The Chaser Report - WAR STORIES: Chas on APEC

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

This Summer The Chaser Report gives you... WAR STORIES!Chas Licciardello graces us with his presence for our first episode of our Summer Stunt Series. Chas reminisces all about previous legendary stunts and all the times he brushed with the law - including some small stunt at APEC may be familiar with. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello and welcome to the summer series of The Chaser Report. This is our very first podcast in our series, Charles Firth. That means we don't have to do any new episodes all January long. What do you mean? We're in the studio recording in January. We are. Yeah, this is what, the third of January.

This is the first episode. God, oh, my hangover from the new year, it's really bad. Happy 2022, Charles. And for today, we're going back. to, I guess, the first grouping that ever existed within The Chaser. You and I started doing comedy with Chaz back in high school. And we're not going to quote any of that because it's incredibly embarrassing. And he's going to talk about a whole bunch of things over the course this month.

But today, we're better to start than brushes with the law. He's got a lot of stories. He's got a lot of clips and we'll get into that in just a second. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on. hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.C.A.

The Chaser Report. Less news more often. Jazz. It is a pleasure to be here with you guys on this particular day of the month that we are recording live in January. Yeah, that's right. And what better things to do during what would otherwise be a month off to talk about television clips from many years ago. This is definitely my favourite topic to talk about me. So thank you very much for providing me with this opportunity. Yeah, I guess when it comes to brushes with the law, people think that the chaser were constantly breaking laws

and just being these absolute buccaneers of lawlessness. But actually, they weren't that many, given how close we skirted the law on many occasions. Well, we had to run everything past lawyers before we went out. Now, admittedly, we didn't tell them exactly. exactly what we were going to do. But we had to write something approximating a script describing what we might do.

Well, things change in the head of the moment, don't they? They certainly do, especially when you intend them to. But I really don't think you should be admitting any of this. I'm pretty sure the ABC lawyers don't listen to this podcast. Otherwise, it would have been shut down by now. So, well, there have been some stouches with the law, some brushes with the law. The first one, actually, if we're going to go chronologically to begin with,

The first one actually involved you, Dom, not me. I mean, I was involved. I got to watch crouching naked behind a bush while you got arrested. I did. Was that the first arrest? That was the first arrest. That was first brush with the law. That was singing in an end.

We should set it up. 2002, 2003. Yes. And so there was what, there was a rugby union streaker from Vodafone. Well, not from Vodafone. He had Vodafone. Yeah, there was a pair of. guys, and they had wanted to streak a rugby game.

Yeah. And they said to Vodafone, who was sponsoring the rugby at the time, we will paint a Vodafone logo on our buttox. And Vodafone's corporate people were like, oh, that's awesome. Let's totally do that. And it blew up, didn't it, Chaz? It certainly did. Basically, they got arrested, and we decided, it got worse for them because then we wanted

to get involved. And the way we wanted to get involved was, first of us, this was a multi-step operation. First, that we were going to have, I believe it was, It was Jules and Andrew were going to be, were they just going to be streaking? They were streaking the courtroom. The court is at the scene. On the trial.

I want to set the scene. So it was Burwood Local Court. And what happened was Jules and Andrew went into a toilet cubicle in Burwood Plaza and had to write the words not guilty on each other's eyes on each other's butt. Because you can't write it on your own ass and draw the Vodafone logo. So imagine if the cops had come into the cubicle when. Hang on, why didn't the ABC hire a make-up person to do that? It's a bit shoddy.

The lawyer said you're not allowed to let anyone see your ass except for each other. You deserve it. And I mean, I think Hansen should have got danger pay, frankly. So that was step one. Yeah. And then step two was supposed to be me posing when the actual defendants turned up on the court steps, I was going to turn up as their barrister, naked, but with a horsehair wig. Yeah, barrister's wig.

Yeah, barrister's wig. and basically just grab by the hand and walk up the steps saying, my client has no comment to make, no comment, no comment, as if I'm a barrister into the cameras being naked. So that was the hilarious two-step cavalcade that that stunt was. Unfortunately, we didn't get to step two because step one got arrested when they, they didn't. Hang on, because they got into the courthouse, though, didn't they?

