Well, when I was studying in the UK, I was taken to a comedy club by a friend and I was hooked. I kept going back because I enjoyed what they did. I didn’t think of doing it in the UK at first, just enjoyed going to comedy. But when I was back in Malaysia, I realised there was no comedy scene here. Yes, there were a few people doing it (namely Harith Iskander, Joanne Kam and Jit Murad) but the shows were few and far between.
I thought to myself, maybe I could start a scene in KL but I kept putting it off as I was busy with work and other things. My brother always said that I should do comedy as I had a knack for it but I never had the time. When he passed away (as a result of a heart attack) I realised that life was too short for procrastination, and in 2006 I contacted my cousin Andrew Netto, got 150 of our friends, put them in a pub and told them jokes. Andrew did really well, and I was horrible. I didn’t know what I was doing, I realised I didn’t know anything about stand-up comedy. I didn’t know how to write a joke, how to deliver a joke and appear confident on stage. I set out to learn about stand-up comedy, doing shows in other pubs, trying out different personalities and jokes.
When TimeOut KL started a monthly show called Comedy Thursday and a few of the comedians, such as Kuah Jenhan, Phoon Chi Ho, Steve Northcott, Jason Leong, Rizal van Geyzel and I started becoming their backbone and we now had a place to call home. The scene improved drastically, and then Comedy Club KL started bringing international acts down and we, while opening for them, had learned so much from comedians we only watched on YouTube.
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