Mark Humphries doesn’t want to rock the boat.
The comedian, writer and satirist is about to take on a different beast, the nightly news on a commercial network, and he knows people are nervous.
What does it look like to have someone take the piss in the final three minutes of a serious news bulletin? To have someone be irreverent, opinionated and funny — things that are not traditionally associated with TV news.
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As someone who has taken shots at the political and corporate elite as well as just run-of-the-mill silly idiots, Humphries has a record of being a little provocative. He was the resident satirist on ABC’s 7.30 for five years, co-hosted the public broadcaster’s The Roast, was on SBS’s The Feed and presented the Channel 10 game show Pointless.
But, as a satirist, aren’t you meant to make people uncomfortable and even a little bit mad?
“I’m in two minds of trying to keep everyone that’s concerned about this segment, having them feel relaxed, but at the same time, feeling like I do want it to be something a bit different,” Humphries tells The Nightly.
“I do want you to occasionally go, ‘Oh, that was surprising’ and ‘Oh, that was quite sharp’. I do like to think that occasionally that stuff I do has a bit of teeth.
“Not every week but sometimes, especially on certain stories where things need to be taken down a peg or two, a journalist in their role can’t really play that role. And I have that liberty that you have with satire of being able to say what the audience is thinking a lot of the time.
“Hopefully, there is the occasional thing that rocks the boat.”
Humphries is one day away from debuting The 6.57pm News, a segment that will, as the name implies, run for the last three minutes of Channel 7’s Friday night bulletin. He will skewer the news of the week with his signature cheek and a bit of snark.
“They get the hard news throughout the week, and then this is just another way of looking at it — piecing together my own observations of things that have happened and then throwing to an embarrassing clip of a politician lying on the ground or spear-tackling a child,” he says.
The footpath-hugging pollie is, of course, Barnaby Joyce, a frequent target of Humphries’ mirth. The Nationals politician may be a friend of Channel 7, appearing regularly on Sunrise, but that doesn’t mean Joyce will escape the acidity of Humphries’ wit.
“The very first pilot sketch we made, I made sure to put a Barnaby Joyce joke in there, and it was great to see my producer go, ‘Yep, yep, yep, he does appear on Sunrise, but that’s fine, let’s keep it in’”.
If there’s anything that is off-limits, it might be “Mr Stokes’ business interests!” he jokes. Laughing, he adds, “They’ve been very supportive so far, and I look forward to testing the limits and finding out where they are.”
Seven’s Director of News and Current Affairs and Seven West Media editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie said: “When the nightly news is done well, it’s always been about more than just breaking stories, the latest crime incidents, sports highlights or world events. It’s also about making you think, sometimes making you cry and hopefully making you smile.
“Mark’s new segment will use satire to cut through political spin and translate current affairs in the universal news language of taking the piss. We are thrilled to have his talents join the 7NEWS family.”
Given Humphries’ propensity to point out truths spinners don’t like, he has had some unhappy customers over the years — “a certain Sky News presenter comes to mind, but that was inevitable, some politicians and a Reserve Bank governor” — but one of the most memorable incidents happened at the federal parliament’s annual Midwinter Ball, which he hosted last year.
“A certain MP walked out after I made a joke about them, which I thought was pretty innocuous,” he recalls. “I thought they had behaved like a goose and that it was a funny clip. It was worth playing. And everyone at their table said, ‘Stand up and take a bow’, because that would completely neutralise it.
“Instead they stood up and left. I was quite shocked at how thin-skinned they were.”
As a former main-stayer of mostly public broadcasters, Humphries knows that there are people who don’t know what to make of his move. He went through it when he hosted Pointless on Channel 10, but he wants them to see The 6.57pm News as a bit of fun.
“It’s kind of funny to have a couple of people say, ‘sell-out’, but when I got the phone call, I was unemployed. I was like ‘Is it selling out to take a job to work?’ But I understand the perception, and they want you to be like perfect, weird outsider that can just do whatever they want. But Channel 7 was the only one that came and said, ‘We’d like to do satire’.
“The ABC had their chance, they had me for five years and they decided to stop doing it.”
Eight years ago, as Donald Trump was running for the US presidency, there was a lot of hand-wringing over whether his candidacy spelled the end of satire. How do you mock someone who was already a caricature?
“You can just run the clip of him speaking and that’s sort of the joke as it is,” Humphries says. “So he made things challenging.”
The advent of Trump didn’t kill satire but it did change things. There is less of it, especially in Australia.
“There’s a lot less satire now. We don’t have Shaun Micallef anymore. We don’t have Sammy J doing stuff, so I’m thrilled to still be out there doing it.”
And the Albanese government also made it harder. “They don’t have as many characters,” he explains. “We had a plethora of characters during the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years. There are certainly stories and elements to satirise in the current government but they don’t really have their Barnaby Joyce yet.”
What he’s doing for Channel 7 is different to what he did on the ABC, and after a nine-month break, he feels refreshed. He will be able to introduce himself to a whole new audience, sans wigs, costumes and outlandish gimmicks.
Without the accoutrements to hide behind, does he feel more exposed?
“I feel like I’m doing a particular character, which allows me to deliver those jokes. I know it doesn’t look like I’m wearing a mask but my head is in there under a thin layer. I feel protected by that.”
But he’s not worried about being mistaken for the character he’s playing, a la the way some people thought Stephen Colbert really was the conservative blowhard he portrayed on Comedy Central.
“Oh, I’d be happy with that. I’d be happy for them to name me for anything, I’m not precious about which version of Mark Humphries they’re familiar with. I’ll take what I can get.”