The Chaser Report - WAR STORIES: The Trojan Horse | Chris & Craig

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

This Summer The Chaser Report presents... WAR STORIES! This Summer Stunt Series special episode features Craig AND Chris at the desk together remembering old stunts and how they came to be. Craig, Chris, Dom, and Charles all take a look at one of The Chaser's favourite stunts: The Trojan Horse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. It's time for another one of our War Stories podcast, looking back at some of the TV that we used to make. Charles Fers here, I'm Dom Knight. We've got Chris Taylor and Craig Rucastell here, both of you. Thanks for coming in. Good to be here. It's our pleasure. How are you guys?

Very, very well, let's not get into the whole thing. I made them, Craig, last time I was on the podcast, I made the mistake of being pleasant and asking them how they were. Oh, yeah. Never do that. You know, normally when you ask someone how they are, they say, oh, yeah, not bad, how are you? Charles takes the question literally and starts going through his mental health problems, his COVID anxiety. Most of the podcast was just that. I never show any interest towards Charles. I barely look him in the eyes until the record button starts.

On the mere fear that he's going to tell me something happening in his life. I tried to explain that too. I said when I asked how I really wasn't interested in any part of your health. I am here, you know. The answer to that question took 10 minutes in a business meeting last year and involved Charles being on the verge of tears. So don't ask that question. Just say, hello, Charles.

Thank God. Thank God. Donnell at least is professional enough to know that I don't give a fuck what he feels like. Yep, that dates back to about, what, 996. Anyway, let's get into a second. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. I think this is the most amount of chaser people I've been with in years. Yeah, yeah.

Possibly since we work together. And I don't know how you guys are feeling, but I'm very uneasy. Yeah, this is very horrible. I'm feeling like I'm getting cancelled as we speak. I don't even know how. It's just happening somehow. It's nice to see you all. Lovely see you, boys.

Charles Howie. You know, no, no, no, no. Quickly, move on. Quickly, bring up some other topic. I mean, I'm doing this remotely. I'm at home, the three of you in a room, and I'm on Zoom. Oh, I just thought you were on a short chair. It's actually, it's nothing to do with COVID.

We just didn't want Dom here. Oh, it's so mutual. But anyway, we're here to look back on the Golden Days, where we did spend a lot of time sitting in rooms. Golden Days. My life has been so much better since moving on from that wretched farce of a show. Both Craig and Chris, their careers are skyrocketing.

No, you're right. They're not the Golden Days for them. That's the inconvenient weird youth that they have. Look, it was a golden day. but it was insane. Like I still look back now and go, you know, the years where we did like 26 Epps in a year of stunt-based television was just insane.

And I don't think we did, we were literally just seven days a week for, you know, half a year. It was an nightmare. It was. And I think, I mean, I couldn't do it today. I mean, it was actually just chatting with Dom off air and we were saying, we must have been oddly match fit. And I know you and I, Craig, had just come off.

triple j and something um that rob sitch from working dog had said to us he said whatever you do after daily radio will always be the best thing you ever do because there's nothing like daily radio for making your comedy brain as toned as it will ever be and you know i can't speak for everyone else but i think had i not had that discipline of writing sketches for triple j every day there's no way we could have pumped out the material and had i not had the discipline of not writing sketchers every day for radio. There's no way. I would have been able to not write all those sketches for the TV show.

Yeah, you were matched for it just being an asshole and just turning up, dissing everyone else's ideas and going out and being a smart aleck in public, which was but yeah, look, it's, I mean, you know, you don't want to, it was, it was a bit of a dream job because we were, it was at a time where the ABC was incredibly trusting, incredibly trusting, like we've probably all had dabbles with them, you especially Craig recently, and And there's still, you know, it's a very, really wonderful institution. But I don't think, in my recent dealings with them, I've ever known this the trust and the arm's length, sort of generosity, just letting us go out, literally running amok in society.

And maybe... The misplaced trust, really. The misplaced trust, really. I think all the trust has been squanded. That's why the ABC. Of course, yeah. I do think, I do think, looking in hindsight, that I think towards the end of it when we were doing stunts, and it started to be that other people,

you know, at the very end of war and everything, for instance, people, or maybe this was even hamster wheel. If we did stunts, other people were filming them because they then had cameras as part of their normal news gathering. And it started to be that those stunts were written up before we put them to air. I think if that had been there for the main part, we wouldn't have got away with it as much.

