Enjoy Imran Yusuf performing at Edinburgh Festival Hall for Edinburgh Comedy Fest Live 2011.
Posts Tagged ‘yusuf’
Imram Yusuf – Edinburgh Comedy Festival Live Performance
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 by andyImran Yusuf Edinburgh Comedy Gala
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 by andyEdinburgh Comedy Gala 2011 in aid of Waverley Care
The Comedy Gala is always a comedy highlight of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and with the
Festival Hall selling out again this year, the atmosphere was electric as the festival’s top acts took to the stage. You can catch Imran’s performance THIS WEDNESDAY 31st August on BBC3 @ 9pm.
Imran Yusuf to Host Chortle Student Awards Final
Thursday, August 25th, 2011 by andyChortle Student Awards Imran Yusuf to Host Finals
Imran Yusuf is to host the final of the Chortle Student Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe on Sunday. The final has a reputation for finding new talent: Previous acts to have taken part include The Inbetweeners’ Simon Bird, his Friday Night Dinner co-star Tom Rosenthal and Radio 1’s Tom Deacon.
Imran Yusuf – The Independant Reviews
Friday, August 19th, 2011 by andyThe buzz surrounding Imran Yusuf as he Brings the Thunder continues and here’s a view from The Independent’s festival critc.
Imran Yusuf – Bring the Thunder
“Bursting with confidence and smooth patter” Independent
Elsewhere, Imran Yusuf, who was nominated for the Best Newcomer Award for his debut last year, cuts a slimline dash in white linen suit and patent black shoes. Born in Mombasa, he grew up in Hackney Downs, or, as he puts it, he was “born in the third world and upgraded to the ghetto”.
Bursting with confidence and smooth patter, “the spirit of Malcolm X in the body of Mahatma Gandhi” has strong words for those who believe that multiculturalism has failed. He points out the advantages of his diverse upbringing (you can swap the teams you support, depending on the sport) while poking fun at the stereotypes. Why do people always insist on asking him what his parents think of his chosen career, he asks. “My Mum doesn’t know I’m a stand-up, because my Dad doesn’t let her out of the house.”
Friday, 19 August 2011. Independent.
BRING THE THUNDER – EXTRA DATE ADDED
Friday, August 12th, 2011 by andyDue to popular demand, an extra date for Bring The Thunder has been added at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011 on Saturday 27th August @ 11pm at The Pleasance Dome, Ace Dome.
BOOK TICKETS FOR THE EXTRA SHOW HERE!
http://www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh/events/imran-yusuf—bring-the-thunder-extra-show
Edinburgh 2011: Imran Yusuf on hummus related jokes
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 by andyImran Yusuf explains his show and tells us an old joke at the Edinburgh Festival.
Video and description courtesy of The Telegraph
Click the picture to watch the video
Imran Yusuf – Telegraph Interview
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 by andyInterview 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
Imran Yusuf – Bring the Thunder **** FEST Review
Monday, August 8th, 2011 by andy2011 Show Review
“strong, clever material which builds to a thoroughly uplifting finale…fascinating” **** FEST
Date of live review: Sunday 7th Aug, ‘11
Imran Yusuf is by no means short of confidence. It’s perhaps not surprising: the Kenyan-born, Hackney-raised ex-computer games tester played 101 shows in 25 days at the 2010 Fringe. It’s an experience which, clearly, has left its mark. Here Yusuf breezes through a set of strong, clever material which builds to a thoroughly uplifting finale.
It is identity—specifically it’s malleability and ambiguity—which provides Yusuf with his comedic fodder. Undoubtedly, he speaks from a fascinating place on the topic, his mixed heritage providing him with a unique angle on national identity. This is a cultural no man’s land he works to his advantage, allowing him to exercise his knack for taking topics to the bounds of acceptability, digging deeper into uncomfortable territory on race and religion before dropping, erm, the comedic bomb.