It was deeply stupid because what? Tell us so. So Denton, Andrew Denton, our great comedy mentors, his thing was you always have to have in advance. So you can't just do a stunt and get the fuck out of there. You've got to have a development. It's got to have a narrative in a second step. So we did the stunt. It went perfectly well.

Jules and Andrews streaked into the front of the courtroom and went, all that sort of stuff and whatever, into the foyer, out of the foyer within about 10 seconds, and got away Scott free, and we got the footage and it was all fine. but the problem was that we waited we waited for you and that meant that Jules got changed back into civvies

Andrew got changed back into civvies and the cameras who were me and a guy called Brad Howard we waited for the second step so we were hanging around what 45 minutes later when the police came to investigate the street can

do they have an identity of their asses you'd be able to identify Jules as I reckon and the key the key detail you're missing there, Dom, is where they waited, which was in the street of the court.

Yes, opposite the courtroom. weren't you reviewing the footage? Wasn't it as foolish as there? We were sitting in a car. We were sitting in a car, we were sitting in a car opposite the courtroom, reviewing the footage on the cameras at the time. Laughing.

And the thing that I have to confess before one of you guys brings it up is that I had completely fucked up and I'd been a bit nervous. So the cameras in that, like they just have an on-off button. And so I had turned it on before the stunt began and then turned it off when the stunt did begin and then turned it on again afterwards.

Now I shot a lot of stunts in those days and I generally was pretty good at getting a shot but that day I completely fucked it up. So my tape just had two slightly different angles of nothing happening. To be fair, to be fair, we've all done that at some point in time but to be accurate, we've never done it in those circumstances. Yeah, that was a massive fucker. And fortunately Brad got the shot.

But he used to think. No, everyone's forgetting. At least Don destroyed the evidence. Everyone's forgetting, Andrew. Remember Andrew? No, yeah, we've got to mention Andrew. We have to remember. So the three of us, so Jules and Brad and I were sitting in the car looking at the footage, Andrew was not in the car.

And so as soon as he saw the police, he was naked. No, I was naked. He wasn't still naked. Chaz was naked under a book. But this time, it was so much longer that they'd been able to clean off the paint. Are you sure? Andrew was in close. Andrew was in close.

There's a photo of Jules and me on the street getting arrested in clothes. And so. Andrew's walked away. Andrew just walked away rapidly and managed to not get arrested. Well done, Hansen. Meanwhile, I was still crouching behind a bush, ready for my moment. Naked. Completely naked, with my clothes several bushes away on the other side of the courtroom.

And the police were milling out, and there was no way I was going to get those clothes. So I just sat there for about 45 minutes, waiting for the coast to be clear. And unlike those guys, I sprinted away to a phone booth to call, collect, because I had no money with me. They had phone booths back in. We had your clothes, that's right, in the car. Yeah, to call, collect, to wait for it, someone who I knew lived only a block away, who was the girl I went on my first date with the night before.

No, I didn't know that detail. Who turned out to be my wife. Oh, wow. So she can't say she didn't know what she was getting into. It's a meat cute. It's the story of a meat cute. I have forgotten that detail. That is absolutely genius.

Yeah, so that worked out quite well. But anyway, that was your brush for the law. Yeah, but just to sort of tie it in and odd, we got arrested and brought down to the Burwood Local Court and interrogated. And the police did not believe for a moment that I didn't have footage. I thought that I'd somehow deleted it. And so I had this most awkward conversation.