Like it was very much because we got the chance to kind of craft the piece and put it to air, made it that you got away with a lot more than you might have otherwise. Yeah, it was in an election? series I think actually. It might have been yes we canberra when it started with the case that every stunt on the campaign trail they'd put the wilds up like the her website or whatever would just post whatever we'd done in unedited and far worse form and it just kind of killed it you're right but so the blissful period I reckon was season one of the war on everything where we were 1030 on

Friday nights and frankly not a particularly large audience and even even season two up to APEC, there was still, you could go out in public without being hassled. That's right, it coming from us, whose job it was to hassle people. But yeah, to go out uninterrupted by other media or even other members of the public. Yeah, and not recognised by the public. That was the other thing that killed it was people going, oh, oh, it's Craig. Oh, hi, Craig. That's what I always found amazing was the extent to which, and it really did show that

and thanks to the ABC for only being watched by a small proportion of the population, it really to show me that even when things got bigger and we're really big and we had been in large news stories, you'd still be able to find so many people that didn't recognize you in any way shape or form. Like, thinking about doing the Trojan horse stuff, right? You think there's no chance this is going to work because Chaser by this point has become, you know, surely people know that if somebody turns up with a giant Trojan horse on a trailer and tries to get through the gates, there's a good fucking chance this might be

They're either an ancient Greek or they're from the chaser. Exactly. It's pretty much what, in either case, it's bad. And thankfully, thankfully, in Australia, very few people that actually watch the chaser and far fewer had done any form of history at school. So due to that overlapping of lack of ignorance. I tend to agree, like there was this sort of popular narrative, either amongst journalists or even internally, as just put by,

Dom that the show became harder to make when it started becoming popular. I must admit, while there were a couple of instances of that, by and large, it was still completely makeable. And in some ways, more makeable, because the flip side of being recognised was that sometimes we were given permission to do things that you wouldn't otherwise. I don't mean formal permission, but there'd be security guards who'd almost go, oh, it's okay, it's not a security threat, it's just those dickheads. Well, even the Prime Minister's...

Yeah, even the AFP, as we were saying, with the chainsaw. If they knew it was us, then you it probably wasn't going to be potentially fatal. And I remember them saying to us, so I'd just make sure there's no projectiles. That's the... I love... You imagine the Secret Service saying that. Yes, the bigger problem was actually... We've ran out of ideas.

No, well, no, but people started co-optiness. Like, you know, so there were people like, well, politicians especially who sort of thought, oh, my approval rating will go up slightly if I play along. And sometimes even companies, you got the feeling, you know, receptionist or front desk was briefed, play along, it's much better for the brand. And so for me, it wasn't getting recognised that was the problem. It was that suddenly everyone wanted to be chummy with us rather than angry with us. Yeah, yeah, and that was the same.

Even with the public voxpops than that, you know, you were generally looking for was a really realistic response to the offer that you were giving. But if people are like, oh, it's a chaser, I'm going to be funny with you. It's like, often it was like, you're actually making this ten times less fun. Well, one of the best things we ever did in my view

was the Alan Cadman prank. Oh, CNN is fantastic. Where we managed to convince quite a lot of politicians that the least likely person, this useless backbencher, he'd once been a chair of a committee. I will not have a word said that

longer serving MP in Australia it was a total time so he'd never that anything that he was launching a leadership bid against John Howard and people were genuinely rattled and were kind of like well I can't say how I'm going to support

I've got to check with my office and it was you know within weeks of that point no one from the chase that could have gone up to at least politicians who knew who we were and gotten away with a prank like that so there were good days back

when we were completely obscure and that's actually kind of partly what led to doing sketched stunts overseas in season three was that one looking for again that feeling of, well, people don't know who we are. And if there's an episode with Chaz where he will say what happens

when he comes up against the Secret Service, by the way, and let's just say that they seem to be very, very good at their job. Well, that's only because I'd already come up against the Secret Service and they'd been pretty shit at their job, but they knew who were there. Oh, right, what's the story behind that?

Oh, you didn't know that. Oh, wait a minute. But, yeah, because Barney, this is, yeah, because Barney the Dinosaur. So what we did is we went, do you remember there was a big story at the time that Barney the dinosaur, his music, I love you, you love me, was being used by Dick Cheney and pretty much would be, you know, Dick Cheney's involved. Have you got the rights to use that song? Craig is saying something. That's going to cost this podcast of 4 millions, yeah. But there was a, that was used in the torture or not Abu Ghantanamo Bay.

They'd used that as part of the torture, was that was part of the torture, was that was part of. that you play that music to people. And fair point, it is torture. It is torture. So I went to Dick Cheney's house, dressed as Barney the Dinosaur, and played that song over and over again, extremely loudly at his house. And I think he wasn't there.

