Here at The Chaser we’ve picked up a side-job from Border Force to conduct interrogations of some of Australia’s most seditious characters, and sort out the subversives from the patriots. These interviews are conducted in conjunction with ASIO and the five eyes intelligence sharing protocols. This episode, we talk to broadcaster and comedian Alex Lee, who proves to be a particularly worthy opponent.

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Stream online at PodcastOne

Interrogation Notes

Subject: ALEX LEE
Under Investigation For: BEING SUSPICIOUSLY PROLIFIC, TREASON

Charles Firth: Alex Lee, thank you for submitting to this involuntary interrogation.

Alex Lee: I submit. Please don’t hurt me.

Introduction: The level of sedition, anti-authority behavior, and advertiser unfriendly thought-crime has reached record levels, especially amongst Australia’s elites. Luckily the men and men of The Chaser have been commissioned by Border Force to conduct interrogations and sort out the subversives from the patriots. In conjunction with ASIO and the five eyes intelligence sharing protocols. This is Extreme Vetting with The Chaser.

Dom Knight: Today we are interrogating one of Australia’s most versatile performers. Charles?

Charles Firth: Ah, Richard Wilkins.

Dom Knight: No, Alex Lee. She’s a comedian who’s appeared in The Checkout, The Roast, Story Club and Saturday Night Rove. She starred in the sellout new play, Single Asian Female, and not only been interviewed on ABC News 24 but a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

Charles Firth: How can someone both be a satirical comedian and a proper news journal?

Dom Knight: What are you saying? Sandra Sully is very funny.

Charles Firth: She is. Let’s get her.

Dom Knight: Do you know why you’re here?

Alex Lee: No, I don’t.

Dom Knight: We are looking for people. We’re looking for recruits from the world of the media, journalism, comedy to go deep undercover.

Alex Lee: To do what?

Dom Knight: Well, Border Force and the AFP helping keep Australia safe, making it better and making people aware of the good points about Peter Dutton.

Alex Lee: Oh, that’s a hard task. So I’m glad you’ve gone to the best person to do this.

Dom Knight: All right. Let’s start with your full name.

Alex Lee: My full name is Alexandra Clair Lee.

Dom Knight: And where did you grow up?

Alex Lee: I grew up in, I guess, South Sydney in around Peakhurst and then Brighten le Sands. Yeah.

Dom Knight: Did you know Albo growing up in South Sydney?

Alex Lee: No. No. Albo never dropped in. Yeah, that was unfortunate. We could have had something really special.

Dom Knight: That’s a positive from your perspective. Absolutely.

Charles Firth: How old are you?

Alex Lee: 33. I was at the playground the other day and this little girl said, “How many twenties are you?” And I said, “I’m 32.” And then I realized I was actually 33 so that was depressing.

Charles Firth: What was the worst thing you did as a kid?

Alex Lee: The worst thing I did as a kid was I was … My sister is adopted, actually adopted. So I said I wished that she’d never been adopted. Which most kids can just say, “I wish you were adopted” or telling them they’re adopted, but she actually was. And I was like, “I wish she wasn’t ever adopted.” And I was in heaps of trouble for that. That was plain evil.

Dom Knight: Was it the first she heard of it?

Alex Lee: No, she already knew, but yeah, that was-

Dom Knight: Did she ever forgive you?

Alex Lee: I don’t know. I should ask. Yeah, that was … I mean, we were pretty brutal to each other, but I think that was one of those moments where you’re like, “Oh, I crossed the line.” Being eight years old, being like, “Am I a bad person?”

Charles Firth: Can I just see you, Dom?

Dom Knight: Yeah. No, I think we should after that for a moment.

Charles Firth: This is a person who genuinely lacks empathy, Dom. This is fantastic.

Dom Knight: This is incredible. I mean, having known Alex for a while as you have, I thought she was very nice and kind. But clearly that’s just an elaborate facade. This is wonderful.

Charles Firth: Look, I think she should be in the inner sanctum of Peter Dutton’s office.

Dom Knight: She could.

Charles Firth: Yeah.

Dom Knight: Yeah, she could now. It’s a very exciting future for her here I think. All right, let’s get back in.

Dom Knight: And do you regularly say devastatingly cruel things to people? Is that something that you’ve gone on to do?

Alex Lee: In a way I guess that’s what comedy is, isn’t it? Just saying cruel things about people you don’t know.

Charles Firth: Well, I mean there is a sort of comedy that’s sort of lighthearted and joyful about the world, but obviously not your comedy.