Anyway, as a result, every time I have to go to America, I have to go and, like, get a visa and tell them this exact story every time. By the way, it's good that they believed you were high. the footage because I'm about to go through the lessons at the end of this episode I'm going to go through the lessons I've learned about the law and that is one of them so we'll get there but let me tell you about my first brush for the law

as opposed to your first brush of the law which was because I wanted a piece of what you just had which was extreme embarrassment of fucking up a shoot and so I during the war on everything my first brush for the law was actually the first episode of the war and everything which was the sniffer dog stunt so just briefly this at this point in this was the big day out they had sniffer dogs all over the place

and people are going, it's a bit over the top for a musical festival involving 16-year-olds. And so basically what I did was I tested out these sniffer dogs by loading myself up with as much meat as possible. Like there was meat down my pants, meat in my shoes, meat on the top of my head underneath a beret, meat in my shirt. I was just covered with meat. And I walked straight through the sniffer dogs to see what would happen. And this is what happened. Edit it out, a bit of mink in the hair. So now I'm loaded up.

But can you get all this meat past the sniffer dogs? Well, look, I haven't gotten past two steps. Oh, no. Those bloody sniffer dogs are all over me. I look hungry, jazz. They look very hungry. So that was not an edit. It literally took one second for the slipper dogs to just run at me as soon as I got there.

I'm looking at these. Your parents are the most popular person in there. Your pants are open in the clip, and you've literally got 10 linked sausages in your hair. I do. I do. And so I got arrested immediately. And I, at that point in time, no one really told me what to do when you get arrested. So it was a little bit scary for me. I don't know if it was scary for you when you first got arrested. Oh, shit, yeah. But basically, I was just applying the lessons I'd learned from gritty police procedials from American TV. Essentially. And so I was just saying nothing to anyone unless I was answering direct questions with yeses and no's, and that's it. Because I thought, oh, yeah, they're going to, they're going to deceive me. They're going to, they're going to, they're going to deceive me.

They're going to set me up, the pigs, that kind of attitude. And they were just wanting to know how to get all the meat. It turned out they had no idea what to do with me. Like they'd sat there and just disgust amongst themselves if there were any potential charges. I'm just trying to think, like legally, what could they possibly charge you with? And they came up with nothing. And so, and every time a police officer came into the tent, it was like a tent there. Every time a new police officer came into the tent, they'd start, they'd walk in talking about what they'd heard about this guy

who had meat, like not realising it was me, and the other police officers would go, shh, shh, shh, shh. But they were loving the story. Anyway, and so, but in the end, they let me go without any problem. So that was, that was not too bad for a first brush for the law. Now, it was worth noting that if you ever find yourself getting arrested,

there's actually no way to unarrest somebody. This is what we found. So the very earnest constable who arrested us in Burwood took us back to the police station. And the grizzled old serge came in and had a big large, offered us and um but there was no way he could let us off like she'd already um basically arrested us so that was it we had to go to court which was once you charged inconvenient yeah yeah so i wasn't there was no way out of it for us so yeah the next time i was charged though now that one was the bulldog stunt i learned a lot from this one let me tell you um the just a quick reminder the

canterbury bulldogs and rugby league team were up to all kinds of mischief and their supporters were up to all kinds of mischief back in about 2007-8. Mischief and criminality. Yeah, a little, kind of illegal kind of mischief. Kind of sexual violence kind of mischief, that kind of mischief. So, yeah, so we turned up, I turned up to, out the front of a Canterbury Bulldogs game when I'm playing, I think, St. George, as a merchandise seller.

And the, and this kind of merchandise I was selling was Canterbury themes, like with blue and white colors, flick knives, rohypnoll, um balaclavas uh that kind of stuff you know like and do you honest most of them were pretty good like i'll give you i'll play an example of the kind of buy play that went on they're like it was actually in good spirit we'll just play nothing plastic will do fine we're not all like that no i can i know the little bulldogs to pose carry knives that's why i'm out here selling them they're saying your supporters so we don't need any of that merchandise oh no you do for self-defense

oh yeah trust me you need it more than anyone oh you're locked up before i get some door Oh, no worries. Bulldogs barclava. If you get a barclava, you'll be the best-looking person at the game. Yours for three bucks. Or I'll give you the Bulldogs discount, your knife me, and then take him for free. Yeah? Keep your face warm from the security cameras, yeah.

