you were going, and you were really, you were very polite, but you could, I could see that you were very irritated because then, as it turned out, you're right. Let's be honest here. You're all right. And we do, you know, in the way of the ABC, we have of sheer bloody mindness,

they give us a second season. And had I had the conversation with you, I'm sure your advice would have been inside. Exactly. I did see though, Sean, And if the final ever mad as hell, you began by teasing the idea of entering politics. So I like the notion that your next step is going to be actually becoming an XPM. Is that what's on the agenda at this point?

Well, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? I think that sort of level of irony appeals to me, that sort of postmodern approach. I would like to end my career. I feel it's coming soon. To tie it up in a little postmodern beau like that, it'd be lovely. Would you do the whole Zelensky thing and, at least, attack a foreign nation and take them to war? It's an interesting read on history, Charles.

We've got some Russians on the team, and they keep me informed about how it all works. Yeah, Alex. Or pro-Russians, at least. Well, the thing that Zelensky didn't have that I have hanging over my head was, of course, I played a character called Milo Kerrigan and Full Frontal. Now, I think if Zelensky had actually done that, if Lottomere had done that, he wouldn't be president today. So I suspect that if I was to ever enter into the orbit of politics...

There'd be lots of attack ads. I reckon all they need do is just play a few YouTube clips. It's me done. Bring out the archive. Now, your new book is tripping over myself, your autobiography. The first sentence is, I'm not sure this book is such a good idea. What's the hard sell? I'm not even convinced it now, even though it's printed, and Charles is looking through it.

We received a copy yesterday afternoon. Oh, good. Well, that prevents you from reading it. I've read the first 50 pages or so. You're not only not yet working on TV, you're not only, you're not at uni at that point. Is there a pacing issue in the book, Sean, do you think? There's 400 pages. I know, it breaks into a bit of a sweat around about page 110. I think I certainly jump over my legal career.

If that's any consolation, you don't have to sit through 10 years of me being a solicitor running files for the State Government Insurance Commission. Fascinating though that might be, I have left that out. most people do three volumes. I mean, Stephen Frye, I think it's done three so far. Kevin Rudd's done four. Jesus had two. I mean, you know, well, actually, there's lots of books.

But, you know, like I'm thinking Old Testament, New Testament. Yeah, well, yeah, it depends where you look at it. The Mormons, the Mormon book, you have a third book. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the unadulterated sequel. Well, like, yeah, so I left, I did leave a bit out. So it does get a bit of a clip on if you can get over the first, 50 pages. I'm really disappointed you don't have an indexing. Oh, well, you know why? Oh, why?

Well, the very reason you would have picked up the book, Charles, would be to see whether you were mentioned in there. And not finding your name, you wouldn't have purchased it. People like you, I'm talking about, not you specifically. It was because, like, I only was given half an hour to read the entire book, and I wanted to see. But flipping through it, yes. Basically, you seem to have met every single famous person in Australia. It, Like, literally, this is just the biggest name-dropping exercise. It's an autobiography. I understood that was what you were supposed to do.

Oh, when I was working with Andrew Denton. Oh, when I was Andrew Denton. I mean, you could say that. You could say, that's nothing. It's not a big claim these days after, yes. I got lots of far more impressive people. Gary Sweet. Gary Sweet's in there.

Eric Clapton. Yeah, he and I share. See, if you go to Adelaide, if you go to Adelaide, do one of your shows, you know, and you're in the festival centre and you walk along the precinct around the precincts and the festival centre you will see stars of fame

and I am looking out over the River Torrance you'll see Eric Clapton's star Gary's sweet star and betwixt them is mine Oh wow Isn't that interesting That's like Destiny's child I love it

Yeah and I'm sure Eric and to a lesser extent Gary are impressed when they walk around One of the best known people ever to permanently abandon Adelaide Is that the question? I think, no, I had done a show in the precinct in one of the theatres once. Oh, okay. And that's the justification for getting it.

The qualification. Yeah, I mean, Eric and Gary, I'm sure, did far more work and stellar work than I did. But I appeared in a charity performance of relative values by Noel Coward. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Oh, wow. And I played Peter Inglton, the insusient, it's got an old coward character. I think I did a good job.

And we raised about $15,000 for some charity. Nice. And on the basis of that, I was rewarded with a star. That's great. And then could I just one more star question, which is you've got a photo of you with Barry Humphreys. Yeah, and it's ruined, though, isn't it? It's ruined that picture. Yeah, because it's got, what's his name in the middle?