Dom Knight: It’s true. And I’ve found working with The Chaser for a long time, that incredible cruelness dressed up as a comedy is just part of life. Yeah, that’s absolutely true.

Alex Lee: Yeah. It’s workplace bullying really.

Dom Knight: You are not just a comedian, are you? You’ve been a…

Charles Firth: You’ve been a proper journalist.

Dom Knight: A proper journalist, right. How did that happen?

Alex Lee: Well, that’s what I studied and then I did a lot of comedy at uni. And then I just happened to get a job at ABC news, making cups of tea for Juanita Phillips and picking up her dry cleaning and all the rest of that. As a runner.

Dom Knight: Is there a secret to picking up Juanita Phillips’s dry cleaning?

Alex Lee: No, that’s pretty standard, but there is a secret to how she likes her cup of tea.

Dom Knight: Oh yeah.

Alex Lee: You have to heat up the cup first.

Dom Knight: Oh, that’s very fussy for an ABC person.

Alex Lee: This was back in the pre ABC news 24 days when I started, when there was just all the resources in the world, so I’m sure Juanita probably has to make her own tea now. It’s not the golden days of the ABC that it once was, but yeah. Have to have to heat up her, her cup first. She likes it nice and hot.

Dom Knight: Can you pass for an ABC employee? You’ve been a few times over the years.

Alex Lee: Well, I’ve certainly been on a lot of canceled shows on the ABC. I’m not sure if they’d let me back in now. I think I’m a bad luck charm.

Dom Knight: But weren’t you a serious news presenter at News 24?

Alex Lee: I was, yes. I started as a runner and then I moved on to being a news producer at News 24. And then they let me read the news overnight when no one was watching and you had to do everything yourself. There was no one else in the… You were literally in the office by yourself twiddling your own autocue button and yeah, just going solo. Which is a very funny thing.

Charles Firth: I’ve often wondered about news Raiders. Is it just incredibly boring? Like you don’t even write the things that you say, do you?

Alex Lee: Yeah, I mean, I guess I never really did a long bulletin but I certainly was in the control room for a lot of them. And yeah, I guess the thing that keeps you on the toes is producers not doing their jobs properly. Because I don’t know if you ever watched the news and you see Joe Bryan’s nose crinkle up as he says the words that are coming out of his mouth.

Alex Lee: And he’s like, “What am I saying?? You know? They kind of take it a distance back. So I think that is probably what keeps it interesting. Otherwise reading autocue is not very hard.

Dom Knight: But there’s a lot of potential here. I’m thinking if you know how the ABC autocue system works.

Alex Lee: I do. I know everything from the bottom. I know where to put the dry cleaning and I know…

Dom Knight: Cups of tea. We looked minister Dutton defits previously with the AFP going through the front door sending police in. That didn’t go down very well. We’re trying a subtler approach. And what I’m thinking is if you were able to access the auto cues of the news as it was read, and put Border Force friendly messages up there…

Alex Lee: Yes!

Dom Knight: They’d have to read them, wouldn’t they? They’d have no alternative.

Alex Lee: They’d have to. Yeah, they don’t know how to form their own thoughts. They just read whatever’s on there. That would be… I think that’s something that we could really look into.

Dom Knight: This sounds very good. And look also, they’re very sensitive at the moment. Anyone who looks like an AFP employee. But you haven’t been a newsreader, you can pull it off.

Alex Lee: Well the thing is though… Now that I’ve gone on to do comedy, I’d have to somehow, I guess renounce all my comedic intentions. I don’t know if there’s some sort of ceremony or blood sacrifice involved doing that. Like when you go back to being serious again?

Dom Knight: Well when you sign the contract with Border Force… Yeah, that’s it.

Alex Lee: Cease being funny. Yeah.

Dom Knight: But then also you’ve done a lot of acting, haven’t you? You’ve done plays and all kinds of things.

Alex Lee: Yeah. I guess I just like to keep a lot of irons in the fire, because I’m not top of the game at anything, so I think it’s good just about to spread it around and do a bit of everything.

Alex Lee: Yeah. So I was in a play called Single Asian Female, written by Michelle Law, that premiered at La Boite Theater a couple of years ago. And then that went really well and we did it at Belvoir and it’s gone on to tour since then. And yeah, that’s been wonderful. Yeah I’ve really… I’ve done a couple of little acting jobs on TV shows and things like that. And yeah, I mean acting is like news reading. `It’s the same. It’s… Actually everyone pretends as a real process to it. It’s easy. You just do pretend. You say the words that are on the script, you move your face in a happy way or a sad way. And bingo bango.

