The Chaser Report - WAR STORIES: Shore Rowing Shed Fund | Chris & Craig

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

This Summer The Chaser Report presents... WAR STORIES! Craig and Chris join the studio for one last War Story on Chris's all-time-favourite sketch. Together the team take a look at the time Chris wrote a script that involved song, sketch, and stunt, international shooting, and a very rich private school: The Shore Rowing Shed Fund. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Time for another instalment in War Stories, our summer series, looking back at the TV shows we used to make. Charles Firth and I Dom Knight here once again with Chris Taylor and Craig Rookcastle to full house today. Four mics. Hello. Yes, great to be here. How are you going? How is the start of this so awkward.

It's supposed to be an easy... I thought you guys were broadcasting. Yeah, you're not master of the arts. If you're not mastered the art of a hello, welcome to the show. Now, today we're talking about bang. Why is there always awkwardness at the start of every one of these? Don't you understand? Haven't you listen back to the great interviews of Chris Taylor and Triple J of bands?

Seameless, seamless things. There's always just, and where Chris would ask these brilliant questions about albums he'd never heard, movies he'd never seen, books he'd never read, but never, never was there a moment of doubt? Sometimes he would convince the people They'd be sitting there thinking I don't remember acting that part in the movie But Chris was so convincing They just wouldn't go along with it

Yes That's true Sam Worthing Started to believe He probably was in My Fair Lady But that's possible Maybe maybe the problem here

You're too well prepared You're too across your brief So you don't have that Dutch courage That I think we had to bring to Triple J We just bluffed every interview with a band Whereas you're sort of intimidated by the knowledge and familiarity you have with your material. Yes. So you don't know where to begin.

Yes. Paralyzed by... No, I'm just paralysed by the fact that, you know, we're podcasters, right? So the tradition in podcasting is the Joe Rogan thing, where you talk about yourself for about an hour and a half. Oh, at the start of the episode. Before you actually even mention that you've got kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we should sit back, Chris.

So we should be back. But also, I'm glad we're keeping the thing, which is what all podcasting. do, which is have sort of awkward side chat before you get into the episode that people want to skip, but then don't, because they're not showing the episode actually starts. I'm just really proud that you've been able to get together a podcast that's brought together four male voices. I guess it just doesn't seem to happen a lot in the podcast world. Formal comedians.

I mean, yeah. It's a new format. We'd invited Gabby, actually, to be part of the first couple with Chaz, and she was just like, I love those shows, but no, it's her own busy. So anyway, here we are. He's still standing in line for a PCR test in Queensland, so that's fine. I fear so. But look, today we have one of the most beloved things that we've ever done to discuss.

And Chris, good on you for mining your schooling, your education in the services of a stunt. Yeah, this is the Shaw Rowan Shed stunt, which was in the first episode of season three, which was actually a very poorly received episode. We'd taken a year off, I think, between season two and three, and I think some of you guys did a live tour. I tried to write a sitcom that never went anywhere. And there was a lot of expectation for the show's return a year later. And we'd sort of come out of the blocks.

I think the first item was a piece you've talked about in this series, was the Vatican blimp, which people felt a bit underwhelming. It was a good story behind the scenes. Terrible piece of television. Not great TV and the sketches didn't quite land, but the, I don't know, we just sort of overthought it or the audience was expecting more APEC or something, but we either by design or by, by, yeah, failing skills, delivered something that didn't go down that well. But the one thing people did seem to like, and I must admit, it's literally close to my heart

because it's a rare example of where we did draw on our lives. I think the chaser was a weird sort of show where, you know, unlike Hamish and Andy or something where it's all about their lives and what they're doing and they really draw on, you know, personal experience. The chaser wasn't like that. People didn't really know anything about us. They would have made some assumptions that were pretty close to the mark. But very few pieces were based on our personal lives or our past.

And this sort of broke the mould from that. I don't mean to say... It's a comedic premise. It wasn't like a memoir like Diary Van Frick or anything, but it was... People may have assumed that the chase were a bunch of Ponzi private school boys, but it wasn't confirmed until Chris Taylor brought this story. I finally had the bravery to admit, yes, I went to a private school.

But Charles was really good at this in the newspaper in translating personal anger into, you know, satirical comedy. and I always just sort of read newspapers looking for things to be angry about but I wasn't really that angry about them but I was genuinely angry every month when I'd get these I think they're called Old Boys Notices or like it's what they're it's a letter from the school you went to with sort of reports on how the school's going in rugby

and what sort of how the gardens are going that they put in years later Oh, yeah, indefinitely, you're on the mailing list. Barrel high does not send these out, actually. I'm not surprised. You know, it's not anything going, yeah, the one football field has still got no grass on it. But no, so I went to this school, George Shaw, which is... There have been no achievements this year.

