Not even bothering with an Anna Coren segue here...

IMRHO -- that's Rarely Humble Opinion for newbies and those of your with SASs* -- the best single TV comedy gag in Australian history was perpetrated by Gerry Connolly. It can't have been much longer than five seconds of screen time and was just three words.

Prince Charles, seated, leafs through a girlie magazine. The Queen, standing, siezes it from her son and heir, looks at the camera: "Queen," she says, "takes porn."

This week, however, we have a challenger from The Chaser boys, currently touring the provinces (and mightily chuffed that APEC charges against them have been dropped). It's one of those topical, lightning-fast, throw-away gags that's more than just well-tuned, it's blueprinted.


Chasin' Chas... Dominic Knight (far left) is the blow-in.

And, inevitably, I run the risk of decanting the champagne by (1) paraphrasing it, cos I didn't write it down, and (2) by taking it out of its context... a beat the buzzer-style current affairs comp with a couple of audience members flanking one of the team (I don't know their fricken names, whaddya think I am, a groupie?!) who is firing back unexpected and off-beat answers to some rather obvious questions.

So, the Q was something like: "-- recently accused of peddling exploitative images of young children --" and the A was... Terri Irwin.

Funny, really. All night I was expecting a gag about the roadie being a Bill Henson lookalike... and it never came.

One thing you've gotta give the Chaser boys credit for... they're anything but lazy. The transition from TV to stage is not an easy one. But, all too often, those that do great TV work do awful stage routines.

I first saw Dame Edna on stage in November 1981. In Subiaco. (I don't know what's scarier. That I remember the date to the month or that it turned out to be correct! I just checked my DIY. 21/11/81. An Evening's Intercourse.)

I initially wrote "live on stage" but Edna wasn't. She was dead on stage. The show was ratshit. Unbelievably, unforgivably slack. Now, I appreciate that TV has a voracious appetite for new material and that stage is comic relief... a single routine can be honed and repeated and toured... but that's hardly an excuse for laziness.

I've also seen inexplicably bad live performances from Wil Anderson. The man who tosses off pearls on TV, week after week, brilliant original material, used to do the same stand-up comedy routine... year after year after bloody year.

Which reminds me... the once-wonderful Doug Anthony All Stars used to do something similar. Songs and routines and banter in the same order. But that was different. Understandable. Not a rip off. More of a musical comedy show.

But, once they achieved a degree of (well-earned) fame, their devoted teen groupies quickly got their routines down pat. Word perfect. And they'd chant along with them. Which pissed DAAS off mightily. So they turned to audience abuse. Ick. That's when they lost me.

The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour is like a triple shot of the TV show. Good new material. Little of the hectoring serial pest stuff that I hate so much. Not too much musical stuff. (Hey, nothing wrong with their If Life Were a Musical routines, but I wouldn't want ninety minutes of it!!)

Funnily enough, the weakest moments were the bits where the boys attempted to make a 'Show' out of it all. The local content was perfunctory. (Frankston = Boganville. Well, dah...) The audience abuse was puzzlingly inappropriate. The show ends with the team screaming at punters to get fucked. And jolly smiling faces shine back at them.

Hmm. Cut that, lads.


* short attention spans

The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour is at the The Athenaeum, Melbourne, until June 14. Then Lyric Theatre, QPAC, June 25 to 28. Newcastle Civic Theatre, July 1 & 2. Penrith (Evan Theatre at Panthers), July 4. Blacktown RSL, July 5. And Souths Juniors, Kensington (NSW), July 6.


My review is scheduled to run in tomorrow's Herald Sun.