Charles Firth: So I’m having real trouble because you’ve also done, you’ve done about a hundred million comedy shows as well and you’ve done theater split, like you’ve done everything. What motivates you? What gets you up in the morning? Like what… What do you want to be?

Alex Lee: Just attention. I just want any… I want people looking at me, and listening to me at all times and telling me I’m doing a good job. And I could get that from any of those things.

Dom Knight: How did you move from being a serious journalism student to comedy though? Because you were doing it at uni… Because you’ve sort of done a bit of everything.

Alex Lee: Yeah, so I was studying it, and then I guess the people I made friends with at university, we started doing comedy together. We did all the reviews and theater sports and things like that. And I guess I spent more time doing that at university than actually concentrating on my degree, which is a story for the ages. I found I had always done performance at school doing plays and things like that, and I guess I just really found my people through comedy. And the people that I started writing with then, and working with then, I still get to work with them now.

Dom Knight: And is that what you most enjoy?

Alex Lee: Yeah. I enjoy doing anything that’s really collaborative and bouncing ideas off of other people. I think that’s a really rewarding thing. And it also means that you’re accountable and you don’t just sit looking at a screen banging your head.

Charles Firth: Is that the magic that bonds dragon friends together?

Alex Lee: Yeah. So dragon friends, it’s this thing that we started doing just for fun. And it was a bunch of my old friends from uni, we didn’t really get to see each other that much anymore, and one of them is a really big nerd. He was really into gaming and D and D, and I’d never done any of that. And he just said, “Oh let’s just try and play it in front of an audience. It’ll be funny cause you guys don’t know how to play.” And I said, “No one is going to watch that. Like the nerds are going to be so mad at us doing something terribly and, and normal people aren’t going to go and see it.”

Alex Lee: And then we’ve been doing it for five years now, and we’ve gotten to travel to the US, and do tours in Australia, and it’s just so much fun. And it is just a bunch of friends at its core, even though there’s all these fantasy elements and dice rolling. It’s just some friends sitting around trying to make each other laugh.

Charles Firth: Playing Dungeons and Dragons. And do you know yet how to play Dungeons and Dragons?

Alex Lee: Considering how long I’ve been playing for, I’m still quite bad. And I think there’s a bit of willful ignorance involved. Have you guys ever played?

Charles Firth: I tried to play when I was young. When I was growing up… At the age when you supposed to do play.

Alex Lee: That’s right.

Dom Knight: Yeah. I was a nerd with a very short attention span, so I was never able to. But you play a half-orc, and I must say when we saw that… From a Border Force perspective, that’s a very exciting possibility.

Alex Lee: Oh, why is that?

Dom Knight: How do you become a half-orc?

Charles Firth: Dutton’s a full orc.

Alex Lee: Yeah. Well you know it, it involves mix a mixed breed between a full orc and and a human. So…

Dom Knight: Is that a tragic romantic backstory to your parents?

Alex Lee: It is, actually. There is. My character’s backstory, I think my mother was a orc and my father was a policeman. And she caught him, such a stupid show, cheating on her with a fairy, so she ate him. So, I don’t know if that’s of any interest to Border Force.

Dom Knight: I’ll look… That ticks a lot of boxes for us.

Alex Lee: Okay great.

Dom Knight: Disapproving of fairies is very, very common in our [inaudible 00:12:46]

Charles Firth: One of the fascinating things about dragon friends though is just how… It’s narrow casting, but it is globally successful isn’t it? I mean you’re a fan so there’s even a sort of whole websites set up to track all the plot lines from the last five years. And there’s fans from all across the globe that just have whole theories about you and your character.

Alex Lee: Yeah,

Charles Firth: It’s so weird.

Alex Lee: It’s super weird. But I think that’s what the internet has enabled; these really sort of intense fandoms. And it’s so strange to us that our online fans are kind of different I guess to our… Because we do the show as alive theater show, but then we also release it as a podcast and do streaming, and people want to be obsessive about something like this in a way that they aren’t for television shows and things like that.

Dom Knight: It’s really interesting because it wasn’t entirely a serious attempt to do D and D, right? I mean obviously getting people who hadn’t done it before, but it seems to be treated with the same reverence as real D and D. And I’ve seen clips of you guys performing to huge audiences overseas and stuff like that. That must be bizarre that they treat it with the same seriousness as though you were doing it… You’d spent many years doing it, and you really.

