Daliso Talks About Comedy

BBC Interview

2011-06-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

I like being interviewed. I do. Lots of entertainers find it irritating but given the opportunity to give pretentious answers to simple questions, I am in hog heaven. This interview was on BBC Africa two weeks ago.

Network Africa Interview by Daliso Chaponda

Daliso 'The Franchise'

2011-03-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

Today Daliso Chaponda had to say 'no' to two gigs because he was already booked. Yesterday, three. Enough is enough, drastic action is called for. It's time to franchise. That's right, he is launching the 'Daliso Chaponda' franchise! Yes sir! No longer will people in London needing uncontrollable laughter find themselves lamenting 'If only Daliso was here' while Daliso is, alas, performing in Glasgow. They will be able to pop into a local comedy club and find, to their delight, another Daliso. In fact, once the franchise is well underway there will be no need to look at listings to see in which comedy club a Daliso is performing, as there will be a Daliso in every comedy club. The Daliso franchise has a seven point plan to push out small independent comedians by offering to perform for less, providing more easily understood takes on subjects addressed by overly intellectual comedians and, of course, a catchy theme tune for TV and radio ads.

This is not only a godsend to audience members, but to comedians everywhere. Having trouble getting that thunderous round of applause you crave recently? Then stop being yourself; for a modest monthly fee you can become Daliso. The franchise pack will not only teach you a Daliso Chaponda comedy set, but it will also teach how to screech your words with the patented Daliso Chaponda cadence. "But wait," you say. "I am a 6 foot 2 white man, how can I be a Daliso?" Worry not, there a number of options open to you including a 3 hour tan bed session, two tins of shoe polish, or a Daliso Chaponda mask (mask provided free in the franchise pack if you apply by the end of March).

"But wait, I am a woman!" As a large percentage of Daliso Chaponda's routine concerns clumsy attempts to woo women it will be easier for lesbians to become successful Dalisos, but straight women who want to be Dalisos may be interested in the 'Almost Daliso Chaponda' package.

"Almost?" you wonder. "Why be part Daliso Chaponda when you can be 100% Daliso?". Because quite frankly, not everyone can be a Daliso. Included in the franchise pack will be a three page questionnaire. Your answers will determine whether you have what it takes to become a full blown Daliso Chaponda. If you can't you will be able to become an 'Almost Daliso'. You can be the 'Daliso in a wheelchair', the 'Transvestite Daliso' or the 'Cannibal Daliso'.

"but what about ad libbing on stage?". Worry not, the Daliso Chaponda franchise pack will teach you to think like Daliso. A rigorous 8 day meditation retreat will teach you how to channel Daliso. After the retreat, If someone heckles you, you will be able to channel Daliso and a fully formed insult to the heckler's parentage, sexual preferences or facial features will leap into your mind unbidden.

For further details e-mail your name and bank details to daliso@gmail.com. You may leave any questions as a comment below.

Topic Suggestions

2011-02-24T16:37:00.000-08:00

I recently decided to start a new feature called 'Jokes by Request' on my Twitter and Facebook pages. Any of my Facebook friends/Twitter followers can now suggest a subject and each week I'll pick one and turn it into comedic gold. Ok, let me be more realistic. I'll turn it into comedic silver, maybe comedic zinc. Whatever formula Rumplestiltskin used, he's not shared it with me.

This week the first suggestion I decided was worth attention was 'Welfare Reform'. I say 'worth attention' because the majority of suggestions I got tweeted were in the vein of 'rape', 'nigger','shit', 'vomit' and 'paedophiles'.

Possibly, the people who suggested I do jokes about these subjects thought they were challenging me. Actually, the opposite is true. Writing jokes about offensive subjects is easy. Just look at school playgrounds; as soon as a taboo comes up, everybody giggles. A lot of amateur nights are glutted with jokes about offensive subjects because numerous beginners think they are being 'edgy' and 'daring'. I'd instead say they are being lazy.

It is far easier to get a laugh when you talk about fisting or abortion than when you mention cherry tomatoes.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not one of these comedians who believes all jokes should be G-rated and offensive jokes are terrible. I'm not saying that there aren't many brilliant jokes on offensive subjects. I'm just saying the majority of them are rubbish. 80% of the so called jokes on Sickepedia are the equivalent of a fat kid on a school playground saying 'penis' and everyone giggling. In the other 20% there are some brilliant jokes (most of the brilliant ones were shamelessly stolen from Gary Delaney but that's another matter)

In my own comedy I never write jokes about an offensive subject but I often will use offensiveness as a tool. What's the difference? I wouldn't do a joke about 'rape' itself but I would mention rape while doing a joke about oppressed women to make a point. Still unclear? Let me use an example from today.