I fuck knows at the time. But the FBI ended up turning up at the front of his property. And they were amazing. Was that the FBI or the Secret Service? I think we're so hard to tell you were kind of lucky you got them and not Cheney

because his history was he would not have survived the data definitely have shot the dinosaur it's probably why they're extinct and what happened well the amazing thing was that they were very kind of controlled at the time

at the particular venue right which was quite fortunate because again in hindsight I know we talked to another point about the fact that you know the helium canister for the blimp looked like a bomb. Also, when we turned up to do this recording, we looked at this big speaker we'd been given. And again, it's this big speaker with wires coming out of it, plugging into an iPod and a shit. And you go, this also looks like a bomb,

for God's sake. We've got to stop making props to look like fucking bombs. So, but they were kind of control of that. But then they said, we're going to come back to your hotel. And we're going to look at what you've got there. And this is very early in the answer. And they said, we said, okay, do you want to follow us? And they said, no, it's okay. You go. And we're fucking incredible.

This is one of those moments where you go here. For context, like at the height of sort of still the Iraq war. Yeah. And, you know, post-9-11, very sensitive for everything. Yeah, pretty sensitive. So we head back to the hotel with them not following us to start with. Now, the one mistake they made was that. We called ahead to one more of our, James was back at the hotel.

So we called him and said, get every prop, because we had a son bin Laden props for Chaz's all these other stuff. We had all these other stuff in our rooms. We said, get everything out of our rooms. So he got everything out. And basically he's sitting in the one room. Like we've got two rooms that are coming back to see. He's sitting in this third room surrounded by things that look incredibly bad.

He's like, if he got busted, with this room. But so that was their kind of, that was their moment of incompetence, but the moment of extraordinary, like I was incredibly impressed was, we had saw no, we did not see them the whole journey back.

And then as we turned into the hotel, out of like the traffic behind us, these guys appeared and turned in behind us. And it was fucking impressive. I was so amazed by. Yeah, Chaz said the same thing that they just somehow knew exactly where he was going to be the next day. They just,

yeah, So then they basically tore our kind of rooms apart. Not tore apart, but kind of really searched every bed of the room, asked about what we're doing, we went through, you know, all this kind of stuff. And they ended up kind of going, but said, look, you guys are on notice. You know, we know you're in town now. And then Chaz was, I think, the next day or a day after,

was doing this stunt at the White House, just as a sound bin Laden and that. And fortunately, we'd managed to get to be able to do that because we'd kept this stuff hidden in the other room. but it did mean they were very much a notice and so when Chaz got pulled over they kind of put two and two together and kind of linked it up again

yeah but yeah exactly it's like yeah crazy well thank goodness of all the stunts we started with the bunny the dinosaur one the most the most important point rather than the Samba at the White House we got a lot of stuff though recording in the States and it was fascinating actually

the interesting thing about that was that and if you look back on this thing I know you guys have had a discussion about being slightly dishonest We kind of made out like we got shut down at that thing. But actually, when you shot in America, it was the one place, the feds or the FBI or whatever, they'd never say, turn off your cameras.

Right. Because it was a kind of free speech, respect thing. Whereas we just come from... They also believe in content. The content is king. There's a lot of hours of Netflix to fill. Yeah. Whereas before that, I think,

I can't remember which way the trip went. Maybe it was after that. We'd been shut down at Buckingham, Palace. Total opposite, like a local cop, Buckingham Palace cop. Absolutely prick. Totally took my wallet, took every card, would write down what was on it, and then throw the card on the ground, throw it down. And also it was totally the whole time going, turn cameras off, you can't have the cameras on. Absolute prick about it. Compared to the kind of FBI secret service, we're like, hey guys.

What the queen does. The queen sees his things from serfs, basically. They probably thought you had contacts on that cop show and if you could get them a job. Like, oh, you're in TV. I want to get in TV, man. Yeah, that's true. The Chaser Report, less news, more often. Should we listen to the Trojan horse sketch?

I think we got on a big excursion besides. Oh, that's what today is. We were going to talk about the Trojan horse. So we previously talked about Chris doing, where can you take an actual horse, but fortunately our horse-based material did not stop there and we had a giant model of a wooden Trojan horse and it was what have we learned from history?

