Comedy with an Accent

Evelyn Mok is well known for being the former co-host of the (now retired) Rice to Meet You Podcast and the creative mind behind multiple popular sketches. The Swedish native is also one of the highest-profile comedian of East Asian heritage in the UK, who now spends her time between both countries. Evelyn talked about how the feeling of being "other'ed in Sweden in her childhood prompted her to m...

“Are you the WHSmith guy?” Stephen Buchanan is known by strangers these days for his viral sketch clips, shared so widely that he’d be stopped and recognised by random people on the street. He won the BBC New Comedy Award in 2018; he is a third of the popular podcast Some Laughs and part of the new generation of comedy talents coming out of Glasgow, a city that has produced exceptional performers...

"What's your mother tongue?" A simple question.. Cansu Karabiyik, our guest this week, replied, "That's a complicated question. I don't really have a national identity anymore." As a Kurdish/Turkish Danish citizen who studied abroad first in America then at Cambridge University in the UK, Cansu is an example that national identity and our relationship with a language may not always be straightforw...

[Notes for our non-Mandarin-speaking listeners, this is a one-off special episode recorded in Mandarin. We will be back to our normal bi-weekly episode in English on Jan 31st] 先祝各位聽眾一聲新年快樂，兔年行大運。 上一集以英文訪問來自美國波士頓，但在中國以相聲和單口喜劇走紅的艾杰西（Jesse Appell）。錄音當天，我們以中文分別又錄製了這一集。本集中文內容集中於主持人冠文與杰西討論中國與台灣所用中文的...

Ahead of the Chinese New Year, we are rejiggling the podcast's format slightly. Our guest this week is Jesse Appell, a native English speaker from Boston, USA who performs stand up comedy in Mandarin and whose career started in China. This reverses our usual format of interviewing non-native English speakers who perform English stand up. Known as 艾杰西 in China, Jesse has performed on Chinese TV...

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! The first episode in 2023 took your host to the Land of Song on the British isles - Wales. Steffan, more often in his Welsh tongue, is a Radio host, TV presenter and household name in his native Wales. Steffan also performs throughout the UK in English, a language he only became fluent in his teens. The Swansea native's love for his culture and his langue is evident throughout...

Bon Nadal! Feliz Navidad! Our last guest in 2022 is our third Spanish-speaking guest - also the podcast's first Catalan speaker - the self-titled "Lovely Boy From Barcelona" Sergi Polo. Fresh from being nominated for the prestigious Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year, Sergi is a regular at the popular Angel comedy in London who is known for his snappy, sharp and witty gags. Just check his Inst...

Baby comic Jin Hao Li is still studying at the University of St Andrews, but he already amassed a remarkable win at the legendary Comedy Store Gong Show in London and got through to the final of Chortle Student Comedy Award this year; A fellow veteran comedian described him as "You are a baby who is walking - but you are not supposed to!" The Singaporean comedy prodigy explains in this episode why...

Your host Kuan-wen describes Freddi as one of the best kept secrets to comedy audience in the UK and the US. Freddi has been a veteran on the Berlin stand up comedy scene, one of the largest in a non-English-speaking country in Europe thanks to the large number of expats in the city. In fact, it should be two scene"s", since Freddi used to perform both in German and in fluent English and the two o...

India's stand up comedy star Sahil Shah has been in this business for over a decade. He has been at the forefront of India's modern stand up comedy scene and has pretty much grown with the scene. It started with comedy sketches uploaded to Youtube, later packed out live shows. This year, he performed for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the UK - including a week at the Comedy wit...

Live at the Apollo star Esther Manito started performing stand up comedy only as recently as 2016 - not to forget we should probably count two years out because of the pandemic. The ex teacher has since brought two critically claimed solo shows (Crusade, #NotAllMen) to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and become the first female comedian to perform at Dubai Opera House. Describing herself as an "Esse...

For the avoidance of doubt, President Obonjo is a comedy character created by Anglo-Nigerian comedian Benjamin Bankelo Bello. In clear contrast to the brash, uber-confident and larger-than-life self-appointed African dictator in exile who speaks with a thick African accent, the comedian Benjamin Bankelo Bello is a soft-spoken, suburban Englishman who often wears a cardigan on top of his shirt. Ben...

Fresh from winning the LGBTQ+ New Comedian of the Year in the UK, Victoria was featured in the Guardian (See link to the article ) a month after this podcast episode was recorded. Her unique brand of humour is best illustrated by the joke quoted in the Guardian interview, in a love poem to the former Home Secretary in the UK Priti Patel, " I wish I was the Falkland Islands, so you can occupy me in...

The very first German speaker invited to this podcast is not from Germany, but from Austria - a relatively small country that produced a range of household names from Mozart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joseph Fritzl, Hitler to Conchita Wurst. This small country is also the remnants of the once mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hubert explains why the loss of the empire creates a visibly darker sense of...

Isa celebrates being "weird" in their comedy approach. They got into the comedy world by accident when they tried to impress a girl - well, Isa did not get the girl, but they did get comedy! The wicked Spanish comedian - 2018 finalist of BBC New Comedy Awards - enjoys sharing the wacky thoughts in their head rather than joking about and conforming to all the worst Spanish stereotypes, against thei...

In the second part of interview with Radu, the chat wandered off at times to include the funny geopolitical situation of Romania and how that gets reflected in Radu's comedy. Kuan-wen also delved deeper into the mechanics of Radu's voice and tone and how those embody Radu's comedy style and his worldview. --------------------------------------- Radu's Instagram (@radu70mld) Radu's 2022 Edinburgh F...

Radu is the type of performer that is regarded by many fellow comics as a comedian's comedian. He not only wins over audiences at comedy clubs, his contrarian approach often involves him throwing out ideas and notions that challenge the audiences' worldview. As he lays out his arguments, the unthinkable suddenly becomes so convincing for the audience and then chuckles come along. Radu's comedy is...

The hilarious interview with Yuriko continues in this episode. In the last episode, your host Kuan-wen and Yuriko started the discussion of the partial and poor understanding of Japanese culture by western societies. An extension of this is the fetishisation of Japanese culture. Because of some of the terms mentioned in the chat eg Bukkake (ぶっ掛け) - and possibly because your host Kuan-wen's mis...

After two episodes centring on European languages, we are back to Asia this week to discuss comedy and foreign accents with the brilliant Japanese comedian Yuriko Kotani, 2015 winner of the prestigious BBC New Comedy Award. Your host Kuan-wen asked Yuriko her view on the piecemeal understanding/perception/interpretation of Japanese culture by western societies. They also shared their constant stru...

The effortlessly charming and cultured Italian comic Luca Cupani, who at some point in his life was more fluent in Latin and in ancient Greek than in English, brought the podcast to a new intellectual level that really challenged your host Kuan-wen to keep up. Renaissance paintings and modern art were casually referenced to and our guest this episode randomly threw away proper Latin phrases rather...

It is not uncommon to name boys after the Norse hammer-wielding god in Norway, but it is a bit weird to use Thor as the first name but also "Odin" (Thor's father in mythology) as the middle name. It does not help that the image of Thor is hijacked by Aussie beefcake Chris Hemsworth, when our second guest of the podcast looks more like a member of a tattoo-free 90s boyband. [The distorted sound has...

Hailing from Xi-An（西安） , Northwestern China, Chin Wang won the legendary London Comedy Store gong show in March 2021 and has since been on a meteoric rise. Chin and Kuan-wen talked about their occasional 'glitches' switching between English and Mandarin, a veiled constructed criticism on her accent, her move south of Hadrian's Wall from Edinburgh to London and how messing up tones when speakin...