Winner of the prestigious So You Think You Are Funny competition in 2023, Samira Banks is a bright new star making waves on the UK comedy circuit. Her trademark jokes include her family’s journey fleeing their homeland as refugees. The crowd’s laughters are often raucous but some sensitive souls amongst them also pull their faces wondering. “Are we supposed to joke about refugees?”

On stage, Samira refers to her heritage as a broad “from the Middle East.” She never specifies which specific country that is. This question thus forms the central discussion of this episode and explains why in the episode title, both her mother tongue and her native country remain unspecified.

Growing up in Germany and moving to the UK for work, Samira is another guest with an international accent that is hard for others to associate it with a specific place. Samira shares her family’s stories and why a reunion of her extended family would turn into a mishmash of accents.

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00:58 Intro

03:58 An international accent that is hard to pin down

06:58 Picking up multiple languages growing up

08:31 Why Samira chooses not to specify her home country when performing

13:09 Family history of fleeing and becoming refugees settling in different western countries

16:51 A closely-knit family and the elders’ funny views on romance and marriage

18:39 Between the English language, the German language and her mother tongue

19:48 German speakers refusing to see Samira as German

20:50 Some other complaints about German speakers

23:50 German v.s. British

25:22 Samira’s past naive assumption of anyone with accents from the north of England

27:04 Middle class refugees’ “privileges”

29:29 Difficulties of handling refugee experiences as comedy materials

31:52 What does Samira think about her position telling her parents’ life experiences?

35:59 Samira’s social media

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

How do you perform and progress on the comedy circuit, when you as a native English speaker already moved to an Asian country where the population does not speak English as their mother tongue (and there really isn’t much stand up comedy going on)?

Such is the story of Sam Yarb, co-founder of the leading comedy club in Taiwan - Two Three Comedy Club 二三喜劇. Sam started by arranging road trips to cities and towns of all sizes on the East Asian island to target the scattered English-speaking expats. Gradually, along came the Taiwanese people.

As stand up comedy becomes more popular and the Mandarin scene outgrows the English scene, Sam becomes the instrumental figure in bringing international acts to the island and connecting the English performers with neighbouring Asian countries.

We hear from Sam how he manages a comedy club in a foreign land and Sam’s observations on the local Taiwanese v.s. expat audience

The Firelight Chat podcast episode with Sam quoted in this episode:

On Apple Podcast

On Spotify

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Two Three Comedy Club on Facebook

Two Three Comedy Club on Instagram

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00:44 Intro

02:51 Sam’s accent

05:03 How Sam started performing comedy in Southern Taiwan (a short Northern v.s. Southern Taiwan debate)

06:36 Comedy road trips in Taiwan

08:51 Audience make-ups in small Taiwanese towns and tailoring materials

10:57 A self-deprecating American comic in front of a Taiwanese audience

15:50 Expat v.s. Taiwanese audiences

19:56 Taiwanese approaching stand up comedy shows with curiosity

23:07 Taiwan - China relations as comedy material?

26:12 Expat audience in Taiwan v.s. US audience

26:57 Nationality comparison based comedy materials

28:34 Being a comedy promoter/producer in Asia

30:31 How the small town gigs are organised and promoted

31:31 Writing all funny ideas that come to mind and making selections later

35:03 Sam’s Social Media and 23 Comedy Club in Taipei

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

Polish stand up comedian Kat Nip is a Berlin-based but globe-trotting performer. She runs her own comedy show in Berlin but is also a regular at comedy clubs in London, including the popular Top Secret Comedy Club.

Winner of London Comedy Store gong show, Kat Nip has written for and acted in Comedy Central Poland’s “Mini-Mock” series in 2022 and 2023. She has also appeared on Arte and Buzzfeed UK.

Having lived half of her live outside her native Poland, Kat’s native slavic sound is quite hard to detect. Yet her accent morphs where she moves to, so she ends up with a funny scenario of a faint German accent even if she does not speak fluent German.

Kat also shares how changes in her health and lifestyle led her to reflect on her comedy materials and directions as well as her stage persona.

Kat's comedy special "Traitor" can be seen on OUTtv

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00:37 Intro

01:51 Guessing Kat’s nationality based on her accent

03:45 A Berlin-based polish comedian who lived in the UK and almost everywhere, hence the confusing accent

07:45 Ending the podcast policy

09:41 Unfiltered

10:34 Polish stereotypes

12:45 More of a Berlin girl than a Polish lady on stage?