Yes, what have we learnt from history because Craig the PM spoke at a summit yesterday about the importance of history and we agree with him. Often it pays to cast your mind back to see what impact history has had on our society. Yeah, that's right. And to find out if we've learnt the lessons from the past,

for instance, I've always loved the story of the Trojan horse where the Greeks won the war against Troy. Yeah, Troy, in Turkey. Yeah, in Turkey, exactly. The Greeks smuggled soldiers through the city gates inside a giant wooden horse. They came out and won the war. A defining moment in warfare history.

Exactly, but would anyone be so stupid as to fall for it again? Would anybody let a Trojan horse through their gates today? Can we take the Trojan horse in? Can we just leave it here overnight? You can pick it up tomorrow morning again, all you? Yeah, pick it up to my morning.

Left-hand side up the next door. Okay, mate. Alright, could I always send that there's no shit like this is coming in. I know. You have a fucking great kick from the horsehouse. It's been dropped off. Alright, I'll just sit in room for God. Yeah, mate.

Where's the history apart? The history department? Quadrangle? Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks very much. Thank you. We just want to leave it here for the night?

I just want to leave it here for the night. We just want to leave it here for the night. Hello. We can't leave this here. We just got this Trojan horse. Yeah, this is the army barracks. We're checking side, quiet letting in the gate. Can we leave it here for the night?

here for the night? What do you mean? I'm sure there's no one inside. Why would there be anyone inside? Can we just leave it here at the barracks for the night? I had no idea he was in there. I had no idea. Excuse me? Excuse me? Hey! I've got to say, I think that is my all-time favorite chaser stunt. I just think it's a brilliant idea. I think it's a brilliant idea. I think it's a brilliant idea. I think it's a was your idea credit. It was my idea, but I actually, I've got to give a lot of credit to everyone else in the room this, because, you know, when you pitch ideas and you've got a list of ideas and you go in, I remember being kind of pretty 50-50 on this one, I doubt this will get up, and everyone was so enthused by it. And not only was enthused by it, that we ended up building

an actual Trojan horse, like, it was like twice as high as the car. Like the fact we made, we spent months building the horse. Like the kind of, I wasn't even back in the idea of much when I brought it in. No, I, the minute you pitched it in, whatever half-assed for, you've pitched it in. I've got the Edemale here. It's a very brief sentence. What does it say?

It says, we have people learned from history. We build a big Trojan horse on the back of the trailer and turn up with businesses, TV stations, anywhere with the gatekeeper saying we have to deliver this horse inside. How many people let the Trojan horse through? And that's all you need. That's the idea. If anything, that's quite a long ride-up for Craig.

There's almost too much detail there. But no, I just, I mean, we were joking in an earlier edition of this series about, you know, a lazy chase of stunt just being not really rooted in any, you know, strong idea. It was where can you take a horse or where can you take a pepper grinder? But this, I mean, this was equally silly, but it was such an audacious offer because, yeah, the art department did build a bloody big horse, but it was also testing a premise. And of course, the premise is slightly, you know, in modern, in modern times,

you're not, it's reasonable, I guess, to accept a Trojan horse. But in our logic, in the logic of the setup, which we didn't play there, but it's that surely the one thing you should have learned, if you're the Turkish consulate, or if you're a historian, or if you work for the military, it's the greatest thing to beware of. The Greeks bearing gifts, a Trojan horse, that means you're about to. It's literally a saying. Yeah, and it was just such a, what we always,

talk about, and Charles, you I think coined this, the commitment to the joke to build the thing, to go to all these quite high status institutions and fucking succeed. Everyone, I think, except the Turks. You accept the Turks as your embassy. Which is good.

The Turks had learned from history. There was the lovely, there was the lady at the barracks who yelled out, hey, check inside. Like, it was great. She kind of picked that. The very, the extremely awkward part about that was that when we went to leave the barracks, for some reason the way the architecture

of the place worked had this huge kind of arch with a light that hung down. And on the way in, our Trojan horse hadn't, you know, had just gone underneath. But then on the way out, we couldn't get it out. We were stuck in there because the Trojan horse was too high and kept hitting their thing. It was like, not only if we got in, we can't actually get out of this place either. But it's funny because we so love the concept of what have we learnt from history. we spent ages afterwards like so long trying to come up with similar ideas we only ever did it once more which was a slightly awkward shoot not great do you remember yeah but it was also awkward the idea the idea was could we invade the polish club well this is it but no but no the idea was dressed as

this is it in in war war two the whole idea was that you know the polls had let the germans the occupation into their country they'd let them in You know, it hadn't been a fight. They'd let them go in there. It was like, have they learnt from history, would Poles let, you know, Nazis come back again. Into their territory again. The closest we had to Polish territory in Australia was a Polish community club.

