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While we all fell in love with Hamish and Andy, Wil Anderson turned them into a punchline.

 

Together Hamish Blake and Andy Lee make one of Australia’s most loved comedy duos.

However, the love wasn’t as unanimously felt by their comedian peers at the inception of their career in 2004. Especially by Wil Anderson, who at the time was co-hosting the ABC comedy talk-show, The Glass House, with Corinne Grant and Dave Hughes.

You see, 21-year-old Hamish and Andy were cast alongside Andrew O’Keefe, Chris Lilley and Kate McCartney in a Channel 7 sketch comedy show called Big Bite. It was then renamed to Hamish & Andy, a move which allegedly angered Australia’s more established comedians.

Wil Anderson explains to Mia Freedman why he doesn’t have kids on Mamamia’s No Filter podcast.

Video by MMC

Appearing on Anderson’s podcast Wilosophy this week, Lee, 38, candidly discussed the “awful experience,” which led to a long-running feud with the former Gruen Transfer host.

“I want to raise something with you which is pretty confronting,” began Lee. “Hamish and I didn’t like you for a very, very, long time.”

“As 21-year-olds in our first gig, to step out and see everyone in there looking at you going, ‘You’ve just stolen our f***ing show’, we tried to talk to people, and it turned into a train wreck,” he continued.

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“What was the hard thing for Hamish and I, at the time, was we were really trying, and then the shows that I loved and listened to, I was becoming a regular punchline on.”

Explaining his side of the situation, Anderson apologised for his actions, stating that he knew he had “behaved like a di**head”.

“There was a whole bunch of people who you guys had been foisted upon,” he replied.

“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.”

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Lee and Anderson would later meet at a Sydney restaurant, where tensions intensified.

“I said, ‘Hey, I’m Andy from Hamish and Andy’. And you said something along the lines of, ‘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’,” said Lee.

“I was like, ‘All right, cool, nice to meet you’, and left. I rang Ham and said, ‘Wil is as big a f***head as you would ever possibly imagine!’”

However, judging from the latest Wilosophy episode, any tensions have long bubbled over.

“I thought it was extremely generous of him to do the podcast and I’m glad we got to have this chat,” Anderson said at the beginning of their conversation.

“The big thing that came to me was the realisation, when I started listening to your radio show, that you weren’t what I had heard you were,” he later continued.

“I just kept hearing how hard you worked, and if there’s one thing I admire, it’s hard work.”

Lee and Blake are about to celebrate the launch of their upcoming Channel 9 show, Hamish & Andy’s “Perfect” Holiday. Their friendship began in 2000, when they met while both studying at the University of Melbourne.

And as they say, the rest was history.

Were you aware of Wil Anderson’s ‘feud’ with Hamish Blake and Andy Lee? Tell us in a comment below.

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