Funny / Spicks and Specks

The Classic Series

• This tangent between Darlene Love and Reginald D. Hunter in 2010, after Adam brings up Tom Jones:
  Darlene: I have a very funny story that happened on the road with Tom Jones.
  Adam: Well, we don't have time for it. So... (audience laughter.) No, no, please!
  Darlene: I got a little close to Tom Jones, we became very good friends. And night we actually went to bed together. We were gonna have sex.
  Reginald: From what I hear, that's not unusual. (Audience erupts with laughter. Alan does a gesture to indicate Reg "hitting it out of the park", then the others start bowing to him.).
  Alan: Can I just say something that I thought I'd never get to say in my life? So, you're about to have sex with Tom Jones, and then what happened?
  Darlene: Well, I actually gave up on him, because of the fact he talked too much.
  Reginald: Now, when you say he talked too much...
  Darlene: No, let me finish, this is my story. When I say he talked too much, he talked about other women he had. So I said, "Honey, it's been nice, but I'll see you." And I put my clothes on and went back to my room.
  Reginald: Oh, so he talked about other women before he had sex with you?
  Darlene: Right!
  Reginald: Yeah, you're not supposed to run the playbook like that.
  Darlene: I've never been in his playbook!
  Reginald: I hear you, I hear you.
  Darlene: And we became very good friends after that, 'cos I was probably the only one that ever turned him down.
  Reginald: Why would he do that? It's not like, it's gonna make you hotter! "Ooh, you had sex with Dolly Parton, I can't wait to get this shirt off!"
• The Christmas Special for 2009: Molly Meldrum dressed as a Christmas tree with his voice disguised. Enough said.
  • Doubles as a CMOA but also the fact that Peter Garrett guessed who it was right off the bat. His reasoning: How many bona fide big wig musos who lived in Melbourne would be willing and able to do something like that?
• The end of the episode in which Richard O'Brien was a guest, in which the whole cast re-enacted the 'Time Warp'...including Adam Hills stripping on-camera at the end of it all, absolutely deadpan, to reveal Frank'N'Furter's corset, frilly knickers, fishnets and heels. This was then one-upped in the next year's Deleted Scenes and Rude Bits special by Myf Warhurst blandly revealing the extent of Adam Hills' costume's, erm, deficiencies...
• "Two Little Words" (in which two players must use one word each to describe a singer or band to the other who must identify them) often has hilarious results, often due to one player not building off the first's word (such as Andy Lee suggesting "Dreaming" for R.E.M. - appropriate but not the most helpful when Alan's word was "Michael"). It's even better when the contestant gets it right anyway - case in point, Ella Hooper using the clues "Catholic" and "Boobs" to guess Madonna.
  • Alan and Anh Do managing to turn Oasis into 'Arsehole Gallagher'.
  • Alan and Greg Fleet turning Massive Attack into 'Huge violation'.
  • Kylie Minogue being turned into 'Singing Budgie'.
• Eddie Perfect played a song over the credits that basically only talked about how much he wanted to fuck Myf, whose expression was priceless.
  • Tim Minchin did something similar- he played the 'Adam Hillsong', while Adam lay across the piano. The best part is Adam's Lame Pun Reaction as he realises the song is building up to an "Adam's apple" joke.
  • Tim also did a song about Alan, while knowing nothing about him except that he was tall and from New Zealand. Naturally, the song was called 'My 6'4 Kiwi'.
• Adam's introductory lines are golden.
  "Myf's second guest is a comedian, an ex brothel-receptionist and the mother of newborn twins, to whom one day she'll have to explain the term 'ex brothel-receptionist'. Please welcome Meshel Laurie!"
  "Alan's second guest is a comedian who was born in Vietnam, grew up in Australia and recently took some of his culture back to his birth country. He's the reason why half the kids in Ho Chi Minh City now have mullets, it's Anh Do!"
  • One time he played one introduction off another: after introducing Divinyls frontwoman Chrissie Amphlett as the third member of Alan's team by saying "Responsible for songs such as "Boys in Town". "Science Fiction", & "I Touch Myself"", he introduces the third member of Myf's team with "Our final guest is the mother of two teenage sons. She's sick of all the boys in town, can't understand their obsession for science fiction, and wishes they'd stop touching themselves!".
• When Alan Brough, of all people, forgot Nirvana sang Smells Like Teen Spirit. And it was a Final Countdown question, so his team lost a point for it.
• On one round of Know Your Product, the choices were all 'Alt [genre]'. The accompanying cards were brilliant- to be more specific, the card for 'Alt Country' was two men in cowboy hats and assless chaps, and the card for 'Alt Dance' was an overweight, middle-aged man in a pink ballerina outfit.
  • Another case happened when the card for 'Australian Country' was a car impaled on a flagpole.
  • On one Halloween episode, the categories were 'Scary Musos', 'Scary Classical', 'Scary Pop', and 'Scary Spice'.
  • Another title card for 'Alternative Country' had a picture of a horse with a mohawk.
  • One for "Australian Orchestras" had John Howard's face photoshopped onto a conductor's body.
• Frank Woodley re-enacting Little Nell's Wardrobe Malfunction during a performance of The Rocky Horror Show, which she had revealed earlier in the episode, & Adam holding up a screen to obscure Frank's nip-slip.
• On one episode, the band doing "Look What They've Done To My Song" were performing tango covers. One of the band members played an instrument that sounded like a wobbleboard but looked like he was fisting a drum.
• Any time Barry Morgan shows up.
• Andrew O'Neill playing the piano on one segment. He decided to take his glasses off so he could headbang, but that created a new problem in that he couldn't see without them, so he ended up having to lean really close to the cards.
• Ella Hooper explaining her 'vagingerbread'.
• Dave Hughes singing on 'Substitute'. He really can't sing.
