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Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Chaos erupts on ABC as heckler interrupts live TV game show
An ABC TV quiz show recently descended into chaos when an overenthusiastic audience member spoiled the episode during a live taping. New Zealand comedian and host of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee was left flabbergasted when a contestant got the unexpected lifeline from the audience. Fellow comedian He Huang was struggling to identify (and then spell) the name of a country represented by one of four international flags. 'Does it start with G?' she asked Guy, after being given the 'fun fact' prompt: 'This country has a lot of world's heaviest animals because a lot of them are still carrying the psychological weight of World War Two.' ' Poland!' a voice from the crowd yelled out, shocking everyone on the stage. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Fellow contestants Emma Holland and Rove McManus were left visibly shocked, with Emma covering her mouth with one hand to stifle a genuine gasp and Rove freezing with his jaw open. 'That is absolutely illegal,' a stunned Guy reprimanded the audience member, prompting a round of raucous laughter. Co-host Aaron Chen sprung into action. 'Don't worry Guy, I'll go sort this,' he yelled, before pretending to run into the audience to apprehend the audience member. Not to be outdone, Rove made eye contact with the audience as he said, 'Before I go, can I just check, are any of my "ancestors" out there?' 'That is generally discouraged,' Guy responded. The host was adamant that the real-life blooper not be taken out of the episode in the final edit because he enjoyed how 'incredibly unusual' and 'kind of funny' the moment was. Speaking to Guy said he felt the social contract between a live audience and TV quiz show contestants was 'pretty clear'. Which is, of course, not to participate in the game show unless you're actually a contestant. 'To be fair, no one was requesting spelling assistance,' Guy laughed. 'The show does draw an audience of word nerds or people who believe in themselves as spellers, so there is a sense of excitement and frustration that can occur when they're watching a contestant who is so close to approaching a word.' The stand-up comic and TV host attempted to unpack potential underlying motivations that may have pushed the helpful heckler to break that unspoken contract. 'One might be sympathy and that you're wanting to help them. You think "I can get them over the line here",' he theorised. Guy came up with the idea for The Guy Mont Spelling Bee in 2020 during the Covid lockdown in Auckland. He invited some of his comedian friends to join him on a Zoom for the silly spelling contest and uploaded the results to YouTube, creating an informal pilot for a stage show. Joseph Moore came onboard as a co-writer and pitched the idea to ABC, with Aaron Chen attached as a co-host. Guy has previously said the series has developed 'quite an intense fandom,' thanks its rotating roster of top Aussie and Kiwi comedians. Previous guests have included the likes of Melanie Bracewell, Urzila Carlson, Geraldine Hickey, Nazeem Hussain, Demi Lardner, Zoë Coombs Marr, Luke McGregor, Tim Minchin, Rhys Nicholson and Steph Tisdell.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘The fandom is quite intense': Guy Montgomery on the strange success of Guy Mont Spelling Bee
Guy Montgomery was an extremely annoying child. Each night at dinner, he would attempt to get his younger sister to laugh so hard she snorted out her food. One evening, when his parents had friends over, he spent the whole meal pretending to be a South African exchange student. 'My mum was like, 'He's not, he's my son,'' Montgomery says. 'She was chasing me around the table, laughing, and I ran to my bedroom. When she came in later I was asleep.' He once read a joke book out loud all the way from Blenheim to Christchurch, a four-hour trip, telling zingers such as this one: 'How do you keep an ugly monster in suspense?' 'How?' I ask. 'I'll tell you tomorrow,' the now 36-year-old Montgomery says, and I don't know if I'm grinning because it's kind of funny or because he's so obviously delighted. Needling loved ones to the point where they are frustrated but laughing – 'so that the annoyance has no power' – is a comedic styling that has propelled the New Zealand comedian's career and powered his popular game show Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee, kicking off its second Australian season this week on ABC. The irreverent and absurd show contains various segments that give guests – including Rove McManus, Hannah Gadsby, Hamish Blake and Denise Scott – the chance to tell jokes while failing abysmally at spelling tasks that range from basic to impossible. Montgomery reigns over the resulting chaos like a kind of encyclopedic svengali. 