The Chaser Report - WAR STORIES: Andrew's Crazy Warehouse Guy Returns

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

This Summer The Chaser Report presents... WAR STORIES! Andrew is back for our Summer Stunt Series, and this time he's ready to talk about some of his most notorious characters. Everyone loves the Crazy Warehouse Guy and the Surprise Spruiker, but only Andrew knows the difference between them. Just make sure to listen before midnight tonight before our manager goes absolutely crazy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Welcome to another summer stunt series episode of The Chaser Report, where we look back on some of the glory days of chaser stunts now that we're all old and middle age. Charles Firth is here. I'm Dom Knight, and Andrew Hanson, he is at the plate once again, telling us about some of his highlights and low lights from particularly the war and everything, but some of the other series as well. Hello, Andrew. Hello, this is nice to just catch up on a summer and have a bit of a chat about old times, isn't it? Isn't it's a lovely thing to do? Yeah, and of course we're not recording this in December.

No. You know, we're all coming into the studio each day to record these. So how has your January been so far? Oh, look, it's been the best, best, most summary of January's. Let me tell you, the first was brilliant, the second of January. That was a good day, too. Oh, that was great, though, yes. Did you enjoy the third or?

Absolutely cork, no criticisms to make so far of the January we're having. I hope you're having a good January at home. It's been a bit about the wet weather, though, hasn't it? Well, or dry weather. And the dry weather, yeah. If only it was going to be dry weather. For today's episode, we're going to take a look back at one of Andrew's most beloved characters, the crazy warehouse guy. That's in a moment.

The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Andrew, you did a lot of these, didn't you? I did a lot of crazy warehouse guys. Yeah, yeah. There used to be this type of TV commercial. Like, I mean, if you're listening to this and you're below a certain age, you've probably never heard of these TV commercials. Unless you live in regional Australia, where they might still be on there. People who own discount stores still record their own ads.

Do they still? People who own discounts. They may well. And particularly Persian rug warehouses and things like this. And they used to have a voiceover artist who would literally scream into the microphone. And the louder it was, the bigger the bargains. Wasn't that the logic? Yes, we're like, the bargains, bargains, bargains, huge bargains.

they would literally scream like this, end of the microphone. It was the most annoying and horrible ads, and they were always on late at night. And I think somebody had the idea that it would be funny if one of those voiceover artists, if we got a glimpse into his life, and then he walked around speaking like that all the time. A lot of the war was, a lot of the war was,

here's a sort of premise, let's just use it in 20 different places. It was, yeah, a lot of it was. Yeah, like, what if that guy or that, I mean, There was even a, where can you take a horse. Yeah, the Trojan horse. That was great fun. No, not that.

There was a real horse. No, no. Where can you take a real horse? A real horse? Oh, yes, that's right. Don't you remember, Tommy? Yeah, which I think, because Chris Taylor finds horses very funny. He does.

Yeah, yeah. And I think he had this idea that it would just be funny to take a horse into different shops. So, which is what he did. Where can you take Mr. Darcy was another one of. That was another one. That was another one. That was another one. No, it was.

It was. And I did one, you know, wouldn't it be interesting? I noticed in American soap operas that a lot of people, when they talk to somebody else, they have their back towards them. That's right. I think it was a camera, I think it was so that, you know, both actors could be facing towards the camera. And you'd see somebody over the other actor's shoulder. And there'd be someone in the foreground having a meaningful, you know, deep and meaningful conversation saying, you know,

I don't know if we can go on like this. I mean, if the Prince of Morocco never returns, then, you know. or whatever it is. And so I thought that would be funny too to just turn up on buses or walk into shops and engage someone in a conversation and then immediately turn around

to face the opposite way and continue talking to them. And it turned out to be quite funny because people don't walk away. At first I thought, would they just walk away? But they don't. If you walk up to somebody

and face to face, oh hi, I'm just wondering if I could ask about, and then you turn around and just deliver the rest of the conversation, facing the other way they don't they don't leave or any like you've engaged them and they stand

there and patiently trying to talk to your back human beings are so funny because we're so polite and we don't even question nobody none of them questioned me standing there with my back to them for ages

and the beauty of the show was if they did you'd just cut them out in the edit well that's true that's true if you didn't get what you want yeah cutting room floor cutting room floor But anyway, back to the crazy warehouse guy. Yeah, because this was just such an enduring thing

because it's just such a funny voice. It's so completely like you're talking about the politeness of humans. The crazy warehouse guy is so completely socially inappropriate and yet people still feel they've got to interact with him. Yeah, well, they sort of did. Yeah, you do rely on people's essential politeness. And the first ever outing that the crazy warehouse guy had was into a McDonald's.

because that often seemed like everyone knows McDonald's. I think we often went into McDonald's to do things. We did to the point where the ABC actually said, you've got to stop doing stunts in McDonald's because we feel like they're getting all this free promotion. It made no sense. We were annoying them time and time again, and somehow that was helpful to them, I don't know.