15:25 Quit drinking but continuing to do a show about jokes on drinking

19:00 Moving on from the easy jokes

21:53 Traumatic experience of performing in Polish to the kind of Polish crowd that made her leave Poland

24:46 Specific type of fellow Polish netizens that are easily offended

28:13 Is the “Polish builder” stereotype still valid?

31:12 Kat’s journey and why she left her village

32:48 Difference being a Polish comedian between London and Berlin

35:03 Comedy reflecting life’s changes (moving on from typical Berlin expat lifestyle)

39:14 Just live your life the way you want

41:43 Why choosing “Kat Nip (presents)” as stage name?

43:49 Hastag gross food on Instagram

45:07 Kat’s social media

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

As one of the founding members of Becomedy - a comedy show production team in the English as well as Italian languages in both Italy and the UK - Tiziano La Bella is a stand up comedian performing professionaly in both languages. He has appeared on Comedy Central Italia and Amazon Prime and only just recently relocated from London back to his home town Rome. Tiziano came to the UK with a clear objective to hone his craft, at a time when there simply wasn’t much stage time for stand up comics - Italy was not yet familiar with the concept of modern stand up comedy and would confuse it with their traditional cabaret. (He definitely did not come for the British weather and sky!)

As a result of the migration of Italians in the UK, Becomedy has been able organise stand up comedy shows in Italian in London and Tiziano has performed more frequently in Italian in recent years, leading to more gigs booked in his native Italy. Tiziano has made use of what he learned from English stand up to shift more focus on performing in Italian and eventually decided to move back as the stand up comedy scene in Italy is now fast growing.

On the eve of his relocation, this podcast invited Tiziano to talk about his accent which carries a hint of Australian English, his creative process in both languages and how he dissect the audience into four different groups. We also talked about the Italian stereotypes and how the Italian accent is the endless bottom of the joke, even though Tiziano does not find doing accents particularly offensive.

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00:46 Intro

04:14 An evolving accent and now a hint of an Aussie accent

08:03 The W-word between British English and Australian English and how Americans and British audiences perceive the C-word differently

10:56 Foreign/minority comedians doing accents on stage?

12:35 Young Italians’ improved English fluency

15:13 Italian stereotypes mined by influencers on social media

16:43 Choosing the funny-sounding words and the formality level of words

20:06 Weird Duolingo scenarios

21:13 Italian immigrants not necessarily able to improve their English fluency

27:05 Forced to use English regularly during Erasmus and starting to perform stand up comedy

29:54 Start of stand up comedy journey and how Tiziano never intended to settle in the UK

32:06 Returning to Italy; shifting to content and performance in Italian

35:19 The reality of living in Roma (Garbage collection) v.s. garbage collection in Taiwan

36:07 “Is this joke about Chinese offensive?”

37:50 Italian accent being the only accent everyone is comfortable with doing

42:10 Not having a stereotypical Italian appearance (based South Italians)

44:23 Differences between performing in different languages to difference crowds

47:47 BeComedy with Italian/English shows in the UK and in Italy

49:17 Tiziano’s social media

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

Our first returning guest is Singaporean comedian Sam See, previously featured in Episode 25 of the first season.

Since the last recording in January 2023, Sam has uprooted himself and relocated from Singapore to the UK as - in his own words - he has reached the ceiling in Singapore. Sam shares his gentle criticism of the comedy audience in Singapore.

Sam also just finished supporting Ed Byrne on tour in 17 locations, including some well-off towns and some run down places. The bulk of this episode focuses on Sam’s approach to perform as a newly settled immigrant act in these small English towns in front of audience that are predominantly old and white.

Sam is at Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year (2024) with two shows:

The Asian Comedy Showcase

Sam See: And I Can't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

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00:44 Intro; why Sam is invited back

03:37 Sam moving from Singapore to the UK

05:04 The tour - opening for Ed Byrne

06:53 The reason Sam swapped Singapore for UK

08:54 Has Sam considered US or Australia instead?

09:40 First time Sam living on his own

13:17 How Sam was asked to be Ed Byrne’s tour support act

15:48 More on the actual tour

16:46 Winning over an older, predominantly white audience

19:32 Research fun facts before arriving in a new town for performance

28:16 Some British cities/towns with tricky pronunciations

29:35 Audience demographic

31:00 Singaporean audience trained Sam to always write generally

33:00 Example of Sam employing local references in his jokes

34:19 Sam’s own touring plan

37:45 Sam’s shows at 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and his social media

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

Marjolein Robertson is a Shetlandic comedian, actor and storyteller. She was Scots Speaker of the Year in 2022, ranked number three in The List’s Hot 100 as one of the top Scottish cultural contributors. Hey 2023 Edinburgh Fringe show “Marj” also received award nominations and was one of the best reviewed show at the Fringe. Technically, Marjolein is this podcast’s second guest from Scotland, but same with every other island, Shetlanders see themselves as Shetlanders first and Scottish second.