Oh, so we can't even think of who it is, can we? What's his name? Are you reading them down here? No, I don't. No, Jamie Jury. The levels of preparation in this kind of interviewer. They're just staggering. But do you, like, is there stories about, I haven't read the book, obviously.

No, I well. When did you meet Barry Humphreys? Well, yes, I do tell the story beautifully in the book. Let me give you a truncated, boring version of it. Yes, rendering of it. No, he was the first guest on my short-lived but brilliant tonight show. On Channel 9. On Channel 9, called McAuliffe Tonight.

I don't know whether you saw that. Gabby, you'd be too young, probably to have seen. We all watched it. That was the greatest TV show. I absolutely loved it in television history, yeah. Well, Barry was the first guest. I think that was the main reason I did the show was I thought, oh, I get to talk to Barry.

I never met him, I quite like him. It is. So rather than send him a fan letter or bump into him and get his autographs something, I thought, I'd do it tonight's show. Pretend his guest. Anyway, so I'm fascinated. Barry's going to be on the show. So there's Barry on the show, and I've never interviewed anybody in my life, by the way,

at this point I should give you a little bit of background, which the Channel 9 people I don't think were aware of. I think they watched, they kind of watched Macal of Tonight, through, you know, in the next room and thought, oh, look, he's interviewing somebody, not realizing, of course, it's all scripted, yeah. So I'm talking to Barry, and asked Barry a question. Barry's answering. I'm like, oh, great, Barry's answering.

Barry's talking to me on camera. This is fantastic. And I kind of drifted off slightly because I was thinking, oh, what do we have to do after the next break? We're doing a gag, yeah, we have to do it. And I realized I just wasn't listening to him, and his voice was coming to that sort of that cadence where he's asked me a question, and I can hear his voice go up, and it stops.

And I look right at him, and I thought, I have no idea what you're saying. This is live television. maybe this is going out live. So I just went, no, but let me ask you this. And then went on to another topic that I hoped had not been covered in whatever we've been saying for the previous two minutes. I think history shows that I didn't get away with it. Did he, like, call you out afterwards?

Well, no, he said, you know, he actually said, not to me, but to others. He said, he really enjoyed doing the show, but that it wouldn't last. Oh, he said it wouldn't last. not because it wasn't any good in his mind, he just thought it was a bit too weird. That's scathing though, to be like, oh, I loved being there. It won't last, though.

Well, he was quite right. He was quite right. I do remember, though, the excellent ploy of the very first gag being running through the highlights of the show so far. Yes, we're inspired a little bit by Daryl Summers who would often have these sort of backpeting sequences in his shows. So we had it to 14 seconds in.

I think it was the very first observation made. the opening monologue. The other, the only decent gag in that first one, actually we pulled off quite nicely. We had Danny Minogue on. Oh my God, amazing. That wasn't a joke. Oh, I thought that was the gag.

No, no, that wasn't a gag. So she's singing, put the needle on it, I think. I think that was the song. Oh, yeah, that hit, which was less mirabal than the, than McAuliffe tonight. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, we gave a great bump for her career for selling that album. But in the cutaway, during the song, a cutaway to me, watching Andrew Denton doing enough rope on the ABC,

which was concurrently running parallel to our show. That's so funny. And as it turns out, most of the audience watching our show thought, oh, that's not a bad idea. Within about three or four weeks, Andrew was kind of top of the heap. Oh my God. Wait, what, like, what channel was that on again, Channel 9?

Well, we were on Channel 9 and Andrew was on the ABC. I can't believe Channel 9 even allowed, like, you doing that. Or do you just doing it? I'm right in thinking that you got the show, because my recollection is that you had several years of being the funniest think at the Logies by quite a long way, which is a compliment to you and an accurate reflection of the rest of the Logies. And so they went, this is actually, we should actually hire this guy because you were the

only thing funny on Channel 9 that night. Well, I was, yeah, I don't know specifically what the mindset was inside the boardroom that thought, yes, this is the next Graham Kennedy. But I do remember we've done, we've done the Macalough program on the ABC. They've done reasonably well for an ABC program, and I think that was quite good. I was also in C-Change. I don't know if you remember, but I was actually an actor for a while.

My mum loved C-Change. Well, she wouldn't like the third season. It was me in it. So, you know, Laura, played by Sigre with Thornton. She was going out with David Wenham in series one. She was going out with William McGuinness in series two. Twist and turns. And Sean McAuliffe in series three.

