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

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

In honour of the War on Everything turning 20 last week, here is our absolute favourite chat from our WAR STORIES podcast miniseries, where Dom and Charles sat down with Chris and Craig to unpack the stunt that proved you've always gotta go big. ---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigle Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. We're still recovering from our shock at the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor, which led us to put out a special episode on the weekend. And while Charles and my jaws get to recover from the floor and put back in a normal talking location, we have decided to share with you an archive episode, back from when we did the war stories series joining up with some of the chaser originals to tell stories from the Chasers War and

everything. And since, as you may have seen in the media in the past week, it is 20 years since the beginning of the first series of the Chasers War and Everything. We have exhumed one of our absolute favorites. This is the episode looking at the Trojan Horse stunt. Go and watch it online. Just put Chaser Trojan Horse into YouTube or wherever, and look at it first before we tell you about some of the stories behind the making of it. I must say this is one of my favourite chaser stunts in that it's based on essentially taking something that we all know and making it real today with an absurdly large prop. And there's nothing that's as funny as an absurdly large prop.

So after the ads on the way in, please enjoy The Tale of the Trojan Horse. We'll catch you for a fresh new episode very, very soon. We've got Chris Taylor and Craig Rucastle here, both of you. Thanks for coming in. Good to be here. It's our pleasure. How are you guys? We are very, very well, let's not get into the whole thing.

I made it, 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 go, 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. I tried to...

On the mere fear that he's going to tell me something happening in his life. I tried to explain that to. I said, when I asked how I really wasn't interested in any part of your health. I am here, you know. Is he here? 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. Thank God, Donnell at least, is professional enough to know that I don't give a fuck what he feels like.

Yeah, that dates back to about, what, 996. Anyway, I think this is the most amount of chase of people I've been with in years. Yeah, yeah. Possibly since we've worked 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. I'll see you, boys. Charles Howie. No, 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're on a short chair. It's actually 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. The 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. It's not the Golden Day. for them. That's the inconvenient weird youth that they have. Look, it was a golden days, 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 here and we were saying, we must have oddly match fit. And I know you and I, Craig, had just come off Triple J. And something 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 we did. And had I not had the discipline of not writing the sketches every day for radio, it's no way I would have been able to not write all the sketches for the TV show.

Yeah, you were matched for it had just been an asshole and just turning up, just in 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 a bit of a dream job because 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 there's still, you know, it's a very wonderful institution. But I don't think in my recent dealings with them, I've ever known this the trust and the, and the, the arm's length,

sort of generosity, and just letting us go out, literally running amok in society. And, and maybe... The misplaced trust, really. The misplaced trust, really. The misplaced trust has been squanded. That's why the ASEC... Of course, yeah. I do think, I do think, look, 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. People, 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 into 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 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 to be the case that every stunt on the campaign trail, they'd put the wilds up, like the Herald 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. So the blissful period, I reckon, was season one of the War and Everything, where we were 1030 on Friday nights and, frankly, not a particularly large audience. and even season two up to APEC, there was still, you could go out in public without being hassled. That's all 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. This one I always found amazing was the extent to which,

and it really did show that, and thanks to the ABC for only, been watched by a small proportion of the population. It really did show me that even when things got bigger and were 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 their gates. There's a good fucking chance this might be a TV. They're either an ancient Greek or they're from the trailer. Exactly. It's pretty much one.

In either case, it's bad. And thankfully, thankfully, in Australia, very few people that actually watched 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. 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, 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 a 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 just make sure there's no projectiles. That's the...

I love... You imagine the Secret Service saying that. Look. The bigger problem was actually... We've ran out of ideas. No, well, that... No, no. 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 in the public. vox pops than that, that, you know, what 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 10 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 bad against Ellen Cair. It's the longest serving MP in Australia. It was. The total time so, they'd never that anything. 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 out 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? You didn't know that. Oh, Barney. This is, yeah, because Barney the Dinosaur. So what we did is we went, do you remember the, 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, yeah. Dick Cheney's involved. Have you got the rights to use that song? Craig just saying something. That's going to cost this podcast of $4,000, yeah. But there was a, you know, in Abu Ghraib or something or not Abu-Tanamo Bay. They used that as part of the torture,

was that it 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 it the FBI or the Secret Service? I think it was the FBI. You were kind of lucky you got them and not Cheney because his history was vital. He would not have survived the data.

