Two Melbourne Comedy Festival performers were attacked last week after defending their friend who was racially abused in the city.
As The Age reports, local comic Peter Morley and his partner Rachel Kottkamp were sitting on a bench with an African American friend outside St Paul's Cathedral after midnight last Tuesday when they were approached by a young man seeking directions.
"I was trying to give him directions up to Russell and Bourke [streets] and he wasn't understanding me," Morley said.
"Our friend told him to leave us alone, that we weren't able to help him. When she spoke up, that's when he got really upset. Partly because she's a woman, but definitely because she's black," Mr Morley said.
It's alleged the man told their friend she was a refugee and to "Go back the fuck to your own country".
After telling the man off, the trio walked away only for the man to follow them with a beer bottle.
While Morley was able to knock the bottle out of the man's hand, he was punched and knocked to the ground.
Morley has no memory of the assault and suffered bruising to the face and his ankle being broken in three places.
"We're in town to do the Comedy Festival and he screwed up two weeks of that for us for no reason," Morley told The Age from hospital.
"And I'm just humiliated. We [he and his friend] had been talking at work for the last couple of months about being in Melbourne and showing her around, that it's such a great city and now that's going to be her one experience of it."
Victorian police confirmed a 20-year-old Reservoir man has been charged with intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury, assault with a weapon and unlawful assault. He will appear in court on 19 June.
Meanwhile, Morley and Kottkamp will move ahead with their Facebook-streamed live show, All Star Hollywood Big Shot Wheel of Bargains 2000!! (NOT Sex Predators), from hospital this week.
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