'I describe myself as the protagonist and antagonist of the show,' Montgomery says. 'It's designed to be enjoyable to watch and irritating to take part in.' Raised in Christchurch, Montgomery dipped into standup aged 22 when he was 'idling around' post-bachelor's degree. During the day, he worked as a mascot at agricultural shows, with stints as a popsicle, an orange bull and a peach-flavoured Bundaberg; at night he hit up local comedy clubs. He was already funny by then, he tells me, devoid of the self-effacement Kiwis are known for. 'I was funny basically the whole time,' he says, deadpan. 'I just didn't take it seriously. I got drunk and told a story and it went well, and I did the same thing again and it didn't. I had no control.' Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning He needed to get better, but he didn't want people he knew watching, so he went to Canada – randomly chosen for ease of visa access – and hit the standup circuit in Toronto while working in hospitality, tallying his gigs in the same notebook he wrote his jokes in. 'It was kind of an extreme form of self-discipline,' he says. That's when he started to learn how to get people to laugh. 'When I first started I was just copying Rhys Darby; they were my jokes, but I was in his cadence, and you overlay all of these influences until your own voice emerges,' he says. 'You're not being funny on your terms. You don't necessarily believe in what you're saying because you're just chasing the ability to make people laugh, and that's the addictive feeling. Over time, it goes from saying something you hope the audience will laugh at to saying something you know they'll laugh at.' Returning to New Zealand in 2014, he won the Billy T award for the country's top emerging standup comedian. This led to a series of TV hosting gigs, during which he met and vibed with local comedian Tim Batt. Their podcast together, The Worst Idea of All Time, gave an indication of the kind of cult following Montgomery's comedy inspires, with 350 people filling a New York theatre in 2016 to watch him and Batt talk about Sex and the City 2, a film they had watched every week for a year. Montgomery conceived The Guy Mont Spelling Bee in Auckland during Covid lockdown in 2020, inviting comedian friends and acquaintances – including Ayo Edebiri and Rose Matafeo – to join in on Zoom and stream the results on YouTube. 'I was always intrigued with the idea of spelling bees – there's all the pomp and pageantry,' he says. 'You'd watch the moderators reading out these quite ornate sentences just to get the word in there, and that's a pre-existing joke format.' It spiralled out to a stage show, and in 2023 it was picked up by New Zealand's channel Three, after which Montgomery and co-writer Joseph Moore pitched it to the ABC with comedian Aaron Chen attached as co-host. Montgomery says having two seasons of the New Zealand show under their belt was an advantage, in that producers have mostly left them alone. 'Because it arrived fully formed, it means it's an accurate and total expression of a comedic instinct.' Some returning comedians are invited to help brainstorm new games for the show, but Montgomery and Moore are still the lead writers. The recipe has proven a hit, generating rave reviews and lengthy Reddit threads. 'When people fall in love with the comedy format like this, the fandom is quite intense,' Montgomery says. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Fans often speculate how much work must go into the show's preparation. 'You do drive yourself crazy writing this many jokes,' Montgomery admits. 'But also I love that … I want it to feel like it's brimming or overstuffed, and for people to want to know what the joke [was] for a certain word that we didn't get to say.' The handmade, retro feeling of the set is also intentional, to spark nostalgia and a childlike desire to walk in and touch everything. 'There's a comfort food quality to these shows,' Montgomery says. 'They don't reflect any of the crazy stuff that's happening, it's pure escapism.' This might also account for the intergenerational audience, with kids coming to the show with their grandparents. 'I used to know what my audience demographic looked like but in Australia now it just looks like everyone,' he says. Staff in this Wellington cafe recognise Montgomery because of his partner, the New Zealand actor Chelsie Preston Crayford, who was filming nearby last year. In Australia, people now stop him on the street; audiences for his standup shows have tripled. 'I'm experiencing success,' he says. 'In New Zealand, no one knows or cares.' Initially, that popularity brought on anxiety and a kind of guilt, which he has talked to his therapist about. 'She said: 'You're looking over the ledge of what would happen if it went wrong and you think you're going to fall all the way down, but you've got all these years of practice and experience,' he says. These days, he exudes the quiet confidence of someone who has found not only their calling but their gift: 'What I'm really good at, the means I have of helping the masses, is by being funny.' Season two of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee premieres on ABC TV and iView on 4 June. Guy Montgomery is touring Australia through June and July.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Usher reveals the Australian treat he demands is ALWAYS on his rider and says he'd like to retire Down Under - ahead of first Aussie tour in more than a decade