Alex Lee: Well we… Actually when we were contacted by the company that makes Dungeons and dragons, we thought they were going to tell us to cease and desist and then they ended up saying, “Hey, can you come and play on stage with us?” And yeah, we have a partnership with them now. So I think people do appreciate it as comedy and being able to use the game in a way that is fun and having fun with it because it is a sort of… It’s a thing you do when you get a bunch of mates over, and you and you have a drink and you play, and you don’t have to take it really seriously.

Alex Lee: And I think people can see this sort of a spectrum there. And it’s not about winning as well. It’s all just, you know, it’s collaborative storytelling. So I think, I think that’s the appeal. And I think also that it’s sort of mainstream now. Like you know, people know about it cause of Stranger Things now and there’s celebrities who play it, and are making movies about it and things like that. It’s just another part of nerd culture taking over the world.

Dom Knight: Seems to be the way. And I guess also you’ve done a lot of improvising, so that probably fits in together. Is D and D a form of improvising?

Alex Lee: Yeah, I think it is. It’s improvising, but the great thing is you don’t have to stand up and do anything. You can just do it sitting down. And yet there are elements which the dungeon master sort of… He has a story that he wants to tell, but you as the players are allowed to take it off in any direction. So in our first episode, we were being kicked out of an inn that we were staying in, and we were meant to go to the castle. And instead we decided to take it to a rental tribunal, and we made them do that. So there’s a lot of that sort of fun that you can have with it. But look, I think I need to be honest with you, because I did just remember we did do a show with Senator Scott Ludlam, or former Senator Scott Ludlam. So I’m not sure if that disqualifies me in any way.

Dom Knight: Was he dismembered?

Alex Lee: He brought his own dice.

Dom Knight: Okay, that’s good to…

Dom Knight: Can we talk about some of your television adventures? Because you’ve been part of lots of stuff and you worked with Charles. What dirt have you got? Sorry Charles, can you just jump?

Charles Firth: Yeah, sure.

Dom Knight: Can you go and get me a cup of tea?

Charles Firth: I’ll just go and get your cup… Do you want your mug pre heated?

Dom Knight: I want it red hot. Yep. Thank you. Just duck out.

Alex Lee: Scalded fingerprints.

Dom Knight: Now you worked on Charles’s TV series, The Roast.

Charles Firth: I did. That was my first TV comedy show with Charles.

Dom Knight: How bad was he?

Alex Lee: I don’t… I didn’t have much contact with Charles. He was there a lot, but he was sort of doing mostly skulking based activities. Skulking in the background.

Dom Knight: I think he was already being recruited by Border Force in that place.

Alex Lee: Yeah. He seemed to be tapping away furiously on a computer that wasn’t turned on. That sort of thing. Yeah.

Dom Knight: That does sound like Charles. He’s not very good at knowing whether it’s on.

Charles Firth: I’m back.

Alex Lee: I mean, because we worked together on that show but we didn’t really have much… You sort of took a step back and let us run wild.

Charles Firth: Yeah I wanted the young worker bees to do what they wanted.

Alex Lee: That was such an amazing experience, because it was so loose. And because we were making a daily turnaround show, there was just a bunch of people in their early twenties… I don’t think there was anyone even above their mid twenties, and we were just sitting around a table and being like, “Okay, this is what we’re going to put on TV today.” And then it would be finished by that afternoon. It was wild, but it really made me… I had that moment, which I had never had working in news, where I was like, “Oh, this is what I love. This is what I should be doing with my life.”

Dom Knight: Working with Charles.

Alex Lee: Working with Charles. Yeah.

Dom Knight: Wow Charles, I’m genuinely impressed.

Charles Firth: Yeah, I think you mean the comedy.

Dom Knight: She is a good actor though. Yeah.

Charles Firth: But can I just interrupt?

Alex Lee: Sure.

Charles Firth: Every single show you’ve ever appeared in has been axed, hasn’t it? Is that right, or?

Alex Lee: Oh.

Charles Firth: Should we go? Should we go through it?

Alex Lee: Go on.

Charles Firth: The Checkout.

Alex Lee: Yeah. Axed.

Charles Firth: Axed. The Chaser’s Election desk?

Dom Knight: Oh not renewed.

Alex Lee: Not renewed.

Dom Knight: Technically axed. [Inaudible].

Charles Firth: The Roast? Axed. Media Circus?

Dom Knight: No, that ended. That just ended.

Alex Lee: That ended.

Dom Knight: Lost interest.

