Comedy gold

Anyone who has had the misfortune to deal with Centrelink, the Australian government's social services agency, will find this podcast comedy sketch at least mildly amusing. 

Distraction from social leprosy

By Source, Fair use, Link

Fans of Australian television sketch comedy now have a chance to reminisce about the golden years of  July 1992 to October 1993 when The Late Show was broadcast on Saturday nights on the ABC. 

A group of diehard fans of the show have created the Champagne Comedy podcast, in which they discuss their favourite sketches and segments from the show, episode by episode. As the presenters have often observed, the cast often had a prickly relationship with television critics, because the show received some terrible reviews. Most notable among these critics was one who worked for a Melbourne newspaper. 

For some reason I followed his career closely after he regularly started slagging off The Late Show, and the later projects that some former members of the cast made during the late 1990s and early to mid- 2000s. This is why I am able to recall some random examples of this prickly relationship, much to my own amusement, and possibly that of my reader. 

When The Panel, a humorous topical discussion show, first started in 1998, one of the core cast members, including Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy, and Rob Sitch, would regularly appear on radio to promote it. In one appearance, Kennedy discussed her recent interview with this newspaper's TV guide. It was her first time hosting the show. The angle of this article was that Kennedy was both excited and nervous about hosting the show because, being a woman, she wasn’t sure that her male colleagues, would allow her to, or that she would be able to handle it. 

Actually, rather than speak to her, the author fabricated the whole story. The first she knew about it was when she saw it published. This was years before the term "fake news" entered the lexicon. She was justifiably offended by this patronising and sexist article. “Ooh, goody. I’m a girl. I get to host,” she said, paraphrasing him. 

Another time he wrote an article where he got Tom Gleisner’s name wrong, calling him “Paul Gleisner."

Fast forward a few years, and this same critic wrote an article listing Australia’s worst TV comedy shows. He mistakenly included Funky Squad, a parody of 1970s cop shows such as Starsky and Hutch, also produced by Cilauro, Gleisner, Kennedy, and Sitch, in this list, claiming that it was so bad, it only lasted seven episodes. The fact of the matter was that it was always intended to be a short run series. The joke could not be stretched out longer than that. 

I have other stuff to think about these days, and my television watching habits have changed, so I don't have the time to closely follow and catalogue the writings of television critics. This podcast is a nice distraction from the daily grind of driving in city traffic. 

http://www.champagnecomedy.com/champagne-comedy-podcast

No right turn?

Gerard Henderson, co-founder of the Sydney Institute, is a prominent critic of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia's national broadcaster. In his Media Watch Dog blog, he wrote:

"The Daily Telegraph in London reported on Tuesday that Tim Davie, the incoming director-general of the BBC, has a reform program for Britain’s public broadcaster – which is funded by means of a compulsory licence fee.

Put simply, Mr Davie wants to tackle what he regards as left-wing bias in the BBC’s comedy output.  As Bill Gardiner reported, the incoming managing director believes that the comedy shows on BBC radio and television are unfairly biased against the Tories, Donald Trump, Brexit and the like.  Tim Davie is also concerned that too many BBC comedy shows promote a “metropolitan, London-centric and left-wing view of the world”.  Sounds familiar?

In his Daily Telegraph report, Bill Gardiner mentioned that some BBC presenters have criticised the left-wing takeover of BBC comedy. For example, Andrew Neil who referred to The Mash Report as “self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged left-wing propaganda”.

Many of the problems identified by Mr Davie can be found on the ABC. Its main comedy programs – The Weekly  with Charlie Pickering and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell – are hostile to the Coalition. And Mark Humphries, who appears each fortnight at the end of Thursday’s 7.30 program, has essentially one “joke” – sending up a Liberal or Nationals politician as a toff or a hick in a manner which bears no resemblance to anyone except Mark Humphries.

Bill Gardiner also reported that, under Tim Davie’s management, BBC journalists and presenters will be reined in on social media from airing their political views while there will be a crackdown on BBC celebrities making money on the side moonlighting for private companies. All this was anticipating Mr Davie’s speech to BBC staff yesterday.

In the Daily Telegraph on 3 September Robert Mendick reported what Mr Davie said in his address.  It was much the same as had been forecast.  Except that the new BBC director-general was even more blunt – telling staff:

We urgently need to champion and recommit to impartiality. It is deliverable and it is essential…. If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC.

In other words, there will be no future roles at the BBC for activist journalists who are driven by what the new director-general terms their “personal agendas”.  As MWD readers know only too well, the ABC is replete with left-wing activist journalists advancing their political agendas.

It is early days and no one knows whether Tim Davie will press for reform when he settles into the job as BBC director-general.  In Australia, Mark Scott promised to reform the ABC when he was appointed managing director and (so-called) editor-in-chief in 2006.  But Mr Scott was quickly subsumed into the ABC’s Conservative-Free-Zone culture and backed off.  His successors Michelle Guthrie and David Anderson did not even bother to address the need to introduce political diversity into the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.  Also ABC presenters, since Mark Scott’s time, have felt free to weigh into various debates on social media.  They present as activists in the morning and journalists in the evening.

Tim Davie may not succeed with his stated intention to reform the BBC, including the creation of political diversity.  However, if he does, this might provide a model for the next ABC managing director when he/she inherits a Sydney/Melbourne centric public broadcaster which is replete with left-wing activists."

As for the ABC, it is vital national institution in Australia, fulfilling a function that commercial media outlets cannot. Having said that, I get tired of its comedy programs, relentlessly making fun of conservatives, as if having conservative political views is something to be ashamed of. The last time I watched Mad as Hell, I think I may have laughed only once or twice. And I thought I was just becoming a cranky, middle aged white man. 

https://thesydneyinstitute.com.au/blog/issue-512/#editorial

Melbourne International Sanctimony Festival

Andrew Doyle has built a career on taking the Mickey out of progressive social justice warriors, particularly under the guise of fictional Twitter user, Titania McGrath. I dare say that there's no chance of this show being in the 2020 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Considering that McGrath, also the author of Woke: A Guide to Social Justice, is on the same side of the political spectrum of the majority of Australian comedians, this show would cut too close to the bone in the Australian comedy scene.

Not always the best medicine

When I saw this very amusing meme, I knew I had to repost it on my blog. I am not a Liberal voter, but I am a conservative. Whether it's in their live performances, or on their television shows, most of the Australian comedians I know almost incessantly mock conservatives and conservative values. It seems that the Australian comedy scene is largely a conservative free zone.

Leftists often like to make themselves out to be nicer, more tolerant people than conservatives, or right wingers, as they often call them, in pejorative terms. That is why I don't go to many live comedy gigs, and I have more or less stopped watching these television shows. I grew tired of the constant ridicule, to see something I actually found funny. More's the pity.