Guido Hatzis: Well Stated.

Guido Hatzis appears at Sanity Strathpine at 11am and Sanity Stafford at 2pm on Saturday. Deported is in stores now.

By the time radio funnyman Tony Moclair’s muscle car lovin’ Greek Adonis alter ego Guido Hatzis hit this second album, we Aussies knew what he was up to. No more would we fall for his over the top egotistical stereotyping. For album three, Deported, it was time to cast an eye over the waters, and find out what an international career in crank calls held.

“There was a problem with recognition,” Moclair explains. “It’s a nice problem to have, but I found that when I was doing the calls the whole element of surprise was gone if people knew they were being cranked by Guido. The strategy was to go sobbing to the record company that we needed a free overseas trip. And they were nice enough to pay for it.”

There were a couple of overseas calls on the last album as well, weren’t there.

“There were, but just because of the time difference and to get a bit of local knowledge and local feel we felt it was best to go to these places direct. Like with any kind of work trip, there’s work hanging over the holiday part… You know how much effort is required to take that umbrella out of a pina colada?”

This time around, Guido take on the might of the United States before plying his trade in the UK as well as running a series of other skits from Moclair’s Austereo program. While it seems easy to get the Americans offside, some of the skits that worked the best were Guido’s responses to advertisements, where the confused recipient continued to be polite and sincere.

“Everyone’s been through this; going to a job interview where you have to be fawning and overly respectful. ‘I’m really excited by the opportunity to work long hours where I’m overworked and underpaid’. To turn it around is so much fun. ‘Look, I don’t care about your crappy job, but the pay’s okay, so I’ll take it, and maybe I’ll even turn up. I’m good at giving the appearance of work’. That’s a lot of fun to do.”