Charles Firth: Yeah lost interest. Yeah. Story Club? That just ended. Saturday Night Rove?

Alex Lee: Well nothing goes forever.

Charles Firth: Well how long did Saturday Night Rove go for?

Alex Lee: The opposite of forever.

Dom Knight: So having worked with Charles, what was it like working with an industry legend like Rove? I mean what was it like? Did you feel like, “Finally someone professional, who knows what they’re doing?”

Alex Lee: Yes, because I’ve also worked with the other Chaser members on The Checkout and I was like, “Oh it’s so weird to work with someone who doesn’t wake up at 2:00 PM, and just occasionally turn up to work fully dressed.”

Dom Knight: I think that was why the show went wrong. But what was that like? Just talk us through the experience. Because that must’ve been a very exciting phone call to get.

Alex Lee: It was, yeah. It was really unexpected, and we did the pilot last year and then the show this year. So there was a big… There was a year between the pilot and the, I don’t know if you can call it a season, the shows that we did. Doing the pilot was really fun, and it really made me realize that you can make an entertainment show that’s not necessarily a comedy show, and that was something that people wanted.

Alex Lee: And yeah, I think it’s a real shame that it didn’t work out. Because I think if it was given time, being able to showcase all the young comedians and up and comers that it did, it could have been something really.

Charles Firth: But do you look at things like Dragon Friends and the sort of mass appeal and desire for that, and then the sort of lackluster desire that the gatekeepers on TV have for television. And do you sort of go, “Actually, perhaps TV isn’t the space for creativeness anymore.” Have you ever thought about that?

Alex Lee: Oh, constantly. Yeah. I think working in the entertainment industry, so much of it is about you make your… You do the work and you become good, and you get good comedy judgment, and you learn how to perform and everything, and you become really qualified at your job. And then so much of your life is just asking for opportunities to be able to do your job.

Dom Knight: Yeah, and the gatekeepers often and not hugely inspiring people. Often they have not done well themselves, dumped themselves,

Charles Firth: But by definition gatekeepers are producers who’ve failed. They’ve put [crosstalk 00:20:56]

Alex Lee: I know. So really, I should be lining up for a sweet gate keeping job pretty soon.

Charles Firth: Exactly. It’s true. I mean especially in this kind of… In America there’s actually producers and gatekeepers who… Because that’s treated as its own profession. In Australia it’s… The gatekeepers are all people who wanted to be creatives, weren’t very good at it and then got a job with the network instead.

Dom Knight: Or Border Force.

Charles Firth: Or Border force if they really failed.

Alex Lee: Yeah. I guess the really interesting thing about Dragon Friends is now we’ve started live streaming. So do you guys know about Twitch? So we can set up a couple of cameras in a studio and go out live. And for an average night we’ll maybe get, I think around 900 people watching. Which is pretty good considering we’re also on 3:00am US time and stuff like that.

Charles Firth: That’s interesting because wasn’t Twitch originally for people just playing video games? And so people are getting content on it as well.

Alex Lee: Yeah people do all sorts of things. Like some people just kind of do live blogging I guess, like talking to people. Because on Twitch there’s a live chat stream, so you can actually have immediate interactions with your fans. It’s really opened up the possibilities for us being like, “Well okay, if I had an idea for a TV show, why would I try and go through the process, potentially of of getting development funding, getting producers, getting to a network, doing a pilot, blah blah blah, when I could just turn on my camera to all my subscribers that I have and do it right now.”

Dom Knight: And so is that where you’ve gotten to with all these experiences of being on all these network type shows, creating things with your friends as well? Is that what your instinct is in terms of how to go forward? Because it’s a strange time, isn’t it to make TV comedy?

Alex Lee: I think it’s just something that I want to develop my skills in, because I think that is probably where it’s all heading. That’s how people are consuming. We’re always going to watch visual entertainment, but it’s just not necessarily going to be through terrestrial TV.

Alex Lee: And I’m running through all the shows that I’ve done. I’ve had wonderful experiences on all of them, and the fact that they have ended doesn’t make them any less good. But I do think that it’s really interesting and I think it changes the way that we’ll write comedy and entertainment. When you are dealing directly with people, it kind of becomes more like doing theater, really.

Charles Firth: Well and you’ve done solo shows, including your solo show I’m Eating Peanut Butter in The Shower Because I’m Sad and You’re Not The Boss of Me.

Alex Lee: That’s right.

