Irresistible chatted to James Schloeffel from The Shovel ahead of the The War on 2024 Annual Comedy Gala presented by The Anti- Experts. Starting their nationwide tour in Gosford on 27th November, there’s plenty of time to catch the gang before the end of the year, wherever you are in Australia.
How much fun is the end of year Annual Comedy Gala?
“The great thing about it is we talk about the entire year and relive it, by remembering all the ridiculous things that have happened. It’s such a good laugh. The War on 2024 Gala will give us permission to tell a real range of stories, and it’s a different way of looking at the news cycle, especially for people who are interested in politics and current affairs. It won’t just be about Trump, although he’s hard to avoid. We’ve been honing the format since 2017, and it’s just getting bigger and bigger. People love it.”
What about your co-hosts? How do you all blend together?
“I’ve worked with Charles Firth from The Chaser for years and we’ve produced some really exciting work together. Mark Humphries from 7 News brings more sketch and character based comedy to the show, and we’re very excited to be working with Veronica Milsom from Mad as Hell this year for the first time. She’s a wonderful talent and will add an entirely different component.”
Any highlights from the show to look forward to?
““The Defo Awards” is a celebration of defamation fuck- ups by overconfident Australian men. An Oscars for defamation. It’s inspired by the likes of Peter Dutton, Lachlan Murdoch, Ben Roberts- Smith and Bruce Lehrmann, people who have brought defamation suits which have massively backfired with what has come out in the trials. We did the awards for the first time last year and we thought it would be a one-off, but it keeps happening, so we’re going to do it all over again.”
Does The Chaser and The Shovel compete for stories over the year?
“Charles and I have developed a great working relationship over the last decade, although we live in different cities and don’t speak very often, which has helped maintain that. We run competing satirical news services so we are like a cartel of satire. We work on our annual magazine together, and we have the Wakernomics show, as well as the Gala, but apart from that we don’t have anything to do with each other, so the only way I’ll know what The Chaser is posting on their website is by looking at it. Occasionally we’ll run a similar story by coincidence, but I purposefully try not to look at it too much.”
Is satire becoming more important as institutions, norms, and the rules based order crumble, particularly overseas?
“We have to be careful not to overestimate the power of The Shovel to reshape the free world, but I think morally there is an obligation and a role for satire. The job of our kind of comedy is to hold power to account, regardless of whether people are sick of it or not, but it will be tough, and it’s already getting tougher.”
How will you handle the Trump issue over his next term as President?
“If you came to the U.S. election and you didn’t have any context or know anything about it, you would think they’ve gone through a lengthy process to find the worse person in the country, and then ask that person to run the place. Trump is ridiculous and provides incredible content, but I do think people will get sick of it pretty quickly. They definitely tired of the whole thing by the end of his first term, so it’s not necessarily the jackpot of satire. But the one thing with Trump is that you never know what is going to happen. America is a very different country both culturally and politically from Australia, so I don’t think what’s happening over there will shape Australian politics in the ways that people are worried about. Compulsory voting makes a big difference.”
Weren’t you the poster boy for Aussies for Trump?
“Back in 2016, we wanted to get into some Trump rallies in the weeks before he became President. Even back then, if you were not a Trump supporter or were seen as a journalist it could be incredibly hostile, so we had this idea to pretend we were Trump supporters, and we created a fake group “Aussies for Trump” to get in. We were able to film people in the rallies and engage and interview them. They were thrilled that people had travelled so far to support their guy, they never caught on. It was a cross between a stand-up show and a rally in 1930s Germany. A weird mix of entertainment and humour with fascist undertones. It was fascinating talking to these people and listening to the conspiracy theories which are now so mainstream, but at the time were novel and wild.”
Your Wankernomics show ‘Just Touching Base’ will be on tour next year. Is that a different kind of release?
“We’ll start the new show in Adelaide in March and then tour all of Australia. That show is all about us laughing at ourselves and the things we all do, compared to laughing at our leaders. People love the opportunity to not take themselves too seriously. It is very cultish the way we use workplace language. Everything sounds strange when you start a new job, and then within a week, everyone talks like everyone else. It’s so different from the other shows that we do. Its a cathartic mix of laughter and grimacing. It’s fun and like a therapy session at the same time.”
Is the jargon different in different countries?
“I worked in marketing for a few years in the U.K., and the corporate jargon over there is off the scale. They speak in a weird way to maintain power, or to not let on that they don’t know what they’re talking about, or to procrastinate. In corporate environments in Australia there’s also an endless source of material, but they do go harder on this stuff over there. They really embrace it. “Levelling up” was a big nonsensical phrase that the last U.K. government used that I don’t think politicians would have got away with in Australia.”
You took the show to Edinburgh last year. How was that?
“We actually played Edinburgh and London and it went down really well. We’re hoping to tour other parts of the U.K later next year, we’re getting a lot of requests from the north of England. Wherever you’re from it’s easy to lose perspective when you’re in the middle of a job. What Wankernomics does is pull you out and it plays your own phrases back to you. You realise how funny it all is.”
The War on 2024 Annual Comedy Gala
GOSFORD
Laycock Street Theatre: WED 27 NOV
NEWCASTLE
Civic Theatre, THU 28 NOV
BRISBANE
The Powerhouse, FRI 29 & SAT 30 NOV
CANBERRA
Canberra Theatre, WED 4 DEC
WOLLONGONG
Town Hall, THU 5 DEC
ADELAIDE
Norwood Concert Hall, FRI 6 DEC
PERTH
The Astor Theatre, SAT 7 DEC
HOBART
Theatre Royal, WED 11 DEC
GEELONG
Arts Centre, THU 12 DEC
MELBOURNE
Hamer Hall, FRI 13 DEC
SYDNEY
The Enmore Theatre, SUN 15 DEC
