After heeding Today Tonight’s complaints about the outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money on their show The War On Everything, the Chaser team has decided to take some time off from TV in the first half of 2008. The Chaser will adopt a purely user-pays approach next year, mounting a national tour of a new live production, The Chaser’s Age Of Terror Variety Hour, from March to June 2008.

Like The War On Everything, the Variety Hour will include a diverse range of short segments, some of which will be kind of okay-ish. It will combine sketches, songs, presentations and interactive audience segments ranging from the satirical to the just silly, and be constantly updated to incorporate up-to-the-minute insensitive gags about the latest celebrity deaths as they happen.

War On Everything co-conspirators Andrew Hansen, Chas Licciardello, Julian Morrow and Craig Reucassel will appear in the show. Chris Taylor has opted not to tour while under the cloud of a fatwa issued by the Irwin family, and will remain in an undisclosed location developing new television projects for the team. His irreplaceableness will be demonstrated by the inclusion of Dominic Knight, one of The Chaser’s founders and a writer for the War.

The Age Of Terror Variety Hour will be receiving formal complaints from audiences in Adelaide, Ballarat, Brisbane, Canberra, Cairns, Darwin, Geelong, Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, Newcastle, Parramatta, Perth, Sydney and Townsville. FULL TOUR DETAILS FOLLOW BELOW.

The Chaser team is still in negotiations with the ABC about future TV shows. Their negotiations with commercial networks of late have mainly been over Supreme Court injunctions.