Oh, no. This is terrible. I only say this. Some of whom may have been Polish. This is the thing. And I say this because I think it's important to revel in the good things, but also the terrible things. I remember standing in Ashfield. I think you were dressed like Adolf Hitler, Chris.

Surely Hansen was Hitler. We're all dressed as Nazis, but I think Hansen had a monopoly on Adam. Doesn't it at some point? Oh, man, it was like incredible. And it felt incredibly awkward. And, of course, we went in there. We aired the piece.

And yeah, it went to air. There was only like 10 people in there, all just politely drinking. We sat down at a table. Of course, they were just polite to us. And it was terrible. It was the worst shoot ever. Oh, God.

But it really good example. You know, a really good example. Because, yeah, on paper, what do we learn from history? Seems like an evergreen idea. Like something you could just... But we got a thousand, if life were musicals or citizens infringement officers or the bloody warehouse guy. This seemed like we had the whole of history to draw on.

And after the brilliance of Trojan horse, the only other moment in history we could think of to turn into comedy was the invasion of Poland. Well, let's see, what have you learned from history? Should we have done that story? Which shows ironically that we, you know, the reason that it worked to whatever we love history is that no one in Australia's learnt history. And we proved that by showing that amongst our group,

we knew no other history direction to talk about. But I love that also the way you did it, and I do enjoy the kind of gormless Craig straight character, which you use quite a lot. But it's, oh, it's a Trojan horse. Like, you spelled out what it is. I would have thought we would not have gone that far because it would have ruined the joke. That's the beauty of it.

Like, we couldn't have been clearer. Like, it's not one of those ones where you're actually hoodwink in anyone. You've been so blatant. You're almost inviting them to look at it, making sure they know what it is and still getting permission to bring it in. Because you don't want them to let it in thinking it's just a big horse. You need them to let it in knowing, I've got a Trojan horse.

And it was... That is a famous device for smuggling people in where they're not supposed to go. For setup here, of course. The idea is that in history, the Trojans let in a horse that there was a gift from the Greeks. It had all of the military inside of it, and that led to them storming the city and taking it over. Our thing was, have we learned from it?

It's led to the saying, a gift from the Greek, you know, never look at, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Beware of Greeks. Beware of Greeks. Bearing gifts. I don't think the never look at gift horse in the mouth is anything to do with actually Greek. I'm not saying it's not. I'm not saying it's not. Don't look at chase the horse in the mouth.

Yeah, yeah, you know, you're right. It's the opposite saying. I mean, there was, again, a sort of a bittersweet postcript to all this because it was such a beloved piece by us in terms. And I think it had its fans in the audience too. But we were so proud of the art department who had literally done a better job, I think, than the Greek, the original Greek, that we made the horse part of our set.

So for most of season two, you can see this Trojan horse on the big war on everything set. And then in an act of sort of reckless, you might call it vandalism, you might just call it wanting to wash ourselves of the show entirely to move on with our lives. But in the final episode, we pushed the Trojan horse off a cliff and it shattered into a thousand pieces at the bottom, I think it was around Whale Beach.

Yeah, it was in Whale Beach. But the reason was, is that the prop was so gigantic. The ABC said, we can't stall this. And we were all like, well, I can't take it to my apartment. Can I? What do you do with it? Surely you can commission an Annabelle Crabb series. Annabelle looks at Trojan horses.

There must be another use the ABC has for this thing. But I think we kept the head, and for years the head was in the chaser office. That's right. But the body of the horse, possibly with people still inside, we never checked. It was hushed off a cliff and it now rests on the bottom. Did we leave the horse at the bottom? No, we cleaned it up. We cleaned it up.

Even those days, we clean up our waist. And you can see that shot is in the very final episode, the very final item, the very final episode, where an Andrew Hanson song, The War is Over. I think it's going to be. And it's actually, I actually really love that piece because it's sort of showing us making amends. and repairing. Well, I guess if it was a war, it was the truce. And it shows us making friends with all the people we'd pissed off,

like Naomi Robson, and I'd had some weird spat with Tim Friedman that I can't quite recall, but he agreed to smoke the peace pipe. And it was us just hugging it out with everyone we'd annoyed. And then we pushed the Trojan horse off a cliff. And it's sort of a reckless act, but it was also really fitting and cathartic as a symbol of the show, just seeing it go and a huge weight. removed from our shoulders. All right, we've got another episode

with the two of you coming up a bit later on in the feed. Our gear is from road microphones and we are part of the ACAS Creatine Network. We'll have more with Chris and Craig soon. There's a new one of these every single day in January. Catch you next time.