Well, yeah, it's a relatable place. Everyone kind of gets its very public, but it's also quite formal. Yeah, there are rules. There are rules, yeah. It's inappropriate to misbehave in a McDonald's, So it's kind of funny. So I guess that may be made sense. And also, there was a McDonald's very near the studio.

That's true. It was really handy to pop out. Anything that was in the studio was just used again and again. Yeah. Yeah, I once had a, like, media studies professor tell me that they thought that the chaser was a sort of revolutionary breakthrough thing for multiculturalism in Australia. because, you know, a lot of the stunts were done, you know, in Asian language areas of Sydney. Yeah. And, you know, and, you know, depicted Asian sort of cultures and people.

No, somebody, an academic thought that. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, yeah, because the ABC is next to Chinatown. Yes. And it wasn't multicultural show. Like, it was full of white men. No, it was not at all. Interacting with.

But the fact that. We occasionally talk to people who happened to be in Chinatown. The kind of camera cannon photo were non-wise. I suppose that Canada's progress back then. It broke down, you know, Howard's Australia, blah, blah, blah. I love academics. I love academics. I wonder what an academic would make of the Crazy Warehouse guy.

So, Andrew, which one of you chosen? Which one of your chosen for us? I'm sure linguistics professors would actually break down the Crazy Warehouse. Yeah, I'm sure there's PhDs on Crazy Warehouse. Crazy Warehouse PhD. That is a sketch, a Crazy Warehouse Guide delivering like an occasional address at a PhD ceremony. That would be great. We never did that.

His PhD would be in all caps. Yes, yes. I don't think we ever had we never had him shouting. We shoot a PhDs, PhDs. Academic madness. We should have had him do that. I can't believe we didn't think of that. Turning up a lecture.

You've got a PhD in gender studies. I think the one we want us to listen to is his first outing, his first live out. His first appearance was actually just a parody of an actual rug ad. But the first time that I went into a public place and actually shot him standing there and yelling, yeah, I'm pretty sure the first one was Adam McDonald's. And it was one of the only ones where I didn't go with a script because normally I would write or we would get together

and co-write a script for him to deliver somewhere. But in the McDonald's, I think because it was the first one, we just was more of a let's go out and see you know what happens when he goes in and just shouts in places and I I was able to essentially make the script by just looking up at the menu on the wall and yelling it

so that's what that's what you'll now hear me do or hear the crazy warehouse guy do in McDonald's here it is hello I'm fine I'd like to order a meal thanks but I just need a moment to decide I can't believe how many choices you've got here.

Bacon and egg tight, chicken, Italian Supreme, chicken tanturi, veggie, pasto, turkey and cranberry, chicken, season, mustard meat, Big Mac, quite a pound of a cheese for chicken, fill in a fish, small value there for only 525, that's 525, unbelievable value, 525, that price is never to be repeated,

525, cellars plus, nothing under 10 grams of fat, that's 10 grams of fat, there's nutrition for you. It's absolutely amazing, you better grab it from all that style. I assume I was being escorted out during that last... The birth of an icon. The thing is with McDonald's as well,

as they would have had people genuinely, like, shouting at them at other times of day. Like, if you'd gone in there on two or three in the morning, you probably wouldn't have been able to be heard over all the chatting. They barely batted an eyelid, the poor staff. They probably just went, oh, that's Joel, the regular. Yes, yeah. That's right.

Come in for the usual order. They probably had it ready. They probably had exactly that order. ready to go to the crazy man. The Chaser report less news more often. Am I right in thinking, Andrew,

because you were, you know, we worked out with all these very carefully scripted lines for both the crazy warehouse guy and the surprised Spruca, the other somewhat similar character that you did. And didn't you just do

them over and over again if you didn't, if you got to the end, you just kind of went back to the start yeah yeah you would you would yeah because it's you know for tv so so you'd want to get a few good takes so yeah i would normally just turn up to the place deliver the script several times over maybe maybe six or seven times um and then we'd choose the best take we'd you know that would essentially be like doing a take i always just felt that must have been even stranger for the people actually yeah oh terrible horrible for me so awkward so because i'm non-confrontational person and yeah to stand there and yell that and then do it another six times in the same spot is a very humbling experience.