In one of my Welfare Reform jokes I talked about how the Tories have changed the name of the Disability Benefit to Personal Independence Payment. I said that "I find it absurd that the Tories seem to think making the name more PC will be a comfort to disabled people who have to survive on far less money in a climate where things are more expensive. At the end of the joke I say that I'm sure most disabled people would prefer a benefit increase to help them cope with the financial crisis titled the 'Cripple Mong Retard Benefit' to the 'Personal Independence Payment'". What I aimed for is to get the audience to react negatively to the words 'cripple' 'mong' and 'retard' and question why they weren't reacting as physically to the revelation that disability benefits were being cut. I hope I succeeded and the laugh I got was not that playground giggle.

The other two Welfare jokes I did crashed and burned. I'll have to try another angle tomorrow night. The final version of the welfare jokes will be posted on my Joke of the Week blog on Sunday night or Monday morning. Following this, I'll open the floodgates for suggestions for next week's Joke of the Week. I hope to get something other than 'rape', 'nigger','shit', 'vomit' and 'paedophiles'.

Being funny when you're not in the mood

2011-02-14T16:56:00.001-08:00

I have to be funny all the time.

I'm writing a sitcom which has to be funny. I am writing the last few chapters of a funny novel - has to be funny. Five nights a week in comedy clubs, I have to be funny. Funny, funny, funny.

Sometimes I want to dabble in other emotional responses. Maybe I should punch someone in the face; or go to a restaurant and eat with my mouth open.

The thing is, sometimes I'm not in the mood to be funny. I have a dark side. All right, everyone who knows me probably laughed right now. I'm serious. I have a dark side. Maybe it's not a pitch black. It's not stab prostitutes dark, but it's at least stab pieces of meat before I eat them dark. All right, I concede. It's not that dark. But it's murky, give me that.

So, some days I'm wallowing in my murky side and I don't feel like being funny. Take tonight. I headlined a valentine's show in Nottingham while I was, as one often does on this annual overload of memory triggers, missing someone. Collapsing in tears while wailing a woman's name is not really funny. Actually, wait a second, I take it back. With the right timing, it could be hilarious, especially if the girl had a name with four or more syllables. "Persephone! Persephone! Why oh why!"

Unfortunately the lady I was missing tonight was two syllables short of comedic potential so I had to just plaster a grin on my face and do romantic jokes. Now, I'm at home typing this blog and as most of the people who read this blog are my comedy fans I feel obliged to throw some funny moments.

Trying to be funny when you're not in a good mood isn't always successful. I'll be the first to admit that that stab pieces of meat nonsense was not amusing at all. The Persephone crap was also underwhelming. All right. I give up. I can't be funny right now. I'll have to go with some other emotions.

A cute cat just got run over by a car. There you go. Ha ha. See. I can depress you if I want to. The cat was very very cute too. And the car was big with big wheels. It made a crunch sound.

So there.

Is Nicole Real?

2011-01-24T08:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a lady approached me at a party and asked 'Is Nicole real'? This is not the first time a woman has asked me this question. I get asked it all the time. The ladies all seem to want to know, 'Is Nicole real?'

First, let me explain who 'Nicole' is? On reading the question 'Is Nicole real' you may have thought the question refered to Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger. One might understandably wonder if Nicole Scherzinger is actually an AI sex-robot created in a factory to sell bouncy music and tight fitting jeans by the same mad scientists who created Pamela Anderson. 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was a bot like me?' She admits it for crying out loud! Have some shame cyborg!

But no, the Nicole these inquisitive lasses refer to when they ask me 'Is Nicole Real' is not the Pussycat Doll. It is the 'Nicole' who I bring up frequently in my comedy sets. On stage I tell numerous stories of my ex-girlfriend Nicole, who was was once a slut but had found jesus and reformed, who was studying psychology, who made more money than me, who married someone else and broke my heart, who was very insecure about her body despite the fact she was stunning, who had parents who were not happy about her bringing a black boyfriend home, who... and it goes on and on.

If my comedy sets were a novel, I guess she would be the other main character (on some occasions love interest, on more occasions the villain of the piece).

Is Nicole real? Why do I get asked whether she is real after almost every gig I do? And why is it always women asking?

Well members of the female tribe relax, the time has come for me to pull the curtain back, Nicole is real and she isn't real.

What?! What kind of non-commital, trying to be mysterious, answer is that?

Let me explain. Early in my comedy carreer I was dating a lovely young lady who often said things that inspired me to write jokes. She was very unhappy with my standing in front of a bunch of strangers and exposing her insecurities and contradictions. She demanded I stop telling the jokes. I refused. The jokes got laughs and as I am rabidly attention seeking, it is difficult for anyone, no matter what outfits they are wearing, to persuade me to stop doing a joke that works. The eventual compromise was that I would change her name in the joke. So instead of ^%_!£$& she became 'Julie' and no, her name wasn't a swear word.