The interview largely revolves the concept of “knapping”. The verb “to knap” for Shetlanders means to change the way you speak to accommodate the listener, as you do not expect the listener would understand your original way of talking. It is an equivalent to code-switching, but the process is probably more automatic when a Shetlander meets a non-Shetlander. It explains Marjolein’s accent shift as she performs and gets interviewed down south.

We also talk about how Marjolein weaves Shetland folktales into her comedy and takes advantage of general audience’s ignorance when it comes to her native island.

This is probably the episode with the densest discussion on linguistics and cultural identity to date; it is therefore slightly longer.

Marjolein is performing at Edinburgh Fringe this year! Her new show “O” is at Monkey Barrel The Hive at 17:40 daily (except Aug 12th). Reserve your tickets here.

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00:48 Intro

03:10 On Shetland and islanders’ identities

06:34 How Shetland is indicated on a map

09:41 Marjolein’s comedy CV & her Wikipedia page

11:34 “Knapping” - a Shetlandic word meaning changing one’s way of speaking to make oneself better understand for the other person

15:51 Marjolein’s “American voice” v “Shetland voice”

18:48 How Marjolein’s accent shits on stage

21:40 New movement in Shetland - the “No Knapping” badge———

25:15 Shetland’s extinct old tongue “Norn”

26:53 “Scots” as a language tangled with Scottish independence

28:53 How A Faroese man - Jakob Jacobsen - helped preserve evidence of the old Norm language

30:37 Audience in England knows Shetland even less than Scottish audience

33:04 Marjolein plays with people’s ignorance when it comes to Shetland

38:50 On her Shetlandic not being “broad” enough for some fellow Shetland’s

46:29 A Storyteller

52:44 Marjolein’s 2024 Edinburgh Fringe show “O”

54:31 A poem in Shetlandic

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

This is a special episode recorded in Mandarin with our guest Blank Peng from last week

前一集的英文訪問 Blank 提及她在中國喜劇圈表演的一些經驗，第二段用中文訪談，主持人與來賓都能比較自然地暢所欲言（但也不能到太暢所欲言啦......這就點到為止就好）。Blank 解釋為何她的普通話在中國被視為不夠標準，甚至她的閩北口音會被其他省份的中國人嘲笑為『台灣口音』，主持人一同討論台灣與中國一些中文用語和發音的差別。

在表演部分，Blank 也剖析為何她會在台上稍微觸碰政治的議題，為何她現在在英國選擇先專心發展英文的單口喜劇演出，以及她對倫敦當地中文單口喜劇的觀察。

The next English bi-weekly episode will be available on Tuesday 30 July

Making headway to big comedy clubs’ paid spots within two years of arriving in the UK, Blank got into almost all the major Comedy New Act Competition finals and collected gong show wins like a dedicated Pokemon player collecting the Poke gym badges.

“Blank is an incognito bilingual stand-up comic,” so goes her comedy profile on some of London’s top comedy clubs’ websites. It is not by accident she’s named Blank; it’s a deliberate choice of a stage name to keep her quite literally incognito - for understandable reasons, given part of Blank’s stand up incudes commentary on her native China. Your host to this day does not know her full real name in Mandarin.

Blank shares a more nuanced picture of her home country’s censorship on the burgeoning stand up comedy scene, how comedians work with the script pre-approval compliance requirements and why places like her more obscure province’s scene allows more leeway.

Having started performing stand up comedy in Mandarin first (and already doing very well), Blank is one of the fewer guests of this podcast who did not start performing in English. Instead, she had to transition into an English stand up comedy performer. She talks about why her Mandarin and English jokes are separate and why she is happy to stick to just English stand up comedy in the UK, despite the growing number of Chinese students and immigrants.

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00:57 Bonus episode in Mandarin

01:25 Intro

02:24 A Chinese national considered having a Taiwanese accent?