• On one episode, Adam decided to help out people who didn't know what "Nessun Dorma" is about by translating the lyrics as one of the guests, a professional opera singer, sang them. He translated them directly for the most part, and then randomly went into the chorus of "Wannabe".
• Ross Noble explaining that the Spice Girls failed in the composition of 'Wannabe' as adding two and two is not an equation. 'An actual equation would be 2x squared.'
• Meshel Laurie saying that Kurt Elling's jazz vernacular, such as 'cats' and 'fly chicks' made her feel so jazz-like that she wanted a bong.
• One post-show bit had Adam riding the bicycle used for Malvern Stars On 45 while Carl Cox played the records. At one point, Cal Wilson pretended to run while offering Adam her glass of water, like they were in the Grand Prix. Adam took the glass and threw it over himself, and then Colin Lane walked over and threw his glass over Adam too.
• Mikey Robins imitating a howling dog while Molly Meldrum sang on Substitute.
• The Ten Tenors singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in Italian. "Bongiorno, bongiorno, bongiorno…"
• Chrissy Amphlett singing "Close To You" to the words from a handbook for people who owned a 2000 Toyota Corona. Denise Scott then loudly reacted to each line and later said that it was the sexiest handbook ever.
• Ross Noble and Martha Wainwright cat-fighting. It got so extreme that Alan commented that next they'd be throwing bits of paper at each other and asking him if the other one liked them.
• This bit in one game of The Final Countdown:
  Adam: Which Swedish band-
  Danny Bhoy: *hits buzzer* Abba.
  • And he was right!
• To carry the show out one night, Gotye played a version of theme tune where every word was replaced by recordings of the guests and hosts. He concluded it with Adam saying, "And to answer everyone's questions, twenty children, two wives."
  • Just beforehand, after Denise Scott performed the song "Oklahoma", she offered to help Gotye out with his music, but the wording made it sound less like music and more like an offer of sex, and she immediately noted that the poor man looked terrified.
• Cal Wilson getting so pissed off with her team's terrible guessing on a round of Cover Versions that she just went on to the next album without even waiting for the team to say 'pass'.
• Adam showing the audience real boxes of fan-made cereals: Karen O's and Steve Miller Bran. He and Frank Woodley then came up with a couple more: Hall and Quick Oats, and Special KC and the Sunshine Band.
• Gary Eck doing his impersonation of Clint Eastwood in The Sound of Music:
  Gary: *mimes eating* Doe. *mimes chewing* A deer. *keeps miming* A female deer!
  • This conversation between Adam and Gary:
  Adam: That point might have just won the game for your team!
  Gary: Really?
  Adam: Let's check the scores… *mocking* No!
  • Colin Hay performing "Land Down Under" with his wife, who played the air flute.
• Laurie Cadevida talked about how she was a contestant on American Idol, and said that Paula told her to 'emote more'. Myf said 'Tell her to emote this" and mimed flipping Paula off with both hands.
  • To take the show out, they played the video for David Hasselhoff's cover of 'Jump In My Car'. When the video got to the bit where the girl decides to get in, the entire panel was screaming 'Don't get in the car!' at her.
• Dinah Lee told the panel about how she met the Beatles, and had a few drinks with Paul McCartney. Adam finally asked her if she'd had sex with him, and Dinah said that she wouldn't tell him the answer… because nobody knows.
  • On the round of Musician Or Serial Killer, Cal decided that her picture was obviously of a serial killer, because given her luck with men, he couldn't be a musician. It promptly went into Fridge Horror territory when Adam revealed that her picture was of Ted Bundy.
• Guy Pratt and Dave O'Neill having a battle of bassists, which Dave 'wins' by pulling the lead out of Guy's bass.
• During a round of Sir Mix and Matchalot, Alan rattled off all the answers in quick succession, followed by Cal saying 'Miss Scarlet in the library with the candlestick', to which Alan replied, "Yeah, but I've got no idea what she's doing."
• On one round of Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma, a U2 tribute band did a song by The Wiggles... so at the end of the show, the Wiggles and Captain Feathersword performed "Angel of Harlem".
• In one episode during "Know Your Product", Jason Byrne starts taking notes on things that he's learned that round. When someone asks if he's going to be doing that all episode, he answers, "Well yeah, there'll be questions at the end."
• One of the Christmas episodes had Brian Mannix being tasked with stopping one team from throwing presents through windows marked with singers' faces. He proved too short for the task, so Frank Woodley was summoned to help him. After getting hit Brian returned fire, with the game soon devolving into an all-out present fight, with Adam himself joining in.
• After Alan sang a round of Substitute where his teammates failed spectacularly, he laments that he thinks he's failed. His team member responds "no, we've failed you", causing Alan to scream "Of course you failed!" while angrily throwing the book to the floor, only to remember that the book he was using was the Bible... He then sits back down on his chair, which immediately collapses. Alan looks up to heaven, crosses himself, and resigns himself to the fact that he must now knell for the rest of the episode.
• When Shaun Diviney submitted his stories for the "What's the Story" round, he misunderstood the requirements and submitted two lies and a truth instead of a lie, a half-truth and a complete truth. As a result, the answer listed as a half-truth was actually a complete lie. When Shaun confessed to this error, it resulted in sheer slack-jawed bewilderment from Alan, while Adam's expression can only be described as the human equivalent of Kermit the Frog's "scrunch face"◊. This half of the round soon falls apart completely as it becomes clear that Shaun's "Truth" answer is more of an Ambiguous Situation, backed up only by a random anecdote from his grandfather, so it's entirely concievable that none of his answers were true at all.