This ebb and flow also allows him room to be, for want of a better word, preachy. But Yusuf steers well clear of boorishness, instead crafting a well rounded show whose central message—that it’s totally right-on to be yourself and to let others do the same—comes through gleefully, stripping away our various affiliations rather than asserting a political one of his own.
There’s the odd weak point – Yusuf can do much better than jokes about boobs and Back to the Future, and a recurring theme of him being “gangster” never looks close to sprouting wings. But these are moments of timidity among otherwise braver material. There are few comedians willing to recite the Qur’an as part of their finale – and still fewer who could make it work.
Review by Evan Beswick, FEST Mag
TAKE ME TO IMRAN YUSUF’S OFFICIAL COMIC VOICE MANAGEMENT PAGE
Imran Yusuf ‘Funny As Hell’ for BBC America
Monday, July 25th, 2011 by andy‘Funny As Hell’ – BBC America
Imran’s dream to unite cultures took another step closer last weekend as Imran jetted off to Montreal for filming of ‘Funny As Hell’ for BBC America. The US only stand-up comedy programme showcases the best of UK stand-up with just a handful of British comics being selected for filming. Appearing alongside Greg Davies, Russell Howard, Russell Kane and Terry Alderton, Imran’s reputation as one of the fastest rising stars on the UK comedy circuit caps off an amazing year before he embarks on the Edinburgh Fringe in just a fortnight’s time.
Imran Yusuf – Bring The Thunder – Edinburgh 2011
Thursday, June 16th, 2011 by andy
EDINBURGH COMEDY AWARD 2010 – BEST NEWCOMER nominee
IMRAN YUSUF
BRING THE THUNDER!!
AS PART OF THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE 2011
Venue: Pleasance – Beneath (Venue 33)
Dates: 3rd to 29th August 2011
Time: 7.00pm (8.00pm)
Box office: 0131 556 6550
Internet: www.pleasance.co.uk
www.edfringe.co.uk
“BY NOT FOCUSING ON THE OBVIOUS RACIAL STEREOTYPES, HE WINS OVER THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE. HIS HAPPY, POSITIVE PERSONALITY LEAVES THEM FEELING UPLIFTED, ENERGISED AND PRIVILEGED TO HAVE HAD AN AUDIENCE WITH IMRAN YUSUF” ***** Chortle
Join Imran Yusuf for his brand new show Bring The Thunder!! – the sequel to his 2010 Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer nominated show, An Audience With Imran Yusuf. This is a show about pursuing your dreams with unrelenting enthusiasm and perseverance from the star of Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow.
Motivating, inspiring and 100% comedy!
‘a fresh new comic voice…sharp, passionate and uplifting’ **** The Telegraph
Date of live review: Monday 8th Aug, ‘11
Imran Yusuf’s birthplace was Mombasa, his parents Muslims of Indian descent, but he was raised in Hackney, East London. (“I was born in the Third World, and upgraded to the ghetto.”) He insist that he never fitted in anywhere, yet appears far from bitter. Rather, his complex background here fuels a set that is, above all, an unflinchingly optimistic challenge to David Cameron’s famous assertion earlier this year that “[state] multi-culturalism has failed” – tragically incongruous in this dark week, but arguably all the more necessary too.
A garlanded Fringe newcomer last year, Yusuf is, then, a fellow with serious points to make. But this proud Briton always puts his case playfully, mocking both sides of the religious divide and even drolly fusing the two. His Islamic My Old Man’s a Dustman, for example, is very nicely done.
He wittily riffs on people’s vain attempts to pigeonhole him ethnically, on the lessons we can learn from the Arab spring, on growing up a Muslim in a predominantly white city. He also enjoys upbraiding us for our reactions to his material, twice twinklingly accusing us of racism for laughing at it.
Girls, too, have clearly been a source of angst for Yusuf in the past (join the queue, matey), and Bring the Thunder is also, in part, this nattily dressed but rail-thin fellow’s personally cathartic plee for women to use their “great power” over men with “great responsibility”. If Spider-Man can do it, he suggests, surely they can too – and, if this bid for romantic clemency is a little one-way, his stance is nothing if not humble.
