Rib-tickling humour: Audience get up to jokes of stand-up comedian

Saad Haroon warms up nippy winter evening with his trademark tongue-in-cheek antics.

ISLAMABAD:

He will pigeonhole you randomly from an audience, make you feel put on the spot and have others laugh uncontrollably at your expense. And to your own surprise, you will find yourself snickering sheepishly instead of taking offence or being embarrassed. Or you might be too intimidated to admit it. Either way, you are in for some no-holds-barred humour, more than you bargained for. 

That is the charisma of the stand-up comedian Saad Haroon who warmed up the nippy winter evening with his trademark tongue-in-cheek antics at Kuch Khaas on Tuesday. Haroon, who has completed a decade of performing improvisational comedy in the country and abroad this year, whipped up a cocktail of rib-tickling humour garnished with a blend of old and new comedy as part of the “Kata-Kat Comedy Tour” in which involves similar performances by the comedian at Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad.

“Ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, this is the 10th anniversary of my comedy career. And it’s also the 10th anniversary of my father asking me not to do comedy. So a round of applause for both of us,” quipped Haroon, who believes he was never meant to be a comedian after being born in a very strict, conservative business community, where “MBA is in your DNA”.

He has a knack for getting personal and inquisitive, asking people about their career, love life, ethnicity and nationality and weaving a quirky narrative around that which tends to get overboard at times but packs a solid punch. With his animated gestures, over-the-top expression and exaggerated accents, he parodies anyone and everyone who comes in his way.

In the run-up to the last decade, he has performed with the comedy troupe Black Fish, created and hosted the country’s first English language comedy show “The Real News” and moved to New York in search of greener pastures. Along the way, he also got married, and all of that figures in the non-stop commentary of jokes directed at family, marriage, life in a big city and the trauma of school days. Among a list of other mundane things, he mocked the stereotypical attitudes of parents, intergenerational gaps and the struggles of growing up in the “chaotic and dangerous city” of Karachi and the small town hang-ups of Islamabadis, who can overlook the entire town from the top of Mustafa Towers.

“It had its moments,” said Saman, an audience member at the performance who had been to a Black Fish show featuring Haroon some eight years ago. “But somehow, I didn’t laugh as much tonight, it felt a bit recycled but then I was much younger back then,” she added.

On the other hand, Hamza, another audience member, said he nearly choked on his drink midway through the performance. “Honestly, I was not expecting to be entertained as much as I have been tonight. Saad Haroon has a way of making the everyday, ordinary stuff sound so plain funny. We could really use this kind of laughter therapy in our otherwise stressful lives,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th, 2014.