Oh, congratulations. The final season. Yeah, third time's a charm. Yeah. So I was kind, that was the most popular program in the country at that point. So I think I was riding on the crest of a number of. of different ways. Yes.

And they thought that was a good idea. And look, you know, I hosted the Logies the year before from memory, I think. 2001, I think. Because when we first got to go to it, we'd seen Denton doing it before. We saw you doing it. Somehow we had in our head the notion that Logies could be done funnily, which was never to be done again. But for a brief period there, it was actually quite, that was our first Logies in 2001.

Yeah, that's right. I remember you guys coming up to me and saying hello, because I really liked, I liked the first and the subsequent incarnations of Chaser. Was it C quadruple N, I think. Was it? Well, I think it was Election Chaser. It was 2001.

Maybe it was election chase out. But I remember contacting your executive producer who was Mark Fennacy at the time and just singing your praise. It's just saying, what a wonderful, wonderful show it was. And then we're up against each other, I think, that year for a loki. That's right. And, you know, I knew people.

Oh, I got it. Yes. And then four years later, Firth. Yeah. I mean not knocked you off. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. Can I just ask? I have spent most of my day knowing that you were coming in.

My one anecdote about how funny you are relates to, I think it must have been the third season of the McAuliffe program. You called it the McAilf Pogrom? Is that right? Yes, that's right. And I just thought the funny. I still think the funniest thing ever in the history of television is that the, and correct me if I'm wrong, because maybe I've misremembered and this is not true, but your set was a large

photo of yourself, a view mid-blink. Is that right? I think so. I don't know whether that was a third season, but certainly for one of the seasons, it may well have been the third. It was a bad picture done in a passport photo booth. Yes, yes. And it's brilliant, but you cannot find it on the web like there is not a single image of that you should put it you should have included in your book or something I sure because it's so funny well how do you know you haven't read it might be in there yeah there is an easter egg that is a good point but not everything you do needs to be on the internet let me just give you that advice well I think that's given that other people have uploaded all the chaser stuff from the early days and we're just basically

if anyone ever watches that stuff our careers such as they are these days it will be completely over. But I think that's a healthy thing. I think the internet is a very democratic place, and especially YouTube, you know, and people will curate what they wish. They'll say, well, I think this has value, and you might not think it has value at all. But that doesn't matter, because they think it does have value.

So you'll be remembered how they want to remember you. You don't have any saying at all. Yes. Unless you want to do an autobiography. In the vain hope you could change people's minds and hearts. You'll be remembered as that wanker who wrote an autobiography. That's right. But I did like, beginning

with the affectation of, you know, being quite self-conscious about the notion of setting it all down. But then a couple of pages in, you're very happy to just tell the story, very unself-consciously. I'm a comedy nerd. I mean, it's a sort of book that I would have loved to have read when I was 16 or 17 years old, because I was just so drawn to comedy, and I was fascinated by the mechanics of it, and I think I had an instinct for kind of how it worked, and I love marrying those two things together. And I love other people's stories about how they, you know, come to comedy. and I would read those happily and I figure this hopefully is like that.

It's just my version of how I managed to kind of get into television quite late in the game because I was about 30 when I decided that I would chuck in the law and become a comedy writer. I wasn't even going to be a performer. I figured that boat had sailed, you know. So I wonder what, you know, I would have been fun like you guys, you know, Gabby, you've been doing it since you were a teenager, probably comedy and no. I've only been doing it for about.

Two years. Two years. But you'd be in your 20s, okay? Yeah, I'm 26. In your 20s. And Charles and Dom, you would have done in your 20s as well. Before we finished uni, in my case, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But to know what you wanted to do at that early age, I find commendable. Yeah. It must have been very brave, though, to take the leap, having built up a career. Or did you just get to the point where you simply couldn't hack it anymore? I was watching the late show. I remember I was watching. Oh, really? Yeah, it was a couple of episodes before the final one.

And I had never watched it. I used to be very, kind of weirdly jealous of watching other people's comedy when they were about the same age as me. Like in the case of the... No, that's fair. Yeah, you see sort of like DJM were maybe a couple of years younger and I was going, well, I can't watch them because they're known to be funny and what if they really are funny?

And I could... Like, I'd go down to the Piccadilly cinemas in Adelaide to see something and there'd be a big huge picture of Steve Weizart up there because he hit his Tonight show. And he's a couple of years older then. Again, I couldn't watch his show either. So I was watching a light show with some of... Admittedly, he wasn't known to be funny, though.