So, a fresh new comic voice in a show that’s essentially a sharp, passionate and uplifting bid for people to follow their professional dreams (as he has) and be nicer to each other across all divides. Anything is possible, Yusuf insists. World peace. Even a white guy winning the 100m sprint. Just don’t let him hear you chuckling at such racially unsound material…
Review by Mark Monahan. The Telegraph
“strong, clever material which builds to a thoroughly uplifting finale…fascinating” **** FEST
Date of live review: Sunday 7th Aug, ‘11
Imran Yusuf is by no means short of confidence. It’s perhaps not surprising: the Kenyan-born, Hackney-raised ex-computer games tester played 101 shows in 25 days at the 2010 Fringe. It’s an experience which, clearly, has left its mark. Here Yusuf breezes through a set of strong, clever material which builds to a thoroughly uplifting finale.
It is identity—specifically it’s malleability and ambiguity—which provides Yusuf with his comedic fodder. Undoubtedly, he speaks from a fascinating place on the topic, his mixed heritage providing him with a unique angle on national identity. This is a cultural no man’s land he works to his advantage, allowing him to exercise his knack for taking topics to the bounds of acceptability, digging deeper into uncomfortable territory on race and religion before dropping, erm, the comedic bomb.
This ebb and flow also allows him room to be, for want of a better word, preachy. But Yusuf steers well clear of boorishness, instead crafting a well rounded show whose central message—that it’s totally right-on to be yourself and to let others do the same—comes through gleefully, stripping away our various affiliations rather than asserting a political one of his own.
There’s the odd weak point – Yusuf can do much better than jokes about boobs and Back to the Future, and a recurring theme of him being “gangster” never looks close to sprouting wings. But these are moments of timidity among otherwise braver material. There are few comedians willing to recite the Qur’an as part of their finale – and still fewer who could make it work.
Review by Evan Beswick, FEST Mag
———————————————————————————
2011 Show Promo Continued
“IMRAN YUSUF’S SHOW HERALDS THE BIRTH OF A NEW COMEDY STAR. INTELLIGENT, THOUGHT–PROVOKING AND LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY” **** Time Out
An Audience With Imran Yusuf catapulted Imran from a relatively unknown performer to one of the most talked about comedians of The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010.
Fast and furious yet charmingly endearing, his is a unique voice with his seemingly light-hearted satire frequently masking hard-hitting topical commentary on contemporary issues such as racism, sexism and religion.
“AN HOUR OF CHEEK AND CHARM” **** Independent
Born in Mombasa, Kenya and raised in the UK with a brief stint at school in the USA, Imran travelled much of the world including Israel/Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia during the Lebanon Crisis in 2006. His work has been inspired by this rich multicultural background, giving him a youthful, energetic and highly original voice that embodies the multi-cultural wealth that exists in modern Britain.
In 2010, Imran presented his debut solo show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The show was part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival and it was Imran’s intention to develop his craft and material at the Fringe whilst at the same time keeping under the radar of the UK Comedy Industry and Press. However, word about the show got out and within a week Imran had gained the first of a collection of 5 star reviews, which led to him being nominated for Best Newcomer in the Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Award 2010 (He was the first performer from The Free Festival to be nominated in the history of the Awards).
Imran has also appeared on the Edinburgh Comedy Gala (BBC3) and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Road Show (BBC1).
www.imranyusuf.com
For further information and images please contact:
Andrew Dingley on 0845 459 56 56 ext.227 or by email at andrew@hahaheehee.com
Comic Voice Management is part of The Comedy Club Ltd Group of Companies.
TAKE ME BACK TO IMRAN YUSUF’S OFFICIAL MANAGEMENT PAGE
Comic Voice Management is the exclusive artist management division of The Comedy Club Ltd, the UK's market leading comedy provider. Visit The Comedy Club.
