Hughes reveals fallout from Tim Worner Logies jokes

DAVE Hughes’ Logies jokes about the Tim Worner/Amber Harrison affair even cost him a job — but he and the Channel Seven boss have buried the hatchet.

DAVE Hughes didn’t hold back during his hosting duties at last year’s Logie Awards, skewering everyone from Karl Stefanovic to Grant Denyer and Grant Hackett in an opening speech that was met with frequent gasps.

But it was the gags he made about embattled Seven CEO Tim Worner that appeared to have the longest lasting effects, with Hughes later claiming he was dropped from a Seven panel show over the monologue.

Mr Worner made headlines in late 2016 when explicit text messages that he sent to former employee Amber Harrison were leaked.

The network went into damage control after the former executive assistant launched a media offensive against the married father-of-four, sharing sordid details of the pair’s two-year affair.

On stage at the Logies, Hughes sneaked a jab at Mr Worner at the end of a joke that started with star of The Wrong Girl and Love Child Jessica Marais.

Hughes appeared to mistakenly attribute The Wrong Girl to Channel Seven rather than Channel 10, but it quickly became clear it was entirely intentional.

Did Hughesy make a powerful enemy with his Logies monologue?

“[Jessica] is up for two shows. She is up for Channel Nine’s Love Child and Channel Seven’s The Wrong Girl. Oh, Channel Ten, sorry. No, sorry. Channel Ten, sorry. Channel Seven were working on a pilot of The Wrong Girl, that was starring their CEO Tim Worner, and ... That was more a reality show,” he said, as the crowd gasped.

“He picked the wrong girl to mess with. It was going really well, but they thought it was too expensive and they tried to cancel it.”

Hughes ended with, “I’ve never worked on Channel Seven and I probably never will!”

In an interview in the Media Diary section of today’s Australian newspaper, Hughes said relations between he and Mr Worner are fine.

“We spoke soon after and we’re all good,” he said. “He acknowledged that my Wrong Girl joke was a ripper, even though he might not have been laughing at the time.”

It comes after Hughes last year claimed that the fallout from his jokes at Mr Worner’s expense had even cost him a job.

Seven chief executive officer Tim Worner.

Hughes told listeners to his KIIS FM radio show in May last year that he was supposed to appear on Seven’s panel show Behave Yourself! when word came through that he’d been cancelled at the last minute.

He alleged that a Seven staffer told his agent: “It’s going to have to go up the line to see if the Channel Seven executives are happy to have you on.”

“And then she said, ‘Do you want to pull out? And I said, ‘No I don’t want to pull out — if they don’t want to have me on they can say they don’t want to have me on,’” he said. “Then I get the word back they don’t want to have (me) on,” he said at the time.

When that story went public, Hughes said he was contacted by Mr Worner direct, who said he had no knowledge of the “ban”.

“He’s left a message on my phone saying, ‘I didn’t know anything about this, I’m not happy about it, of course you’re welcome on Channel Seven, I want you on Channel Seven.’ So I believe it was some of the people below.”