You get it for dogs? Man, I'm a huge dog support. Look at this. I'm the one that gave them the right hip-knock. Say no to bonnors. Mate, I'm not your parole officer. It's okay. You're interested as where the police enter, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. It was actually in good spirit The Bulldog supporters They've made plenty of Bulldogs jokes themselves It was fine It was a good stunt But then I being me Was looking for an ending

So I thought the ending is to try and sell it to police officers Oh no Yes Because you're going up to them You're interested Yeah yeah And the police officers They gave me the ending I was looking for

But then they gave me a lot A very long ending That went for six months Which was a trial For Offensive Conduct And I learned a lot about the police from there. I'll tell you the two things I learned there, which is this is actually the best part of the story, right? The first thing is to film everything you do whenever you do a stunt. Film

everything. And the second lesson is don't trust the competence of the police. Let me tell you why. I'm going to tell you the story now. We're in court, right? And they are running a line that I did things that I simply did not do. They're saying, I said things I didn't say, I did things I didn't do. The things that they suggested I said were much funnier. I wish I had done them. But unfortunately, I hadn't. And we'd given them the footage the day I got arrested.

We gave them the footage, the raw footage. They had it. They never looked at it. And so they went up in court and under oath said a whole bunch of things that were contradicted by video evidence. We'd filmed everything. They lied. And there was video contradicting them.

That's the first thing. The second thing is, They turned out that they had this, what they call a COPS database, C-O-PS database, which is like your rap sheet on everything they got. But not crimes, just things that they've taken note about you while you're a bit suspicious, right? In my database entry had a whole bunch of stuff I hadn't done, including things like things that Chris had done instead of me on TV,

that confused me and Chris on TV. Well, you did look very similar. And also, including things that were. were sketches. They wrote, they wrote down sketches that we had done on TV, on the war and everything as real life. Oh, no. And there were things that Chris had done in sketches, not me. They're just a little bit thick. Yes, yes. And so, and don't tell you they charged me the iron thesaurus sketch. They should have charged us for that. And anyway, in the end, the judge, they didn't even ask us to defend ourselves. Like, they, they ran their prosecution. And

then we just said, Your Honor, we present the video. And we took a lunch break. And then that was it. I didn't have to say a word. So they just dismissed the charge. So yeah, so film everything, even if you're not making TV show, film everything and don't believe that the police are necessarily know what they're doing. Yeah, there's more to talk about on that front very shortly. There certainly is. And Charles, please tell Alexa to keep the camera rolling. Oh, yes, yes.

Very, very good tip there. Well, so there you guys. That your very first arrest, baby's first arrest back in, when was it? 2006. Yeah, wow. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore.

FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.C. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. Now, Chaz, in your list here, it's time for the big one. Yes, yes.

This is the one which I think Pell being weighing for when they're talking about brushes with the law. This, of course, was the. Apex stunt. You guys have heard a lot about this before, so I'm going to summarize quite quickly the actual stunt itself, which was we're talking about an international event with lots of, lots of world leaders, including George Bush, and we drove a limo in pretending to be a Canadian diplomatic vehicle. We got to within meters, and I don't mean hundreds of meters, I mean single-digit metres of George Bush's hotel before they told us to keep on driving

and we thought we are going to jail forever if we keep on driving. So we got out of the limo, I was dressed as Assam Bin Laden. As you do. And then this is when this happened. Chief. VIP liaison.

Okay. So here I am. Assam Bin Laden staying 10 metres away from Bush's hotel. So what do they do? They arrest the other guy. Oh no. Oh, there's some other guys coming to arrest you now. No, they're for me as well.

Poor old Osama. No one likes a summer. In fairness, there's a lot of other reasons to arrest Julian. So they might have been smart. But look, we then ended up in jail for about 13 hours before we were released. And by the way, the police did the Macca's run. Thank you, police. Yeah, this is in the basement of the Surrey Hills Police Centre.

So not actually a jail, but certainly we're in a cell. Yeah, we're in a cell together. Like, it was, it was like an avant-garde album cover. It was Jules the second time it was. I had been locked up for about 45 minutes, so not much. So we're all there by, yeah, for about 12, 30 hours before they let us go. And they took lots of photos with us, by the way. I learnt the difference between the police officers and the top brass.

