Shaun Micallef has told of the time that he was encouraged to drop two of the jokes he had written as part of his Logies monologue.
It has been almost 15 years since Micallef was the host of the Logies but he has now revealed that he was encouraged to remove two of the jokes he had included in his Logies speech. Shaun Micalleff was the MC for the evening and was, and still is, considered one of the funniest men in Australian.
However, it has now been revealed that not everything that the funny man writes down makes it to the show. Shaun Micalleff said that he had planned to run a joke that saw him running into anti-gambling campaigner Tim Costello at the Crown Casino. Micallef explained that the joke was that he “said to him, ‘How did you go?’”.
Shaun Micalleff explained that he thought that the controversy around that joke was concerned with “Channel 9’s relationship with Crown Casino” saying that at the time it was slightly awkward.
The second joke involved recreating a scene from the Untouchables in which Robert De Niro wanders with a baseball bat around a table of executives. He said that had then planned to “smash the s**t out of a watermelon” that acted as someone’s face.
Reflecting on that time now, Micallef says that he is glad that it never made it to air stating “I didn’t know what I was thinking, this was a really stupid idea.”
Hosting the Logies has been titled as a “poisoned chalice” with many people receiving poor reviews for their efforts regardless of their reputation. Shaun Micallef said that he was actually lined up to host again following his successful stint in 2001 but the TV station, “god bless them”, decided to go with someone else.
Shaun Micallef is currently starring is Mad As Hell but is also set to host the next series of Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation.