James Weir: We hate to sound like nerds but there’s no classy end to Gleeson’s Gold Logie gag

We’ve all be laughing at this for weeks. But there’s no classy way to end this year’s Gold Logie gag.

A friend’s mum had a saying she’d rattle off when we were in high school that we’d all eye-roll at — but her tedious message finally became relevant this week as tensions boiled over in the fight for the Gold Logie.

“One time’s funny, the second time is sometimes funny, the third time is not very funny, the fourth time is getting old, the fifth time is annoying, the sixth time …” and she’d just keep crapping on until my friend yelled at her to aim her Hyundai toward the nearest Macca’s drive-thru.

Her never-ending saying was usually provoked when we were in the backseat being undisputedly hilarious — probably making fun of our English teacher’s beat-up Daihatsu and yen for a sweater vest.

She could’ve just said an actual adage like, “Here’s the line — and you just crossed it,” but — when it comes to sage advice and household items from Kmart — mums like to put their own spin on things.

While her reaction to our jokes about sweater vests can only be described as out-of-touch, her wise words rang true this week as Tom Gleeson’s mock campaign to win the Gold Logie turned into a bloodbath complete with political-style smear ads.

Stop blocking the stairs, we can’t get through.

It’s the second consecutive year the ABC host and comedian has campaigned to hijack and nosedive the award. He succeeded last year when he petitioned for Grant Denyer to win, even though the Family Feud host’s show had been axed and he technically wasn’t on TV anymore. Grant won and we all had to watch fellow nominee Tracy Grimshaw — who usually shuns the spotlight and lets her hard work speak for itself — clap along and pretend like she wasn’t annoyed some cancelled game show was deemed better work than her searing Don Burke #metoo interview.

I hate puns, but it was grim … shaw.

Amanda Keller was another victim of last year’s hijack, and she’s enduring it again now. But it has taken its toll and the broadcast legend has had a gut full. (NOTE: I know the term “broadcast legend” seems like a classy synonym for “ancient human”, but I swear I just mean she’s one of the best).

“It’s hard because Tom is playing a different game, and that’s what I’m finding I’m struggling with, to be honest,” The Living Room host said this week.

It’s a weird one because there are two sides to this red-headed coin.

We all think Tom’s hilarious and we love to groan about how naff the Logies is. We come for Karl Stefanovic’s hopefully-inebriated re-emergence from obscurity, stay for Bert Newton tottering out to drop a homophobic slur, and sleep through Jessica Mauboy’s halftime performance. It’s a bloody tradition.

But it’s still an important night to some and in recent years the big award has represented a shift into more sophisticated territory, with Waleed Aly’s 2016 win and Samuel Johnson and Carrie Bickmore both using the award to draw attention to social causes.

Tom branding the awards a meaningless joke can probably be interpreted as a bit of a sledge to someone like Amanda who has been slogging it out for 35 years.

Even Grant Denyer let rip about Tom hijacking his campaign last year.

“Everybody in the country now thinks I won the award because of him, and if I’m honest, that sh*ts me,” he said on his 2Day breakfast show while lamenting the “joke” that Gleeson and fellow nominee Sam Mac have turned the award into.

If you’re a bit uneasy watching Tom turn the award into a laughing stock, you’re kinda made to feel like a bit of a loser who doesn’t get jokes.

But we totally get jokes! We love jokes! Except my friend’s mum. And this is one joke she would absolutely not find funny. Not a second time or a third time or a fourth.

Honestly, the cutaway shots to the other nominees when they lose to Tom are gonna be painful.

HOMECOMING QUEEN KARL’S AWAITED RETURN

Speaking of Karl’s speculated re-emergence, we honestly can’t wait. We’ve missed seeing him on screens. Why Channel 9 got rid of him on Today is just confusing.

Anyway, he’s still got that show This Time Next Year which sounds interesting in theory but is actually just ridiculous and probably very annoying to film. The premise is basically this: Karl’s filmed meeting some random person who, I don’t know, wants to be an Olympian in 12 months. And then they wait an entire year and revisit the person to find out if they’ve finally achieved their goal, which most of the contestants have not. The show should really be called The Letdown.

What would be even more compelling is if they just applied the format to Karl and we just kept checking in on him annually at the Logies to see how things have fared.

Apparently Karl is coming out of hiding and making a glittering return to the spotlight tonight.

Hopefully he has learnt from Matthew Perry’s mistake and cuts his fingernails before crawling out of whatever dank Mosman mansion he has been holed up in.

(If that paragraph makes no sense to you, you’re just going to have to Google “Matthew + Perry + fingernails” because I don’t have room here to venture into the ins and outs of Chandler’s recent mani-pedi fails.)

Unfortunately, the one big rumour that tempted us to watch the damn broadcast has been quashed. Did you hear the rumour? Not the one about Karl’s spray-paint hair. The one that his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn would be rocking up to the ceremony with those Studio 10 ratbags.

Well, it doesn’t matter anymore as she has personally snuffed it out. It’s a shame. Producers could’ve just run side-by-side live feed of Karl and Cass on opposite sides of the room while the awards played out in the background.

What a homecoming.

Twitter and Facebook: @hellojamesweir

Get ya nails did, Karl.

Originally published as James Weir: We hate to sound like nerds but there’s no classy end to Gleeson’s Gold Logie gag