Yeah, there's suburban cops. Because the police officers, they were loving it. They were saying this whole APEC is incredibly boring. You've made a terrible day, interesting thing. you. Can I have a photo? Can I have an autograph? That kind of stuff. Can I get you McDonald's? That was great. They were lovely. It was a great time had by all, whereas the brass seemed very, very angry and very, very chidey in their press conferences of, there multiple press conferences over the coming days. They said they're going to throw the book

at us with all these laws. In the end, they just never even charged us. In the end, they just let go. So, which was nice. But that sort of took 11 months, didn't it? Yeah, it did. It took a long, long, long, long time to go through. But the, and The ABC lawyers, no doubt, did some serious negotiation on our behalf. Yeah, but in the end, it didn't go anywhere. The Bulldog's case is still the furthest I've gone in terms of brushes with the law. Do you know why I didn't go anywhere? The reason why I didn't go anywhere is because the police assembled this giant brief of evidence

and it then got passed to the director of public prosecutions who's separate from the police to review it and work out what charges should be filed. And there were many damning facts in the police brief of evidence. One of them, for instance, was that the person who weighed... you through, had that morning. Were you going to say that? No, I was but saying there's a pretty big deal that the police actually explicitly waved us through.

Yes, but also the person who waved you through had that morning given a seminar on how to recognize the chaser. I didn't know that. That's a great thing. It was a legendary member of the federal police who wrote a book about it of his adventures apparently. But also, yeah, a lot of the, again, a lot of the things that they claimed, such as people were running and so on, would disprove by the footage.

So, yes, get someone else to revoke. view the charges if you do get arrested. Why do the police just get it right? Is it because they're so used to just lying and getting away with it? It's very embarrassing. $170 million in policing on APEC. I think usually people don't film everything they do. I think usually when people commit crimes or commit alleged crimes, they don't have six cameras. Usually. That's what's missing from the world's greatest burglars. They just need to get a multi-camera shoot going. Absolutely. They'll get away with it. Yeah. And then they can sell to Netflix, make even more money.

That's how Ocean's 11 words. It's real. Yes. It's actually real. Yeah. That's a great lesson. So this is educational. I have more coming up in terms of education,

which is the final one. I'm not going to go into too much detail because you're probably going to hear about this in other episodes. But we're in the Vatican. Also, this is not my personal brush of the law. This is more Julian's brush with the law. When we're in the Vatican, we were filming a stunt. Well, it wasn't me. The other guys were filming a stunt.

Julian was filming a stunt where they had this. giant pedo blimp going through the Vatican City. I don't even remember what the story was, just general pedo stuff. Did you just say, like, pull down for a young boy or something like that? Something like that. Anyway, and the Vatican were really keen to get the footage of that stunt. And that's when we implemented one of our painted techniques. We had a few techniques with Tracer, which I'm going to share with you now.

The first one is divide and conquer. Have as many people filming as possible and have them all scatting different directions at the same time. And at that one, we had eight different people with phones and all the rest of it. And we all went in different locations, all hid in different locations. Nathan Earl, who deserves a shout out when we're talking about brushes the law, because he has been in prison so many times. And whenever any of the chaser go to the prison, Nathan is else next to them.

And this particular occasion, he was in jail next to Julian with the footage up his ass for hours and hours. And he got away with it. Are you telling me that the footage of the Vatican stunt traveled in somebody's rectum? It does seem appropriate, doesn't it? But anyway, yeah, so shouts and they thought, so divide and conquer is the first one. The second one is, yeah, make sure they don't get the footage.

Because if they get the footage, you're not going to get it back. If you're making a stunt show on TV, make sure. Because there was a few times when we gave the police the footage and we never saw it again. Except for the Burwood one, which we eventually got back months later. But that's because it was a blank tape. Yeah. The real footage of that is on a DVD extra.

But, you know, so now with, if you film things on an iPhone, does it back up in the cloud? Because that would be really useful, wouldn't it? I don't know. It backs up very slowly in the cloud. Okay, okay. Another couple of tips. I know we're probably running out time, but a couple of more tips, just from the chase of years in general.