After we broke up and I started dating another woman, inevitably I was inspired to write jokes about her. (Indeed ladies, date a singer and you can expect beautiful odes to your perfection, me, all I've got is jokes). Having learnt from the 'Julie' debacle, I gave my new girlfriend a nickname 'Patricia' and now told some jokes about my ex Julie, and others about my current girlfriend Patricia.

Alas, I clearly lack the traits to keep a woman happy. After 4 years, I broke up with Patricia. Now, my comedy sets became madness. I now had an ex Julie, another ex Patricia, and a Lana who I had started seeing but couldn't call my girlfriend because she 'didn't like definitions'.

One day in 2005, I just said all the things that happened with Patricia happened with Julie. An unexpected thing happened. The jokes early in the set worked as always, but the jokes in the second half of my set started getting bigger responses. The audience laughed more at the idea of one crazy woman constantly destroying my life, than the reality of two women.

When I was leaving Canada and my undefined whatever with Lana ended, I decided, what the hell, why don't I throw the Lana stories into the Julie pool. Lo and behold it got funnier. When I did my 'Don't Let them Deport Me' One Man Show by the time I was forty minutes in, I would often get a laugh just by saying 'and then Julie...' Her name was a punchline!

In the UK, where Ali G was very popular, an audience member assumed I had decided to use Julie as my comedy girlfriend because of Ali G's 'Me Julie' and I immediately switched names. Thus, Nicole was born.

5 years later, and numerous relationships/flings/mistakes later, Nicole has become a sort of Frankenstein's monster of a woman with bits of every woman I've ever had feelings for stitched to her. No story I tell about her is truly fictional, but she also is not exactly like any one person I have dated. Nicole is real and she isn't real.

I am currently single, so perhaps my new pick up line should be, 'Would you like to become part of Nicole?'

Anatomy of a News Joke

2011-01-19T13:44:00.000-08:00

Every week in the UK, I scour through the papers looking for things to write jokes about. Often have a hard time finding stories absurd enough to merit inclusion in my comedy sets. In Malawi I have no such problems. Within 2 days of my arriving in Malawi I had already read about how a woman gave birth to a plastic bag and the president of Malawi mentioned in a speech that he was the 'most insulted' president. I researched the past year and found a plethora of zany news stories. Witchcraft allegations, barges that never arrive, people claiming to be the sons of ex-presidents, cross-dressing revolutionaries... Why is there no Malawian soap opera?

After the show I did at Harry's Bar tonight I was asked by a woman with a fabulous chest how I turn news stories into jokes. I always take the questions of women with fabulous chests very seriously and this blog entry is an expansion of my inadequate answer to her. "Er... I think about it a lot..." was my eloquent response, but in my defense, it was a particularly fabulous chest.

Now, back at home, undistracted by a jiggling bosom, I return to the question, how do I turn strange news stories into jokes? My process begins with my joke notebook. Into this leather bound tome I write down each subject I want to make a joke about. I then ask myself questions that may lead to a humorous end point.

So from 'woman gives birth to a plastic bag' I got- 'Who impregnated her? What was the labour like? What is the plastic bag to be named? Twin brother = paper bag? What do other women think? Imagine you had plastic bag as sibling? Was it a PTC bag? What lullaby would be best to sing to a plastic bag? Umbilical cord? What is the....

And so on.

Next I attempt to answer each of these questions and consider if there are further questions the answers lead me to ask. Somewhere in all this question asking and answering, a joke emerges. Sometimes it takes an hour of going off on tangents and asking question after question to get a decent workable joke, sometimes it takes 30 seconds.

And that's how I do it.

I think that's a much better explanation than 'Er... I think about it a lot.'

Artistic Feuds

2011-01-11T02:17:00.000-08:00

Rappers are always insulting each other; it is part of hip-hop culture. It ranges from formalized rap battles in which two MCs go toe-to-toe like lyrical deulists at dawn, to snide rejoinders concealed on track 5 of their latest mix tape. Usual insults involve implying their fellow rappers penis is tiny, that aforementioned rapper is a sexual deviant, and also that they are talentless. This is usually accompanied by an array of promises to either punch, shoot or hack off their target's head with a machete. It's pretty much 'schoolboys in the playground' stuff except that the abuse is delivered with inventive word play.

Comedians have never been combative. Chris Rock has never stood on stage and vowed to pop a cap up Jerry Seinfeld's ass. Peter Kay's posse aren't at war with Jimmy Carr's. And I think comedy is poorer for it. Oh, there are Comedy Roasts in which comedians insult each other, but that is all consentual, playful abuse. The only time I hear one comedian truly debase another is back stage in a green room. Plain old gossiping, no frills.