Yeah, well, yeah, as it turns out, as it turned out, I think I think I shouldn't have been that worried, although his show was far more successful and probably better and funny than the one I try. The genius of him was getting other people to host it all the time. I think that's if you'd done that with McAuliffe tonight, if you've done the first show. No, no, no, haven't even done the first one. But you had Barry Humphries right there.

You could have walked off the set. Well, I should have, and it would have been a much better interview. Can I ask, how did you then get into full-frontal? Because that's a very quick transition from watching the late show to suddenly turning up on TV. To writing for its distant and slightly backward cousin. Yes. Well, fortunately, a fellow had been to uni with Gary McCaffrey,

who's a very, very well-known English comedy writer, he's really good. He was writing, he happened to be writing for Fast Forward, so I rang him up and said, can you get me a job? And he said, sure, that's fine. So I was working, in those days you would get, this is for full front or you would get minutes to air, you would be paid for minutes to air. And they would guarantee, they'd say, they'd guarantee you, they'd say, all right, 30 seconds a show, we'll guarantee you 30 seconds to air.

So I get paid 120 bucks a week for writing for full front or whether I got anything on or not. And if I got more than that on, then I would get paid more. If I got less than that, wouldn't matter. It still be 120 bucks. I mean, I'm a bit surprised, Sean, the book is so long. long given that the story is yo rang up and mate and got a job well that's right well no i but after that after that i've made many errors that's what's called tripping over myself i've made so many bad shows i think those are the interesting stories those are the things i've learned most from

keen to read in the rest of the book is the amount of time devoted to the many successes versus the ones that didn't go quite so well because yeah i think what else was bad didn't go quite so well they're the most interesting stories they are i agree and there's more of me There's more misses than hits in the book. But that's true of almost everyone who's had a long career in TV. I mean, we kind of had one idea flog that as long as we couldn't and then that was it. Whereas you came up with, you've done narrative stuff, you've done satire, topical stuff, all these, all different kinds of shows.

Well, the secret to my success, Dom, is that I've never done anything badly enough to not be forgiven. And I thought, nor have I done anything good enough to only be remembered by that one great thing. So I've had a middling career where I've been, it's hard to sort of pin me down a little bit. Sometimes I do a documentary, sometimes I do it. And I am attracted to doing things that I've never done before. In fact, those are the things that. I mean, panel shows, quiz shows, that kind of, it's all part of the tapestry. We only had one idea.

Yeah, I think we've all got a skill set that's on, let's assume it's an A4 piece of paper. Our ability to fold it in as many different interesting shapes as possible, I think, is probably the skill that you need to survive. in the Australian television industry and the ability to make your own work, which is what all comedians should be doing is make your own work because no one is going to ask you to do anything. So what's the worst project you've ever done?

The worst one. Well, probably radio. I did radio. Breakfast radio, and I wasn't very good at it. I thought I had to write everything. I wasn't relaxed. I couldn't tell stories about my life. And I kind of, I wasn't.

You know what? I thought it was beneath me, truth was, it was beyond me. I just, I wasn't able to take advantage of that opportunity. Was this vaguer? Yes, it was vaguer. Because I mean, we've had a bit of a commercial radio experience as well. And the strange thing is they hire you for one particular skill set. And they love hiring kind of wordy ABC comedian types, but then try to make them the exact opposite of that. I mean, we had someone who were three minutes into any talk break, which just started basically aggressively threatening to punch us unless we can't do a point

and they could play, you know, a nickelback or something like that. Well, we started off, and the promise was we were told, okay, it's Radio National with Music. That sounds nice. That is. That sounds good. Do that. Okay.

So we did that for about, you know, they had a test signal on, and that was writing quite well. We came in, dropped off a little bit, unfortunately, and within a month, within a month, they'd gone, I think they should have gone back to the test signal idea. But anyway, within a month, they said, all right, forget about Radio National with music. Let's go for, let's go 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This is in 2005, by the way. So I'm there, what about the 2000s?

