Amit Tandon, a stand-up comedian from India was touring UK recently. The online tickets were sold-off within a few weeks, and the organisers had to sent out an alert stating that it was a full-house and that one needed to queue up early to get the best seats.
People had started queuing up outside the hall nearly two hours before the show at the Greenwood Theatre near London Bridge, on the day of the show, to get seats that were closer to the stage. The gates were opened at 6:00pm, for a one-hour show that started at 8:00pm.
Humour integrates people, and according to co-organiser Ankur Sharma, one of the Founders and CEO of Antzs Pvt Ltd, “People want to go out for these 90 min Comedy Gigs to be able to rejuvenate themselves and Asian diaspora is now ready to take Stand up comedy as a career.
Just to give you a perspective, The Amit Tandon London Bridge show was sold out 3 weeks before and people were on the waiting list for cancellation. So we put together another show in Greenwich in the same week that also got sold out one week before. So a massive scope for such activities.”
Avirup Datta from the audience told the Asian Voice that “the good thing about Amit Tandon is that he forced us to laugh at ourselves, at our idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, making us remember our lives back in India. He helped us enjoy the small joys in our lives without belittling anybody.”
As per Ankur, “I reckon people could really relate to his jokes. He puts in so much of research into all content that the audience just clings only any opportunity that they have to see him. Especially in today's busy and stressful life, people find this a good way to relax and make the most of their time. He is popularly known as the "Married Guy" and one punch line that has really gone viral is "Amit Tandon - Produced by Mother and Directed by Wife"
Neeti Sahni, an audience agreed, saying “his is a comedy that everyone can connect to, anecdotes are very close to day to day life and his jokes are not limited to one type of age or audiences. I specifically love the way he talks, proper Delhi accent and attitude.” Payal Subramanium said “It was a happy show and we could connect to his jokes – there is no vulgarity, it was impromptu fun and no personal comments. We felt connected to all the people in the hall.”
British Asian comedians are also making it big in this circuit. Aziz Ansari, Anil Desai, Imran Yusuf, Russell Peters and Romesh Ranganathan are big names now and what makes them click is probably the fact that they do not crack jokes about just their ethnicity or race.
Aziz Ansari for example, started performing only about four years back, but has emerged as one of the most audacious and competent stand-up comedians, with a sizeable mainstream fan-following. He is being looked at as the social chronicler of his age, who has covered socio-political issues like immigration, politics, factory-farming, gay rights, America's racism, fear of feminism and more while making people laugh silly, rolling off their seats.
Romesh Ranganathan, a former teacher, actor and stand-up comedian started in 2010, and is doing well in his new BBC3 series of Asian Provocateur. He was picked up by the BBC Radio's Asian Network, that conducts the Asian Network Comedy events - a purely Western concept of targeting socio-political issues through pure humour and wit. Anil Desai, Tez Ilyas, Aatif Nawaz, Bilal Zafar, Jay Islaam and some women artists like Aditi Mittal and Sadia Azmat keep performing extensively on radio and across the UK.
Unlike most other professions, this is not something you can train in; it is something you just pick up as an art. Strong creative and writing skills, an ability to remember your lines, fantastic comic timing, intuitive thinking with a good stage presence is what clicks.
This laughing matter also means serious business - “This relatively smaller format with multi city shows has been so popular that we have been inundated with requests for other artists too, so watch out for the next stand-up comedy show that we organise,” words by Ankur, aptly summarises the future of this art form in the next few years, to say the least.
