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Chaser nears amid Vatican & Dr. Seuss controversies

The Cat in the Hat and The Vat are in a spat with Morrow, Reucassel and all their shat.

drsYou can just feel The Chaser boys edging closer and closer (the new series is expected on May 27), this week with two controversies doubtless keeping their legal team busy.

The boys are waiting to hear if Italian police will lay charges over a stunt at the Vatican last Wednesday. Julian Morrow and Craig Reucassel launched a 5-metre long blimp in St Peter’s Square, in airpsace that may be part of the Vatican’s no-fly zone.

Italian police seized two cameras, tapes and a laptop computer, and a brief of the incident has been given to a prosecutor in Rome who will then decide if charges will be laid.

The pair was detained and questioned for about eight hours by Italian police, and they’ve now engaged an Italian lawyer. Yesterday, Australia’s resident ambassador to the Vatican, Tim Fischer, incorrectly said charges had been laid.

Meanwhile Dr Seuss Enterprises, publishers of the popular of children’s books, has demanded Mambo stop selling one of the Chaser-designed T-shirts that features a spoof image of “The Cat in the Hat”, which features an image of the cat’s red-and-white striped hat sticking out of its mouth and rear, with the accompanying slogan “The Hat in the Cat”.

“Our only concern is that if it does get to court level, we’ve dedicated ourselves to doing all interaction in Dr Seuss language, so it could be a very difficult case to run,” The Chaser’s Craig Reucassel told Live ews.

“Rhyming slang to the Constitution is going to be tough.”

The boys have issued the following poetic response to Dr Seuss Enterprises:

The lawyers for Seuss threatened to sue us
Sue us? Who, us? Yes! They made a fuss
Cos we put a hat within a cat
And they were not happy with that

The t-shirt we made for Mambo
They claim that it will have to go
Because it breaches copyright
Which gave our lawyers quite a fright

Now Dr Seuss was a funny bloke
We think he’d probably like the joke
What’s more, we think the shirt’s okay
Because of the parody and satire provisions that were introduced
into the Copyright Act the other day*

So please say we can sell our shirt
Or else we’ll feel extremely hurt
And like the story of the Grinch
Our Christmas also you will pinch

Source: ABC, LiveNews

5 Responses

  1. Should be a good season coming up if they are doing stunts at the Vatican! I guess being so famous in Australia meant they simply had to move offshore for some pranking 🙂

    Bring on the new season!!

  2. I’d hardly call something of that comic level (wow, they switched a couple of words to achieve a bit of toilet humour!) ‘satire’ or ‘parody’.

  3. I think it’s only a matter of time before something rather dramatic happens to one of The Chaser team. The defence of being a naughty boy will only go so far.

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