Usher has declared his deep love for a common Australian candy. The American R&B star appeared on The Project on Thursday night and raved about the local red liquorice. 'There should be loads of this waiting on me when I get there' the 46-year-old told host Rove McManus. 'I have no idea why it's so good and what you do that's so different than American liquorice but it is by far the best liquorice that I have ever tasted in my life.' The hitmaker added that he always ensures that he has lots of liquorice on his rider when he's in town. 'It is a necessity. It is on every single list of rider that I have for anything that I do. It's by far the best liquorice in the world. It's great!' he said. Usher added that he is a big fan of Australia in general and would even retire Down Under. 'It's been maybe 10 years since I've been there. I love, I love Australia.I love the energy, the I love the food, I love the accent, I love all the things about it. 'When people ask if I decided to retire, where would I retire to? I say Australia.' Usher will be heading Down Under later this year, as part of his Past Present Future Tour. The multi-platinum artist is bringing the globetrotting tour for eight shows - four at Melbourne 's Rod Laver Arena, and four at Qudos Bank Arena In Sydney. It will be more than a decade since Usher headlined an Australian run, with his last visit back in 2011 on his OMG tour. The singer was last in the country back in 2018, performing alongside the likes of Salt-N-Pepa, T-Pain and Naughty By Nature for the RNB Fridays Live tour. The tour, which kicked off in the US back in August last year, has since jetted to Europe and the UK. The hitmaker added that he always ensures that he has lots of liquorice on his rider when he's in town. 'It is a necessity. It is on every single list of rider that I have for anything that I do. It's by far the best liquorice in the world. It's great!' he said Usher took to Instagram to make the auspicious announcement, sharing a compilation video of some of the best tour moments. Fans were quick to issue their excitement over the announcement with the likes of, 'I'm so excited, I'm headed to Australia'. Others, who had already witnessed the tour, first-hand admitted how excited they were for Australian fans. 'They in for a treat,' one fan wrote. 'A time was HAD at his London show I had an amazing time!' It seems the critics agree, too with culture bible Billboard praising the show. 'Much of the two-hour show felt less like a concert and more of a celebration of the man whose music has soundtracked lives, redefined a genre, and shifted the pop-culture landscape over the last 30 years,' they wrote. The gig promises to run the gamut of Usher's 30 year career featuring fan favourites such as My Boo, U Got It Bad, and Love In The Club. The set is also sure to include tracks from Usher's ninth studio album, Coming Home, which dropped in 2022. With the tour currently in full swing fans can expect a very well oiled machine by the time it hits Australian soil. Also, Usher has been on top of his performing game of late, with a bravura turn at the Met Gala in New York this week. The superstar also honed his act in a 100-show Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace and Park MGM between 2021 and 2023. He also delivered a critically lauded Super Bowl performance in 2024, prior to Kendrick Lamar, who also recently announced a Down Under visit. The Past Present Future tour got off to quite the rocky start however, with Usher having to postpone the commencement of the US leg due to injury. The hitmaker ended up missing a trio of concerts after he hurt his neck preparing for the shows. Usher also recently shared his secret for keeping fit in his 40s. The Yeah! hitmaker is well-known for his ripped physique and six pack - and shared that his fans motivate him to stay in optimal shape. 'The consistency that comes with being a performer who has to dance and sing and still have a six pack at 45 years old? Yeah, there's a little bit of mindfulness there,' he told Us Weekly. 'But thank God that I have fans that I go work hard for every night.' Usher will play at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena on November 19, 20, 22 and 23, before heading north to Sydney's Qudos bank Arena on December 1, 2 4 and 5. Tickets for all dates are on sale go on sale Friday May 16.