And they put it, it might not have been monthly, it might have been quarterly, but it was basically a bit of an update on how all the sporting teams, it was always just about sport, but there was always on the back page this sort of cap-in-hand article about please remember us in your will or please like I'm only 35 they'd seen how you eat but if or if you don't remember us in your will and have a little bit extra now please we're trying to build a new rowing shed for our eight which is what they call the rowing eight and they think it's getting a little bit shabby, the current one,

so we'd like to build a new one. And the facilities at these places are world class. They have theatres better than anything Cape Blanchett has ever performed in. Like, the quality of their musicals, their pools, their gyms are Olympic standard. That's unfair, Chris. They'd had this rowing shit for a few years now. That was shabby. They're back from at least five years.

Yeah, so five years they thought, oh, it's getting a bit shabby, so we need money for a new one. And I just got the shits about that. And so it was a rare example of pitching something to the group of, can we just do something which makes fun of the proportional outrageousness of a private privilege school that gets funding from the government as well as so many school fees and all the other avenues of wealth that has pouring in that they're still asking old boys for money compared to all the things you could be spending

your disposable charity dollar on. So the idea was, I think it was three steps. And I should say this was a sketch. Yeah, it was a sketch with a stunt element and an original Andrew Hanson song as well. So why I love this piece, it was quite an ambitious in its scope. It's a mixture of all parts of the show, actually. Well, yeah, that's really true

because individual episodes might have had a sketch, a stunt and a song. But it was an example where we tried to put all those three themes into one piece. it had an international shoot built in because we were so lucky to be generously funded by the ABC for this third season it was like it was it was generously resourced the irony of it is when you say it was generously resourced let me just say this that we went to South Africa

because we could get an extra step on our around the world ticket for no extra price we stayed at my uncle and aunt's house in South Africa we literally like I remember thinking back to this because Trent O'Donnell, who's the director on this, has gone on to, you know, directs, you know, Brooklyn 9-9, all that kind of stuff. Amazing L.A. Yeah, he's great, great director with us.

And at the time, he just slept in a spare room at my uncle's house. I think back and go, I wonder if he looks back and goes to that. I get treated slightly better. The Chaser Report, now with Extra Whispers. So the premise was we should ask the needy to help fund. the Shaw Rowan Shed. So it was sort of a very sarcastic piece of going. In the first instance, we went to a cancer ward,

and for fun fact, it was the same, we actually shot that bit, and the same day we shot the infamous Make a Wish sketch. It was in the same ward, again, with another actor playing a cancer victim, this time an adult. We asked him to donate to the shed. We then went to the block in Redfern in Sydney,

which back then, unlike now, was exclusively indigenous and it was sort of where the Aboriginal community thrived and lived and so we went in there with permission like it was all a scripted sketch with producers and like shooting permits and stuff and asking the indigenous community to give to the shore rowing shed and then the big third step which was just the oh my God I can't believe they did that

was well why don't we play it In the piece, it's pitched as Somalia, and then Craig can talk about how we actually shot it. On the foreshore of Sydney Harbour stands one of Australia's most prestigious schools. The Sydney Church of England grammar school, or Shore, as it's often known, boasts some of the finest sporting grounds and facilities

of any school in the world. As an old boy of Shore, I'm very proud of the school, and I always try to stay abreast of what they're up to and so forth. And I was quite distressed to read an... item in their recent newsletter here requesting donations to help them build a new rowing shed. I knew at once I couldn't possibly live with myself if I just sat by and did nothing. Enlisting the help of friends, Chris went cap in hand to a terminal cancer clinic to speak to the patients about the schoolboy rowers plight. Look, I'm sure you're probably in a little bit of pain

right now, but I'm just wondering if you wouldn't mind helping out the shul rowing shed fund. Determined to widen their fundraising efforts, Chris sought to raise awareness among Australia's Indigenous communities. While another volunteer Craig Rookastel travelled to Somalia to run education campaigns about the rowing shed crisis in Australia. We've had a really great response here in Somalia. Everyone's been really generous and understood the plight of shores rowers. They've done really well and this is just one African country.

On January 18th this year, Somalia's biggest names in music got together to put on a live concert to raise money for the Shaw School Shed Relief. There's a river I have been to where schoolboy hearts have lived. From Australia, just trying to collect some money. I don't hear me gone. You haven't got any money for them? But they're in a very old rowing shit from 1998. place where angels tread but the currents swim is a sure running said for the GPS

trying to do a parody of live-aid shed in africade in african they grow it doesn't make them meat heads so come on now give them a shed I think it ends on a plaque where we actually put a plaque on the actual shawl rowing shed which

funded by the families of Somalia and it was yeah I do really I'm really quite proud of this piece because it's sort of it is something that shits me about these private schools and mine in particular and just the commitment again

to not just sort of, you know, maybe in early chase we would have just ended at, you know, one of those local steps to go to hospitals or to an Indigenous community, but to then go to Africa, the genuine home of famine and the needy.