Charles Firth: Did you have to run that title past anyone else or…

Alex Lee: No. That was just the solo thing. I was like, “What could be the longest possible thing I could put on a poster?” I thought that was very funny just to make everyone’s life difficult in the flyer, brush, or printing industry.

Charles Firth: How did the ticket sellers deal with it?

Alex Lee: I think it was just I’m eating peanut butt on the ticket, unfortunately.

Charles Firth: You probably got a big audience.

Dom Knight: that would work on Twitch.

Alex Lee: That would actually, I think that would be all channels dedicated to that.

Dom Knight: So what do you want to do? In terms of… We’ll look at your Border Force options too, but assuming that you can find a job other than with us, we’ll come to that. What do you actually want to do?

Alex Lee: Entertaining the troops. The Border Force troops at the airport.

Alex Lee: I’ve kind of, I guess because of my combination of journalism and comedy, done a lot of satire. Which I have such a funny relationship with, because I don’t know… I’m not convinced that satire does what people say it does.

Dom Knight: Can I have a word with you, Charles?

Charles Firth: Yeah.

Charles Firth: Oh my God.

Dom Knight: Does this basically deconstruct the whole premise of this podcast?

Charles Firth: This is, this is sedition. Oh, sedation. Not just against the government or Australia. This is addition against us.

Dom Knight: Have we committed to a high concept podcast premise? That doesn’t work. What do you think?

Charles Firth: Well, I think we’re going to have to apply some torture techniques to get it to retract that statement.

Dom Knight: We might have to I think. Yeah. All right.

Dom Knight: So Alex, we’re concerned about your problem with satire.

Charles Firth: We’re going to need you to retract it.

Alex Lee: Really?

Charles Firth: Yeah. And here, just…

Alex Lee: What are you doing with that permanent marker? That’s not how audio works, Charles. You can’t black it out.

Charles Firth: What about this device?

Alex Lee: Well, that is just a fork that you’re jabbing into my ribs, so that will work. I retract it. Satire has a full ability to change the world. And if you just do satire that’s enough. Is that better? Is that okay?

Dom Knight: Well it’s actually a good question. But I’m starting to wonder, satire has mostly been left wing over the years and we live in a world where all those ideas are incredibly unfashionable and failed.

Charles Firth: Well, look at our legacy. We started with The Chaser in 1999 and we now… It was the sort of conservative government.

Dom Knight: It was a John Howard thing.

Charles Firth: Yeah. And he didn’t last long. And then we now are at a point where we’ve got Trump, Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson running the world. We’ve clearly had this massive lurch to the left.

Dom Knight: Yes it seems to work. [crosstalk 00:26:30]

Charles Firth: It’s totally worked!

Alex Lee: You’ve done it!

Charles Firth: Achieved!

Alex Lee: Well, you guys can retire now. So well done.

Dom Knight: Well, could you help Border Force put together a direct streaming platform, where we just broadcast-

Charles Firth: Live from narrow.

Dom Knight: To people who agree with Border Force? Would that work?

Alex Lee: I mean probably that would. That’d be… On Facebook I’m sure you’d be able to find your audience.

Dom Knight: Dungeon friends I’m thinking, if you’re down with the project.

Alex Lee: Yeah. That would be a very accurate. I think this is… The way the left has traditionally used satire, it has been a left wing thing. But the way that right wing trolls… They have their own sort of sensibility of comedy, which is really… We’d be loose calling it comedy, but I guess the way that everything’s really tongue in cheek and it’s like everything can be passed off just, “Oh it was just a joke, it’s just a joke.” Where you know, really it is quite harmful.

Alex Lee: So I guess maybe satire is for the left, but I’m sure the right… They do have their own techniques for… Especially the very strong right-wing conservatives for-

Dom Knight: That can cause genuine harm.

Alex Lee: For creating people. Yes.

Dom Knight: That sounds brilliant.

Alex Lee: You guys, Border Force has got to get on 4chan.

Charles Firth: You don’t think we are?

Dom Knight: Who do you think started it?

Dom Knight: Alex Lee, thank you very much for being extremely vetted.

Alex Lee: Thank you for vetting me.

Alex Lee: Extreme vetting with The Chaser was written and presented by Dom Knight, Charles Firth and Andrew Hansen.

Alex Lee: Recorded in collaboration with PodcastOne Australia.

Alex Lee: Produced by Alex Mitchell and audio production by Dassi Thompson.

Alex Lee: For all episodes, search extreme vetting podcast. Listen for free @podcastoneaustralia.com.au, or download the new PodcastOne Australia app.