
“I want to raise something with you which is pretty confronting,” 38-year-old Andy Lee said to Wil Anderson, minutes into their one hour and 20 minute conversation on Anderson’s Wilosophy podcast.
“Hamish [Blake] and I didn’t like you for a very, very, long time. And I think he got over it earlier than I did.”
Lee, who co-hosts the top-rating podcast Hamish & Andy, recalled the pair getting their start on a TV sketch show called Big Bite, which also starred Chris Lilley and Kate McCartney.
Andy Lee almost died as a one year old. Post continues below.
At just 21 years old, it was decided by executives that the program would be renamed ‘Hamish & Andy’, which didn’t sit comfortably with either of them.
Lee described it as an “awful experience,” and feeling as though the rest of the cast was looking at them like they’d stolen the show.
“You guys were young, and you were put into a show where I knew a whole bunch of people who were involved in the show, and some of them were not happy that these two young people had been thrown into this show, so I was getting a lot of stories,” said Anderson, 45, implying they weren’t popular on set.
On television shows that Lee once loved, like ABC’s The Glass House, he became a punchline. Lee recalled specific jokes that were made, calmly relaying them to Anderson.
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One day, Lee’s mother rang him to ask: “What did you do to Wil Anderson?”
At this stage, the two had never even met.
Then one night, Lee spotted Anderson in a Sydney restaurant and decided to introduce himself; an attempt to remind Anderson that ‘Andy Lee’ wasn’t a character, but a human being.
Anderson replied, “Oh yeah, when I show people through my house, I say this is the Hamish and Andy kitchen for the amount of money I’ve made off jokes about you two.”
Top Comments
I hope that Wil Anderson is genuine when he says that he has learned how powerful words can be. I saw him doing stand up a couple of years ago and there's no other way to describe him except a bully; making fun of people in the audience for laughs. Here's hoping that his routine these days can get him laughs that aren't at the expense of others.