Interview by Dominic Cavendish | Telegraph.co.uk | 9:25AM BST 09 Aug 2011
“Yusuf is one of the best things to have happened to British comedy in ages.” Telegraph
Spending an hour in the company of Imran Yusuf – whether on stage or in person – can achieve the near-impossible in these dark days of riots, double-dip recessions, terrorism and global unrest: it can make you feel happy, positive, and ready to face the future.
Yusuf is one of the best things to have happened to British comedy in ages. Fast-talking and funny, this skinny London geezer bathes whoever he’s addressing in a feelgood aura without any recourse to simple-minded escapism. He may leaven his stand-up with cheesy chat-up lines, confessions about his disastrous love-life and the odd dinosaur impression, but he doesn’t stray far from the main topic at hand – being Muslim in Britain today, and why, for all the pessimism, he thinks we’re going to be OK.
Born in Kenya to parents of Asian descent but raised in Hackney Downs after the family fled Uganda, Yusuf, 31, was such a breath of fresh air at the white-dominated Fringe last year that he went from being an unknown, performing for free in a tiny venue, to one of the hottest tickets in town – with queues round the block and even extra volunteers drafted in to cope with demand.
In swift succession, he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, stormed an appearance on Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow and bagged a BBC3 sketch-show pilot, so all eyes will be on his follow-up show this year, Bring the Thunder. It promises to develop the themes of last year’s set – and in particular tackle David Cameron’s contentious and dispiriting line that multiculturalism in the UK has failed.
“It does feel like I’ve been tarred with this brush,” he says. “My perceived value is that I come from a group of people who aren’t very nice, that’s the way it can feel sometimes. But at the end of the day, pointing fingers and trying to blame people is never going to be the best thing. For me, growing up as a Muslim in Britain has been a positive experience. Most of my friends aren’t Muslims, they have all kinds of faiths and backgrounds.”
hat diversity is reflected in the make-up of his audiences: he attracts, he says, “the lightest of the light to the darkest of the dark, the youngest of the young to the oldest of the old – I get girls in hijabs and guys with tattoos all over them.”
Has he encountered hostility on the circuit? For sure, he answers: “Once in a blue moon, by the time I’ve got on-stage someone has shouted ’suicide bomber’ or ‘check what’s in his shoes’, so you have to address that perception. But I’ve also had people come up and tell me how they love what I’m doing and that I’m helping to defuse some of the tension that exists. There’s a lot of hate out there and a feeling that ‘only what looks and sounds like me is for me’. That’s why I want my comedy to have a broad appeal.”
Having come adrift in a career in the video games industry during his twenties, Yusuf’s dedication to his newly discovered vocation is inspiring. He wasn’t even aware of stand-up in his teens and only made a serious attempt to be a comic in 2007.
“I’ve turned my life around,” he says, radiating can-do energy. “A few years ago, I was broke and things were hopeless. When I first came to Edinburgh in 2008, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t belong here – I’m never going to be one of these big festival comedians.’ I quite can’t believe where I am now.
“And I want to tell people that that kind of change is possible for them, too. You shouldn’t be defeatist. I know it sounds schmaltzy and American, but life is an amazing opportunity. It’s how you choose to look at things that counts.”
‘Bring the Thunder’ is at Pleasance Courtyard (0131 556 6550), until Aug 29
TAKE ME TO COMEDIAN IMRAN YUSUF’S PAGE ON COMICVOICE.COM
