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The ARIA-winning Australian satirical prank call character of Guido Hatzis has been officially cancelled today, after several ABC employees rediscovered several Youtube videos of hilarious skits that used to make them laugh before Twitter was invented.
This comes in the wake of Netflix and BBC removing comedy series “Little Britain” and “Summer Heights High” from their platforms – after the show came under fire over the use of blackface in some of its sketches.
Thousands of Gen-X Australian comedians are now growing increasingly nervous about videos of them performing pre-Harry-Connick-junior-on-Red-Faces blackface – which seems to be one specific tool of outdated comedy that not one comedian over the age of 40 have been able to refrain from using throughout their entire careers.
The development comes as media companies reappraise content in the wake of protests over police brutality and systemic racism right across Australia, the UK and America.
With Australians now finally learning that a lot of people take issue with the historical baggage and blatant racism that comes with painting your skin black as a comedy prop – we as a nation haven’t even scraped the surface on greekvoice.
Guido Hatzis was a Greek-Australian comic character created and voiced by Irishman Tony Moclair through the Triple M network during its late 1990s glory days.
Most of Hatzis’s comedy involves making prank calls that are usually centred on outrageous claims about his looks and abilities and berating ‘skips’ (Anglo-Australians).
It is not yet known who exactly is cancelling the Guido Hatzis character, However, early Twitter pile ons may suggest it’s coming from the elite ABC skippys who don’t like being portrayed as wowsers who can’t appreciate the barbs sent their way by the fictional Greek adonis.
The Betoota Advocate sent a couple 19-year-old reporters down to Betoota’s Flight Path District today in an unsuccessful search for Greek-Australians who might be able to say that this character offended them 21 years ago.
Local white goods retailer, Con (65), thought that Guido Hatzis was voiced by Greek comedian Nic Giannopoulos – and had never given the racial undertones a second thought until now.
Our reporters immediately went looking for a better quote.
Elleni (45, hairdresser) said that the only thing she didn’t really appreciate about Guido Hatzis was that all of her brothers began emulating his arrogant playboy persona and started growing out their curly hair while also wearing excessive jewellery.
After hours of scraping the barrel for an offended citizen in Betoota’s historical Greek enclave, our reporters stumbled across the closest thing we could consider to be click-bait-worthy.
Ken (55, Plumber) said when it comes to Guido Hatzis, he did take issue with the way that Greek plumbers were portrayed as shonky tradesmen who think there is nothing that sticky tape cannot fix. However, he did agree with the suggestion that he has never once accepted a non-cash payment in his entire career.
While the Guido Hatzis CDs have not been on sale since the turn of the millenium, it is not yet known how this particular character will be cancelled, but pressure is mounting on YouTube to remove the remaining videos that have sat their quietly for nearly 15 years now.
However, given the fact that YouTube is in no inclined to remove the conspiracist propaganda accusing Bill Gates for creating COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement to control the population through 5G, the chances of getting the Guido videos taken down is very unlikely.
Probably no more to come from this story.