I always told this with a straight face by the chief programmer saying, oh, there's not been too many good pieces of music made during the 2000s, apparently. Those 15 years were a complete write-off, so there was no point playing any CDs from that period. So then we were expected to do personal stories, and I'm not very good at that. I'm not a stand-up comedian. I'm not like Denise Scott, who's very good at that sort of thing,

so she was able to fold in a lot of her material just as general conversation, whereas I would take a digi recorder home and go for a walk on the beach and pretend to interview an old fisherman, doing both voices. That was the sort of crap. I was handing up, and so they didn't want that, and it was unpleasant. And then I went off and didn't use Topia, which was... Oh, which was brilliant. 10 past 10 on a Wednesday.

Perfect. Nearly won a Logie, but I don't want to go into that story again. Fair enough. It is heartbreaking. It is amazing, though. Mad as Hell has just gone for so long, 15 seasons long, going back to the start of this government. Is it not a coincidence that it comes to a finish as we have a Labour government?

It's a bit too neat, isn't it? Yeah. No, I think we would have been fine. I think if the appetite had been there, and it was just as ravenous as it was when we started, because when we started, we certainly had a Labor government. Yeah, and there was plenty to deal with with the Rudgillard. Yeah, absolutely. And I suspect, you know, the great thing about the Labor government is that they will eventually fall short of your expectations.

By the time you would have been doing another show next year, guaranteed there would be plenty to work with it. Yeah, and we were growing some characters. And, you know, I think the shock was that we had nine years of quite interesting characters from the LNP, which we had to put aside. So, but that wasn't the reason we stopped. The reason we stopped was I just felt that 10 years was enough. It's ridiculously long. I mean, that's the lifespan of, five other shows. Yeah, and when we started, I remember Mark was doing, Mark Humphreys was doing the roast.

Yes. Which Charles started. Yeah, that's right. And I always felt that that, I remember talking to Sophie Zachariah who I think might have been producing it. Yeah, she was there at your pet. And I said,

I said these two, these were two, you know, like in the way that John Stewart's show and Stephen Colbert's show used to follow each other. I thought, this would make a really interesting hour. Yes, yes. I agree. Well, I did suggest that.

I thought, I thought, well, I don't care who follows who, But on Fridays it would be really nice. You were doing nightly pieces, five minutes each, five minutes, ten minutes. No, we're doing 15 minutes a night. And they allowed us during the election, I think, to go after you. I think it was. Or no, no, maybe it was before you. And it boosted your ratings as well.

Like they gave us the main channel slot, like one night a week. It must have been Wednesdays. So you should really be saying thank you for the rate. And no, no, and you're, and you're, you. Your instinct is exactly right, which is we sort of both benefited from being in the same space, but it was the same sort of audience. And we both, whether it was you or I can't remember which one was on an eight, but we were following, well, it might have been Friday or Wednesday.

If it was Wednesday, we were immediately coming out of 7.30, which was a much better place for a show like that to be. Yes, that's right. Rather than maybe after as good as Tom's hard quiz is, it might be better actually follow, you know, the news and 730 and then suddenly you get a nice comment. In all the material, you don't have to spend time setting it up. Anyway, for that reason, and I said, we could also play with each other in that sort of gap between the, you know, when one show finishes and one show starts. Anyway, that didn't happen, unfortunately, because I think there was a lot of really good writing talent.

Oh, yeah, well, the people who came out of that show were just fantastic, including Mark. Yeah, yeah, he's still on, isn't he? He's still on TV. I think you're speaking to him, in fact, next Wednesday. Now, I'm being told that you do have to go on ABC Radio. Without music, coming up. So thank you for coming. We can chat to you again, if you like, once we've read the book.

If we might have some more informed questions. I'm done. It's been good. If you want to see, Sean, he's in Perth tonight. Brisbane, the 11th, October. Sydney with Mark Humphrey's on the 12th. Canberra on the 13th, 5th of November, which is Saturday in Melbourne. Tuesday, it's the 8th of November in Hobart and the 9th in Lonsestan.

Did you do that from memory? No, I've got it in front of me. Oh, all right. You know, I'm interested, but they're not that good, Sean. No, not that good. It's a tripping over myself tour. If you want to go and see him, being interviewed by lots of, frankly, better interviewers than we've shown ourselves to be able to course of this conversation.

And the book is out now tripping over myself. Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Thank you. What a pleasure it is. It's lovely. Yes. And I'm sorry we can't keep going, but, yeah, you've got to go and do other stuff.

I've got to go and talk to Richard. I don't know what I'm going to talk to him about. He would have read the book. He would have read the book. He has, I've seen it on his desk. I saw it on his desk. Our Gears from Road with Part of the Acast, Creator Network. Catch you next time.