They would 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 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. 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 for this 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 there 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. They just, the next day. They just, yeah, they just followed that. And this was it.

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 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. Right.

Yeah, but exactly, it's like, yeah, crazy. Well, thank goodness of all the stunts we started with the bunny, the dinosaur one, the most important point rather than the Sama 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 at 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, yeah, 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. Absolute 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. 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.

Oh, you're in TV. I want to get in TV, man. The Chaser Report, less news more often. Should we listen to the Trojan horse sketch? I think we've got on a big excursion besides. Oh, that's what today's sketch. 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.

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, you know, 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 just take the Trojan horse in?

Can we just leave it here overnight? You go pick up tomorrow morning again, are you? Yeah, pick it up tomorrow morning. I'm on left-hand side up the next one's I'm gonna know what shit like this is coming in? This is the history department? Quadrangle? Quadrangle?

Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks very much. We have a gift. Can we leave it here for the night? That's the Consul General. We just want to leave it here for the night.

Hello? We can't leave this here. Got this Trojan horse. Trojan horse. Yeah, this is the army barracks. You leave it here for the night? Inside. 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. Yes, me. I've got to say, I think that is my all-time favorite chase a stunt. I just think it's a brilliant idea. I think it was your idea.

It was my idea, but I actually, I've got to give a lot of credit to everyone else in the room of 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. It was like twice as high as the car.

Like the fact we spent months building the horse. Like the kind of, I wasn't even backing the idea of much when I bought it in. I was like, this is great way. The minute you pitched it in, whatever half-assed for, you've pitched it in. I've got the Edemail 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 will 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 jason 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 times, 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 are Trojan horse, that means you're about to. saying. 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. It makes them funnier. There was the lovely, there was the lady at the barracks who yelled out, hey, check inside. Like, it was great. that 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 feet. It was like, not only if we got in,

we can't actually get out of this place. 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 was...

Could we invade the Polish club? Well, this is it. No, but no, the idea was... Dressed as? In World War II, the whole idea was that, you know, the Poles had let... the Germans 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 learned 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. 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 because. Surely Hansen was Hitler.

We were all dressed as Nazis, but I think... I think Hansen had a monopoly on Adler. Doesn't that at some point? Oh, man, it was like incredible. And it felt incredibly awkward. And of course, we went in there. We aired the peace. And, yeah, it went to air.

There was only like 10 people in there, all just politely drinking. We sat down at the table. Of course, they were just polite to us. And it was terrible. It was the worst shoot ever. But a really good example. Because, yeah, on paper, what do we learn from history? Seems like an evergreen idea.

Like something you could just roll out every week. We got a thousand if life were musicals or citizens and 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 in the comedy was the invasion of poll. Well, let's see, let's see, Craig, what have you learned from history?

Should we have done that? Which shows ironically that we, you know, the reason that it worked or whatever we love for history is that no one in Australia has learnt history. And we proved that by showing that amongst our group, we knew no other history you'd actually talk about. But I love that also the way you did it, and I do enjoy the kind of gormless Craig street 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, 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're being 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 it's not supposed to go. For set up 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 a gift horse. Beware of Greeks. Beware of Greeks.

Beware of Greeks. I don't think the never look a gift horse in the mouth is anything to do with actually, 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 post-cript to all this

because it was such a beloved piece by us internally. 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, it was 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 apartments. Can I? What do you do with it? Surely you can commission an Annabelle Crab series. Annabel looks at Trojan horses. There must be another UCAVC 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 pushed 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 Anandra,

and 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. 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.

We are part of the Iconicast network and we'll catch you in short order probably tomorrow.