Noted wage thief George Calombaris‘ brand new show Hungry has debuted on Aussie televisions and it flopped harder than barramundi on a boat.
Per The Herald Sun, Hungry hit Aussie tellies with only 69,000 metro viewers and 29,000 regional viewers. By television standards, this is not very good, but it’s still better than the massive flop that was The Challenge.
According to hosts Calombaris and Sarah Todd, the show has taken an “economical” approach to filming. Todd apparently looks after George’s clothes and also does his makeup to cut costs. Sounds to me like she’s doing three jobs at once, but what do I know?
What I would love to know is if she’s getting paid equal to Calombaris to be on this show.
What I would not love to know is why the most recent episode of Calombaris’ show is titled “Coffee Wanker”. Leave those coffees alone!!!
In case you missed it, a Victorian businessman became the first person in Australia to face criminal charges for alleged wage theft last week. At the same time, Calombaris was doing a press tour for the launch of this very show right here.
The Wage Inspectorate of Victoria filed a heaping 94 criminal charges against the restaurant Macedon Lounge and its owner Gaurav Setia.
Per The Age, it alleged the business underpaid penalty rates, superannuation and wages of four employees to a sum of more than $7000.
Gaurav Setia will face 10 years in jail and will have to pay more than $1 million in fines if found guilty.
Allow me to quickly remind you that George Calombaris, who was explicitly guilty of wage theft, stole $7.8 million in wages from 515 former employees and was slapped with a $200,000 fine.
Now Calombaris gets to waltz around Australia filming himself eating food and looking at coffee cups in strange ways.
He even appeared on television’s worst show The Project to perform a bit of reputation rehabilitation.
It sure is messed up that the first Australian to face criminal charges for wage theft is a person of colour, while one of our biggest cases of wage theft is being celebrated on a TV show. Flop or not, the show shouldn’t have been given the green light in the first place.
