Update 11.30am: Click here for the latest reaction on this story from Australia and around the world.
Update 10.50pm: Daryl Somers just apologised to Harry Connick for the skit. Connick said if he’d known it was going to be on he would never have agreed to be a part of the show.
Harry Connick looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him tonight when as a judge on Red Faces on the Hey Hey it’s Saturday reunion he was confronted with a troop of black and white minstrels taking the piss out of the Jackson Five.
The American crooner, possibly sensing a backlash back home, gave the Jackson Jive act a big fat zero, and said if the show was on air in the US it would be off air again immediately, “Hey Hey No Show”.
The Jackson Jive, complete with cheap afro wigs and boot polished faces had been on Red Faces 20 years ago. The joke might have been funny then, but have things changed?
Last week a staggering 2.2 million viewers tuned in to Hey Hey for the first of its two Wednesday night reunion shows, and it was tipped to do something impressive in the numbers tonight as well.
The producers also took the bold move of spoofing the show’s competitor Masterchef, in a segment that certainly had some comedy chops.
But the rest of the show was, in the words of another Puncher: “Like watching your grandfather try to break dance.”

That the Jackson Jive was so funny to us 20 years ago is a little bit embarrassing now. I’d like to think we’ve grown up since then, but more than 2 million people clearly disagree with me.
I’m guessing Harry Connick is desperately hoping a clip of the segment doesn’t make it’s way onto YouTube, and back home where sensitivities about race are much more finely tuned.
I’m also guessing if Hey Hey lives another day he won’t be back. Did you see it?
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