But I think also your ability to memorize dialogue, which is, you know, far above everyone else in team, that then made Mr. Ten questions work, didn't it? Because I don't think anyone else could possibly have remembered and sort of sequentially delivered the ten questions in the way that you did. I cheated with Mr. Ten Questions on me, because he was a reporter character, right? Mr. Ten questions. So it made sense that he could. have a clipboard and I actually I made the clipboard

part of his part of his appearance because they all had bursting the illusion they had their own little wardrobe and instinctive items like the Sproaker's hat

Sproker's hat Sproker always had the same hat and I don't want this to irritate you Andrew but what was the difference between surprise Sproof and crazy wearhouse

everyone everyone used to ask this and we didn't know and I didn't really know I think there was a slight difference but not much. They're basically very similar. And a lot of their...

They both are British accent. No, the surprise spruker's Australian. No, the other way around. The Crazy warehouse. Crazy warehouse guys, Australian. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, we just heard this. Yeah, the Crazy Wehouse guys Australian.

The Spruca is British. And then the Surprise Spruca was like the Gowing's guy. Yeah, and Lowe's. Like outside Lows and Gowingings. There are always these guys with big microphone boxes. Doing that thing in live, it was extraordinary. And they've gone to... And in Melbourne, it used to be at that place near the town

Hall on Swanson Street. Oh, Swanston Street was for them, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's that sort of downstairs place, you know. And that'd be these sort of English guys, and for some reason, these English fellows would stand out the front of the store, and they were a very, very persuasive sort of people who's talking to microphones and say the word madness a lot, I noticed. Because I went out and researched how those spookers spoke by just listening to them

for a few hours one day. There's different catchphrases for each of them, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, although in the end of the crazy warehouse guy and the surprise Spruco. did share a few catchphrases. They both talked about madness and insanity and the boss going crazy, and they both had great concerns

for their boss's mental health. And they also were very big on imposing midnight deadlines on their sales. If it was always like, you've got to be out there by midnight tonight! Or the spruker would say, you know, they all have to be sold by midnight tonight.

You know, so they were pretty similar. The bed diagrams did he say, I remember Chaz and I were obsessed, possibly Charles, we talked to you about this as well, but there was a guy outside Lowe's on Park Street in Sydney. We'd actually do this. And I remember him always going, I sail for the needy, not for the greedy. That was his every moment. Brilliant, brilliant.

Where did these guys go? They're gone. You know what did them in, though? What? Tate C. No, because somebody, at some point in the 1990s. Somebody realized, oh, wait, we could just replace all of them with a recording. Yeah, they had a recording two years of that person.

You're right. You're absolutely right. In fact, I think the Melbourne... How did they not realise that 30 years earlier? Maybe because the tape was too expensive. Probably back then it was cheaper to just hire a British man. Hire a person to do it. And then when you watch Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels,

there's that amazing first scene where the guy's spruiking like stolen goods on the... And it's exactly the same patter. So somehow we've got them directly from Cockney, Cockney, Lund. Oh, yeah, we did. Yeah, no, they've got a down pat. You know, they've worked out a great sales spiel that Australians never really worked out. Oh, except for when we shatter like this, when we kind of borrowed this, you know. Did they ever meet?

Was there a sketch where they met? I thought, I remember that. There is a sketch. There's a climactic sketch where the crazy warehouse guy meets the surprise spruker. And they have a confrontation. And all the, yeah, the common words get. In a rug warehouse. We shot it in an actual Persian rug warehouse.

At that point, you just can't really take the characters anywhere else, can you? That's just... Well, that was it. I mean, we felt it had run its course, I think, by then. You know, so it needed an ending, didn't that? You were never the bravest when it came to doing their sorts of stunts. It was always a bit better thing, didn't you? I hated them.

I hated doing them. And so did Chris, Chris Taylor. No, it was sort of, Craig and Julian loved doing them. relished, relished going out and upsetting people. Julian Morrow still does, as you can. If you've been keeping up with the new... Be careful, man. Yeah, he may sue you.

No, he may sue you. He sued someone else than chasing yet. No, he's having the time of his life to upsetting people out there. And I wasn't. I'm very non-confrontational, but I did like the joke. So I would do something for the gag, but I didn't have a good time. I used to drink. Because I was so nervous.

Did you? And actually, yeah, yeah. You know, I also get very nervous. Drink alcohol? Yeah, but I, well, I did. No, but maybe I should tell you about that. Let me tell you about that in the next instalment. That should be a cliffhanger.

Okay. That should be a cliffhanger. Andrew Henson's alcohol problem. My booze problem on the Chaucer's War and everything. Stay tuned. And how would surprise Spruker plug that episode? Yeah, yeah. That's right.

Booze, booze, booze. Absolute, madden it, something like that. I don't, I can't do him anymore. I'm rusty. Rusty, rusty, rusty, rusty. I've completely, I've got, what is it, the voiceover artist has gone crazy and completely forgot now to do it.

All right, thank you, Andrew. We'll get into that next time. Gives from Road Microphones, and we're part of the Acast, Creator Network, another summer stunt series episode with you tomorrow.