And Dom can, in fact, Charles and Don, can definitely testify to this, which is we learnt on day one back in 2001. And during our pilot, we learned how you get past law enforcement into things that you want to get into, you walk right towards them and through them and act like, and smile and chat and act like nothing's wrong. Yeah. Even if you're... And ask directions.

Totally. How do I get in there? Totally. And then they'll go, oh, you go in that way. And there's one more can ingredient. Yeah. Wear a suit. Yeah.

Yeah, wear a suit. Be a white man wearing a suit. Exactly. Exactly. And like, and that worked for 20 years. Like, just every single time. I know. I did it like literally yesterday.

You were doing a banking conference. You know that at the Aston by-election, right? There was a huge, there was a very first thing we shot for the pilot of election chaser. There were heaps of protest groups outside because John Howard was there. It was the war and all that. And I actually went up to them after we'd finished. And I said to them, by the way, we all just walked into that hall

and created all this trouble wearing suits. Why don't you try that? And they're like, no way. Well, I'll give you a perfect example, actually, even better example, which was the third straight election. Let's use fourth. The fourth straight election that we were crashing the Wentworth Hotel for the liberal after party to do a stunt.

The fourth straight election, it was my job to do at that time. And I was just going, oh, my God, they're never going to let me through. And there's no way I'm going to get through. They're so expecting this. I was in costumes and stuff. We hide out a hotel room in the hotels there for a day beforehand waiting so they wouldn't see you walk in and stuff like I was going through every precaution. We're not planning to go through the service elevator.

We're going to get someone to order some room service and then someone else would hold the elevator open. I'd go in there through the kitchen. It was so elaborate. Like it was really was Ocean's 11 stuff, right? And just before I was about to do it, we had Sky News on because it was during the election. That's the only reason you have Sky News on. We had Sky News on. And Kieran Gilbert said,

the question which everyone's wondering is, how is the chaser going to try to infiltrate the Wentworth Hotel? And he had some security going on to speculate. And they said, we think he's going to go through the service elevator in the kitchen. He explicitly said, what I was just about to do in about 10 minutes time. And I thought, well, I can't do that.

So I thought, you know what, screw it. I just lost the disguise, the stupid wig. I lost everything and just walked through the front door. I walked out and walked through the front door, and I got in. And that was four in a row. That was four in a row. It always works. Just walk right past the cops with a smile.

If you need to be on your mobile phone at the same time, please do. And just walk straight through them. It works every time. So that's one more lesson. And the final lesson I've got for the brushes of the law is, and this is an important one, if you're going to break a lot of laws, the higher up you go, the more competent they get. Okay. So what I'm referring to there is, if you're going to,

me a non-dangerous crime, then it's good to do it around the feds. Because they know what they're doing. Oh, that's so true. And we found this over and over again. Like, Craig could turn up with a chainsaw to the Prime Minister and the feds wouldn't shoot him. That would be fine. The feds knew exactly what they were doing.

But if you do anything near a mall cop or a Hoyt's cop or something like that, they're going to nail you because they're cowboys. So that's my lesson from hard, hard lessons there, hard learned lessons. Avoid the small cops, lose stuff around the top cops. The snipers, the feds, those guys, they're cool. They're cool. That's going to be mentioned, actually, Chaz, with the Apex stunt, we didn't know at the time. But because we didn't know that George Bush's hotel room was right next to the

Macquarie Street where we had the motorcade. So the secret service were on rooftops with you in their side. Yes, the snipers. Dressed as a someone being like that. Honestly, give me the snipers any day over a more cop. Let me do. I swear. Hard experience, Dom.

Thank you, Chas. It's a pleasure. We'll have him back a few more times during the course of the summer. Catch you then. So much fun. It was illegal. Thanks for listening. Agirits from Road Microphones.

And we're part of the ACAS. Creator Network. We'll do it again tomorrow in the summer series, but done live every day. It's not like we've pre-recorded this shit in December. No. We'd never do that. See, yeah. Thank you for your patience.

Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.