The 2014 Series

• During Josh Earl's first episode as host, he goes off on a tangent about Brian Johnson replacing Bon Scott as frontman of AC/DC. "Can you imagine the pressure that Brian must have been under replacing someone so beloved by Australia after seven years? I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like..."
• A new round was introduced where each team is given a fridge covered in word magnets, said magnets being the titles of four songs jumbled up, and a certain team member must unjumble them with help from their teammates. The songs on Adam's team's fridge included XTC's 'Love On A Farmboy's Wages', Diesel's 'Tip Of My Tongue' and Midnight Oil's 'Put Down That Weapon', so naturally, Adam instantly called out 'Put that farmboy's weapon on my tongue!'
• Ben Mingay doing Substitute using a children's book called Digit Dick and the Tasmanian Devil. The audience lost it, especially when he did a really very good impression of Kate Bush as he sang "Wuthering Heights."

Later Specials

• In the 2019 Ausmusic special, Ali McGregor appears in one round to tell a story about visiting the Playboy Mansion with her young daughter, which turns out to be true. Adam starts jokingly criticising her as a parent, before clarifying to anyone in the audience who doesn't know that Ali is his wife and that he was there too.
• In the 2000s Music special, the OK Go video for "Here it Goes Again" is brought up, along with the fact that it took the band 21 takes, only three of which got the choreography right. Adam says that they don't have any footage of the 18 failed takes, but shows us a montage of Treadmill Trauma Amusing Injuries to give us an idea of what they probably looked like.

The 2021 Series

• In episode 2, “Look What They’d Done To My Song, Ma” is played by a Super Mario Bros-like 8-bit computer game (soundtracked by MIDI covers of popular songs converted to chiptune) featuring animated versions of the regular hosts. More time is spent to describing the animations rather than guessing the songs.
• In episode 3, Microsoft using “Start Me Up” by The Rolling Stones at a product launch is brought up. Adam follows up a clip of it by thinking that Microsoft were trying too hard to be “hip” and mentioning what might’ve happened at the Apple launch. Cue a repeat of a clip of Tom Ballard’s tap-dancing class played earlier into the episode.
• One of the books read during Substitute is “Aqua Erotica”, a collection of short stories about sex. One of of the consistants wants to read the book, to which he gets what he deserves once the round is over.
• In episode 8, Adam Hills plays a clip of dingoes howling while Mitch Tambo’s 2019 Australia’s Got Talent semi-final performance plays on a TV, solely to poke fun of his singing skills.
  • It is brought up later when Mitch sings “You’re The Voice” by John Farnham during a round of Substitute as his final song, except he is singing the translated rendition he performed on the Got Talent semi-final, rather than singing a book to the tune of it. Kate McLennan chooses to guess it incorrectly as “Two Strong Hearts”, which Adam announces as the "correct" answer.
• One of the clues for the first "Secret Song" is the video background loading songs by Rick Springfield, Rick James and Ricky Martin during "Know Your Product" instead of the requested clips, thus "rickrolling" the teammates.
  • Also the fact that the entire episode is effectively one massive rickroll.