Charles Firth (comedian)

Firth went to Adelaide in July 2007 to present at the Festival of Ideas with fellow Chaser Julian Morrow, where his performance included asking the audience to SMS their questions to him, throwing lollies to the audience, and "defacing" three Wikipedia articles.

Firth worked on a new weekly print magazine and news website, which was launched in mid-August 2007 called The Manic Times. The newspaper has since ceased production and that company is now called "Manic Studios" producing web video for the Australian, and more recently, American Union movements in partnership with The Republic. Firth remains actively involved as a writer, performer and producer.

By 2006, Firth had moved to the United States. He periodically appeared on The Chaser's War on Everything in a segment about American culture entitled "Firth in the USA". This segment served to highlight American ignorance of Australia and the world in general.

During this time Firth also researched and wrote his first book, American Hoax. This involved creating a number of fictional stereotypical American characters on both the progressive-left and conservative-right sides of American politics. The characters included liberal ad-man Bertrand Newton, conservative scholar Dr Andrew O'Keefe, conservative economist Edward McGuire, working class bartender Darryl Summers, and female Iraqi-immigrant poet Khorin al-Ghrant. The book explored the efforts of these characters (all played by Firth) to try to interact with real-world political groups and individuals. American Hoax was released in November 2006.

On CNNNN, broadcast in 2003 and 2004, he played a role as host of the fictional segment "The Firth Factor", parodying journalistic styles used by the American Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly's prime time show The O'Reilly Factor.

Firth went on to attend the University of Sydney where he completed an Arts degree in political science, edited the Honi Soit student newspaper, and in 1997 broke through a plate glass window during a University Senate meeting to protest the introduction of full fee paying places at the university. While attending, Charles was also the subject of a reality-TV style documentary called Uni, by film-maker Simon Target, centred on the lives of students at the University of Sydney. Fellow Chaser Andrew Hansen was also a subject. It was aired on the ABC in 1996.