So, you can imagine my delight when I learnt that two prominent UK comedians, Frankie Boyle and Mark Watson, were slinging insults at each other. The furore erupted after Mark Watson wrote a blog about tasteless, offensive jokes and used a certain Frankie Boyle joke about people with Downs syndrome as the definitive example. Frankie then posted on twitter that Mark Watson was a 'notorious sell out'. Game on.

Like a starving carrion eater I went to the websites, blogposts and twitter accounts of Mark and Frankie, ready to giggle like a hyena at a vicious back and forth. Alas, I was disappointed. It was just one or two comments and the insults were banal. Mark Watson and Frankie Boyle are both brilliant comedians. Surely they could have taken the time to insult each other with a little more panache. Rappers at least have the decency to insult each other with style.

iron solomon vs. shirt n Tie:

In the Bronx nobody wants you,
they want me to stomp you and spit shit you can't respond to
I'm several steps beyond you,
you should quit hip-hop and get a job at the bronx zoo
You're coming weak as fuck on this rap shit,
so maybe you'd be better off sweeping up some giraffe shit

locksmith vs. dizaster

I will stone this fucker, this clone's a buster
Looking like Gadaffi fucked his own homeless mother minus the trojan rubber
And gave birth to a Lebanese version of a turban toting coked up trucker

Now those are insults. Come on my fellow comedians, if you're going to squabble put some effort into it. Frankie Boyle called Mark Watson a sellout because he did an ad for Magners Pear Cider. Why not some Cider House rules reference? Also 'Cider' rhymes with 'inside her', imagine the cuckolding potential of an insult rhyme.

Mark Watson gave it a go. On his blog he said

My HMV tweet upset three people. I apologise to them. This is how it must feel to be Frankie Boyle. Except he wouldn't apologise.

Bam! Well, not really. He's 'unapologetic'??? Is that the best we can do? We're comedians. We're meant to be funny. So I'm putting it out there; any comedian who wants to insult my heritage, my face, or simply imply I had sexual relations with a four legged mammal, consider this a call to arms. Game on.

The Noise Next Door

2011-01-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Last night I did a New Year's Eve show with the very hilarious Mandy Knight and the Improv Troupe The Noise Next Door. The Noise Next Door make me want to punch something rapidly in jealousy. They are the funniest Improv Troupe I've seen, and I've seen a lot. I implore you if they are performing near you, check them out. I was blown away.

This morning we all had breakfast and at one point I was talking about how the chief attraction of Improv is that every night is different; every joke is new material. You can see your favorite Improv Troupe two weeks in a row. Unless you have Alzheimer's, I would suggest that you only come see my stand up comedy routines six months apart unless you want some serious dejavu. Even six months apart, I could only guarantee fifteen minutes of the jokes would be brand new.

At the same time, I'll admit I've never been a huge fan of Improv. I've always thought of it as one of stand up comedy's younger, less gifted siblings? I love to stick on Eddie Murphy's 'Raw' or listen to a Woody Allen recording. I laugh every time I hear Woody Allen talk about the bullet that saved his life or Eddie Murphy talk about Umfufu. I'd never rewatch Improv. How many people rewatch old 'Who's line is it anyway' DVD.

The Improvisation of a stand up comedian is an interesting phenomenon. When someone in the audience says something and you answer something on the spur of the moment, and it gets a huge response. I was the host of a show in Preston a few months ago and a man and his wife came in very late disrupting the show. It turned out they were just coming from an engagement party. "Oh you're getting married," I asked. "Why? Was she late too?" It got a huge response. To be honest it got a larger response than most of my carefully crafted and edited and re-edited jokes. Then why not simply improvise all the time?

Part of the problem is that a lot of the attraction of being a comedian to me, is the fact that I get to make a statement. I can tell a crowd of strangers my views on politics, love and life and they'll listen to me and consider my views simply because they are funny. It's possible to spontaneously create a funny joke, but can you spontaneously create a joke that comments on a specific injustice in society which is bothering you? An improvised song is a wonder to behold, but could you spontaneously generate a song that people would want to hear over and over like Phil Nichol's 'Gay Eskimo'. No. Of course you couldn't.

Or so I thought. The last two paragraphs recounted my biases before watching 'The Noise Next Door' yesterday. They stunned me. Not only did I laugh more than I have laughed in months, I also wished I could get a recording of the song they performed about Darth Vader's brothel so that I could play it over and over again. Making a point be damned; it was the funniest thing of the night.

So to end this blog I'll just reiterate that you should watch The Noise Next Door, they are so good they have made me question some of my inherent biases about Improv.