Level four of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation may not look like much with its maze of cubicles and squashy couches but it is the central nervous system of the beast that is the Chaser. A mock school photo of the boys hangs on the wall behind us as we wait on the couches for Chas Licciardello. He is running slightly late for the interview courtesy of New South Wales’ public transport system. Despite the group’s success, they have not progressed to chauffeured limousines.
Andrew Hansen strolls past in military garb and powdered white hair, presumably done up for a shoot, and introduces himself as he spots us. Taken aback by his friendliness, all we could do was lavish compliments on his interesting attire to which he points out, doesn’t quite fit. We immediately notice that his pants aren’t entirely fastened properly.
“I think there’s all these people out there who think that we think we’re tough guys because we’re always in the news,” says Chas as he sits behind Julian Morrow’s desk. Morrow is the only one of the Chaser who has his own office as he also doubles as executive producer.
“But we know that we’re geeks, we know that we’re nerds. We know that nothing we do is brave. And don’t pretend otherwise.”
The Chaser Boys, as they have been affectionately dubbed by fans, comprises of Andrew Hansen, Chris Taylor, Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel and Chas Licciardello. They all worked on satirical newspaper ‘The Chaser’ which infamously published ex-Prime Minister John Howard’s unlisted home phone number before Andrew Denton came knocking.
“Oh that’s legal,” Chas quickly points out when asked about the Howard incident. “Totally legal. If you have a phone number you can print it. Just totally unethical that’s all,” he laughs in his distinctly coarse voice. “Let’s distinguish between immoral and illegal. Immoral, we do plenty of. Illegal, we don’t do so much of.”
It’s an interesting revelation considering the number of times they have been arrested, most famously for Chas’ attempt to sell riot weapons outside a Bulldog’s football match and when their fake Canadian motorcade infiltrated several rounds of security at the APEC summit to come within a block of George W Bush’s hotel.
However, despite what the public may think, being arrested is not something they enjoy. At least, not for most of them.
“I think one or two of the guys do get off a bit on the arrest,” he says. “I’m definitely not one of them. I hate being arrested, not because of the ‘threat’ or something, there is no threat. You’re never safer than when you’re in police custody.”
“The police are professionals, they know what they’re doing, they’re not going to beat you in jail,” he says, adding: “unless you’re Aboriginal”. It’s almost as if he couldn’t help himself and we laugh partly in shock and partly at the political incorrectness.
“Truth be told, we do have debates over those kinds of issues and I won’t pretend that we have any kind of consistent line,” he says, referring to their boundaries on ethics and political correctness. “There are times when we think ‘aw, that’s too slack’. There are times when we don’t. To be honest, more often we think it’s too slack than not, but enough ‘nots’ slip through,” he says and let’s out another laugh. “So we have a quite terrible reputation by now.”
This reputation also extends to other continents. Most recently, reports of the Chaser’s arrest in Italy surfaced after the group flew a blimp over the Vatican into what was apparently a no-fly zone.
“Craig was flying the blimp. The rest of us were accessories to flying a blimp but having said that, I didn’t get arrested because I ran faster than the other guys.”
We’re incredulous of the claim, so he continues: “The Italian police are pretty inefficient, they do things old school so if you’re a little bit more evasive you can get away with a fair bit. And so far, I don’t even think they’ve gotten around to filing the paperwork, so fingers crossed.”
The blimp incident is only one of many brushes with the law the boys have had since shooting began for the new series. The first episode airs on May 27 on ABC1. It has been a long eighteen months without the Chaser boys on screen, most of which they spent travelling the nation with the live show: ‘The Chaser’s Age of Terror Variety Hour’.
He concedes the live show is much easier than working on the show in the studio. “Don’t let any comedians tell you that touring is a gruelling schedule, because it’s just a joke.”
“You just need to write a routine, get it right and then just do it over and over again,” he says. “You end up with people cheering even when you’re not particularly funny and it makes you feel really good. It makes you feel way more talented than you actually are. I recommend it to everyone.”
When asked whether anything unexpected happened in the live shows, he responds first by asking us whether we publish online. He realises that we do from our momentarily evasive facial expressions.
“It’s okay… They’re not going to read it. You don’t have a big readership in North Queensland I’m assuming.”
He continues to recount the incident regarding an act where he is learning to do stand-up comedy from a GPS system: “It tells me to tell a joke and I try to tell a joke and I come up with the most offensive joke imaginable and it starts going “wrong way, wrong direction, turn around” etcetera right? Now, the original joke I came up with started off with a lesbian, quadriplegic Aborigine etcetera right? It was that kind of thing and you never actually get to what the joke is because the GPS is telling me ‘wrong way, wrong way, wrong way’ and I stop.”
