On the day after The Chaser’s now infamous “Make a Wish” sketch was aired on ABC TV earlier this year, the broadcaster received a handful of complaints. By the following week it had received 4300, mostly from people who hadn’t actually seen the show, but had read about it or heard it discussed on talk-back. It was a similar case for Bill Henson’s photos of naked teenagers and Kyle Sandilands’ lie detector stunt and concentration camp jibe. In what The Chaser’s Julian Morrow describes as the “year of outrage at the media,” he used the Andrew Olle Lecture to take aim at the “talk-back jocks,” mentioning Steve Price, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley by name, who thrive on stirring up sentiment and causing such situations to escalate beyond a reasonable perspective.
While admitting that The Chaser’s Wish sketch “was the worst by far,” and again apologising to those truly affected, Morrow says he was surprised at how the sketch had gone global thanks to the talk-back hosts who put it on their websites, even after the ABC had removed all copies of it from its own.
Click here to listen to the whole lecture and tell us whether you think Julian Morrow is right or wrong. Or should he just accept that while he is in the self confessed business of pushing the envelope of public decency in the name of comedy, talk-back announcers are in the business of pillorying him and his ilk when they push too far.
On a much more sombre note, it is with deep sorrow that we mourn the passing of Vic Davies a great radio man whose wit and talent entertained audiences for decades. At 55 he has left us far too young. Please feel free to leave a message in his memory.
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