And to see, so how was, because I wasn't on the shoot. No, yeah. What part of it was scripted sketch and how much was stunt? It was a very, it was an interesting shooting experience to be honest, because we had like a day and we had a local fixer,

but we went to Soweto and basically... Just outside of Joburg. Yeah, so the African township outside of Joburg, which has come a long way, but it's still, you know, it's still, you know, there's a lot of poverty there. And we hadn't, it wasn't lined up. So basically you'd written a sketch, and I then had to go and find people in the Soweto Township

and try and get them to perform what you wanted to do. do and did things like, you know, so the part there where I did door knocked and somebody answers, we didn't, that's not set up. Like I literally went around door knocking and it's real. So it was real. So we did it as if it was a real thing and asked them to show rowing shed. And of course, you've got really natural responses that way because they're like, what are you talking about? But it was. There's bits where we, we'd obviously taken over props like the shore boater. Yeah. And we got local people. And that was, I guess, more scripted. Yeah, but, but we basically went in with the fixer and I, we just got, the fixer and I

go and talk to people and go, hey, do you want to be involved in the sketch for Australian television? And I had some money trying to kind of get people in and pay them a little bit. It was very awkward at times because people would like, we had these people I remember in a, in a, in a, in a, a Ute, and so in Bucky who, and they were all kind of going along together and we got them involved, and I kind of gave the guy who was driving some money to give to everyone, and then later somebody came back to me and said, how come you didn't give me any money? I was like, well, he's meant to give to you as this whole kind of weird thing. And not only that, right near where we did the door knock, it got quite tense at one point because there was a little bar there

that kind of got tense to the point where there was like a brawl happening there and we had to get the fuck out of there quite quickly. So it was a, it was a... You didn't cause the brawl. No, no, not at all, but it was just a thing where, you know, the local fixer was like... They were just fighting over who gave more money to the... The short... Or was that, right, right.

It was a pride thing. It was a pride thing. Yeah. But it was a wonderful day, and everyone that played along was awesome. There was always great kids and, you know, wearing shore rowing, she had things and that. But it was a, I remember being there and going, we've bothered to, we've added on this extra stop on the way home.

We did it nowhere near any of the other shoots. Any of the other shoots. And also nowhere near Somalia, let's be like, yeah. Yeah, we were misleading. We would have been true commitment. But we literally were there because I was born in South Africa. I've got relatives there. We literally just were bunking down with relatives of mine.

We had one day there to shoot this thing. and it wasn't all pre-prepared. It was just kind of going there and going, okay, Chris wants this to happen. Let's see if we can fucking make this happen in the day we have that. It was fantastic. It was a really fun day. It came together so well.

I was really, really pleased with it. And it's sort of been interesting since that's gone out because often, you know, younger kids who went to shore love it. Like it was, you know, amongst the students, it was really, really popular and they absolutely got the satire and shared the opinion. And they got all the money. And they got a new row engine.

But what's interesting is that the school itself hated. I can imagine. Because I was always a little bit jealous of everyone else in the chase. Not jealous, but I noted that you guys tend to go back to your old school to talk to students about the chaser. I think this is the grammar people. Not me. I think like Jules and certainly you, Dom and Chaz, I know you've all done speaking engagements, which are lovely. And I'm, you know, you're all.

always happy to do them. Shaw has never asked me back. And it's actually, even when I've sort of... Oh, really? A couple of times we needed locations for other shoots, like down the track for Hamster Wheel. We needed like a science lab or a school. And we got, for some reason, a researcher on the show

who wasn't aware of the history of the tension between Shaw and me, just said, can we shoot in your lab? And they said, is this the chaser? No, Chris Taylor said some very rude things. things about us on air, it slammed the phone down. Wow. It's sort of, dude, like, it's a joke, and it just sort of compounds their reputational problem.

But also, you raised awareness at the rowing show, I mean, let's just put it on the national agenda. They're probably too busy spitting on poor people or something. Yeah, well, it did become the school that, yeah, started. That was, that's right. That wasn't a random thing by charge. That was a real reference, that was a muck-up day. No, that was a muck-up day.

Just a few years ago, they... It's good to see. They had a muck-up day where one of the points was to spit on poor people. And then the reaction by the parents was not to go, oh, that's terrible what have done, but it's how dare you impugn the reputation of our kids by reporting? Yes, their anger was with the reportage. That is good to see there, again,

that they've learnt the lesson of the satire of the Shore Rohing's... It's very impressive that you took the... You took the issue to a television program with an audience at the time of over a million people and they still learn nothing from it. Well done to short. Our Gies from Road Microphones, we're part of the ACAS, Creator Network.

We'll catch you next time. See ya. Bye.