“Now, when we were in North Queensland, that got a huge laugh, and we thought, well, that went well. But then afterwards, when people come up to us after the show to get autographs, everyone was asking “What’s the joke? What’s the joke?! It sounds really good! What’s the joke?” And it gave me real insight into race relations in North Queensland. They all wanted to know what the joke was about the quadriplegic Aborigine. Very interesting.”
From then on, the team dropped the word Aborigine from the segment – “And it didn’t go down as well.”
However, it doesn’t seem like the boys are going to be holding anything back for their new, more compact season: “I can promise you that we will be smugger than ever before,” Chas says.
“It’s tough to give you details because we ourselves don’t know what we’re going to be doing. It’s kind of a week by week proposition. So at this stage I can tell you that there will be new segments. I hope there will be new segments because if there aren’t new segments it means that we’ve filmed a lot of stuff that hasn’t worked.”
One drastic change for the show is the decision to scrap the segment: ‘What We Learned From A Current Affairs This Week’.
“We really covered every angle you could possibly cover. Because let’s be honest, the segment really had two or three episodes in it although we stretched it out over two years.
“Short of getting injected into one of their arteries, I don’t think we can get any closer to Today Tonight than we got at the end of 2007,” he says.
The end of 2007 was when the Chaser infiltrated Today Tonight headquarters with a camera crew – “They locked the door and wouldn’t let us go for two hours.”
There are no hard feelings towards Anna Coren who has changed from being host of Today Tonight to working for CNN. She was frequently a target for mockery during the Chaser’s ‘A Current Affairs’ segment.
“I’m delighted for her. She finally got out,” he says in amusement. “I didn’t think anyone could escape [Today Tonight]. I thought it was a black hole, that’s the end of your career right there but she somehow managed.”
Another prominent target on the Chaser hit-list was John Howard who was accessible through his daily walking regime around the outskirts of Sydney.
When asked whether Kevin Rudd’s lack of outdoor exercise makes it a hindrance to potential pranks, Chas responds: “Yeah it does actually! When you think that you probably think, ‘Oh yeah that’s a funny thought’, but it’s actually true… Not only because he doesn’t walk, but also because he’s a big hider.”
“He never walks in through the front door. You might think he’s a media slut, but the truth is that he really likes control of what he’s on and what he’s not. And right now, he doesn’t want to be on our show,” he says.
It appears the Prime Minister may have sung a different tune in the days before his new-found importance.
“He used to seek us out. Actually he used to be the worst offender. When he saw one of us with the camera, he did this huge detour to walk past the camera in the hope that we’d approach him.”
Chas’ theory is that politicians feel compelled to be recognised by younger audiences and desperately want to impress their children, mentioning Alexander Downer as a prime example: “Whenever we went near him, he was always wanting to know what day he’d be on so he could tell his daughter.”
As one of the Chaser team’s most visible members, it seems Chas stops at nothing short of sending strippergrams to pashing Rove on national television (which he describes as “A little bit firm for my taste, I gotta say. Not very tender”). His comedic roots stem from his undergraduate days at the University of Sydney.
“I’m not kidding when I say without the Law Revue, I would not be on TV, and you just could get heaps of valuable experience performing at uni. As much funding as people can throw into university activity programs, I think it would help comedians a lot,” he says.
The Chaser team have a reputation for their intelligence, due in part to their fountain of law degrees. Although he found his other degree in science to be “utterly useless”, Chas never wanted to be a lawyer either.
With this love for scriptwriting, Chas wanted to break into the radio industry, particularly to impress Ugly Phil of Hot 30 countdown fame, in the era before Kyle Sandilands.
“I sent a strippergram to Ugly Phil to read my scripts. I figured people send shit to him all the time, so that’ll get his attention, and I got no response. So I said okay fine. Then I sent him a male strippergram. ‘Sorry obviously I misjudged you, this might be more to your taste,’ and still got no response. So I sent a fatogram,” he says.
With the new series about to hit screens around the country, Chaser’s War On Everything is an obvious commercial dream. The team have resisted the urge to abandon the ABC despite receiving offers from every channel, every year.
“To be frank, I think it’d be suicide if we did [leave the ABC],” he says.
He outlines why going commercial wouldn’t be so wise: “Every time we got arrested we’d probably get fired. As opposed to the ABC where they pay for our legal bills – which is nice. And let’s face it, we culture a very cynical audience who would turn on us in a second if they thought we sold out.”
But at the end of the day, the concept behind the program will still be the same: “It’s just about taking the piss,” he says. “There are times when you think to yourself ‘oh we’re making a good satirical point’. But the truth is our first job is to be funny, and if we’re not funny, what the fuck are we doing on TV?”