04:00 More British than American influences

05:31 Unsolicited feedback on her accent from audience members

06:12 Mandarin stand up comedy performer before English stand up

08:34 Coming from a “third-rate” Chinese city

10:54 Comedy New Act Competitions and Gong Shows

13:40 Comedy censorship in China

22:12 Turning into a more unique performer in the UK

23:17 Separate comedy materials between Mandarin and English stand up

24:56 Blank’s stage persona in Mandarin stand up

26:29 Ethnic minority comedy performers and hack jakes

31:05 Blank’s racially self-deprecating jokes and the principle of fairness

32:20 No longer performing Mandarin stand up in the UK

35:51 Why “Blank”?

36:40 Why “Blank404” for Instagram>

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

Describing her accent as “a beautiful mess”, comedian Micky Overman’s show “The Recipe” was amongst the best reviewed shows at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023. The excellent show is now free for viewing on Micky’s Youtube channel and forms the basis of this interview.

Micky has one of those accents of a proficient non-native English speaker that not everyone can work out what her mother tongue is. Despite this, unsolicited advice still found its way to Micky, that she should play up her foreignness and even present herself as a Dutch cliché on stage.

Except it is clear to Micky she does comedy for herself and wants to be herself performing comedy rather than a caricature. Micky was fed up with notion that a person could be largely definite merely by their nationality, she even wrote a show to mock this idea in 2018.

But Micky’s latest critically acclaimed show does quite the opposite. “The Precipice” has little to do with her being Dutch. It has to do with her thinking about mental health, motherhood amongst other subjects that most other millennials would be wondering. The writing is sharp; the humour is universal.

Watch Micky’s show “The Precipice”

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Micky will perform at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024 with a new show “Hold On”. July 30th to Aug 25th (no Aug 13th) daily at Monkey Barrel The Tron at 5:50. For Tickets, click here.

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00:43 First Impression of Micky’s accent

02:19 Intro

05:35 Everyone interprets Micky’s accent differently

07:40 Micky’s accent shifts based on the people she talks to

08:35 Micky’s opting for British pronunciation in her comedy sets for jokes to land

10:38 Deliberately mispronouncing words to make them funnier

12:55 Why would someone pretend to be Dutch? On national stereotypes

15:55 Foreign comedians SHOULD use their “otherness”?

21:11 Practicing not to over-introduce herself in the 2023 show

25:07 Micky in English not having the same perceptions by others when speaking Dutch

26:38 Micky’s critically acclaimed 2023 show “Precipice”: her worldview through how the jokes were structured

28:22 Micky’d turns of phrase

30:48 Show not tell; trust your audience and do not talk them down

33:23 Comedy writing as music

34:02 Enjoying being dumb, not taking herself too seriously

35:36 Micky performed in a deadpan style at the very beginning

37:14 Micky’s 2023 show Precipice on Youtube

37:25 Micky at Edinburgh Fringe in 2024

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe

Guido Garcia Lueches is a theatre maker, actor from Uruguay. His one man show “Playing Latinx” - though categorised as Theatre rather than Comedy in last year’s Edinburgh Fringe - packed in so many jokes that it was probably funnier than many shows under “Comedy” had to offer.

To be fair, the show was also marketed as “Half stand up”, but to its creator, genre is not something he’d bother. It’s whether the audience gets his intent that counts.

The show weaves in multiple Latino stereotypes and is first and foremast silly. But beneath the silliness and stupidity lies a message that is mostly definitely political in nature. The show was based on all the audition experiences Guido had to endure over the years. All the exaggerated characters were roles Guido were asked to perform as and if he is lucky, typecast in.

When Guido speaks in English without too heavy a Spanish influence, he was instructed to “just do your accent” even though he was speaking with his accent. Then he realised what the casting directors were after, dialled up his Spanish tongue, got one Mexican drug lord role after another one of a sexy pool cleaner.

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00:41 Intro

02:26 Kuan-wen’s poor knowledge about Uruguay

05:04 Guido’s accent in English that he is not sure how to describe

07:13 Wrong prepositions gives Guido away

08:40 The standout characteristic of Guido’s accent

10:50 Facing questions about his accents from British people

13:06 Singer, Actor, Comedian and Dramaturg

14:51 Guido’s show “Playing LatinX”

16:30 Idea of the show coming from bad audition experiences

19:36 Different accents featured and changed in the show

22:40 “Could you just do your accent?”

24:09 The industry’s attitude towards a needed foreign accent

27:30 In a perfect world, how would people know a small country without stereotypes?

30:16 Why humour is crucial to Guido’s show design

34:15 What if the audience doesn’t get the irony? What if the jokes reinforce the stereotypes instead?

37:41 Silliness and drama; theatre in the UK as observed by Guido

43:36 Why Latin”X” ?

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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe