Funnycontrol | Travelling laughs: Of standup experience at venues world over

Standup comic Vikram Poddar performing at KL Crackhouse, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

My journey into standup comedy began in 2011 with winning the semi-finals of the Fosters LOL open mic hosted by Vir Das. My intro of “Marwari Investment banker from south Bombay” seemed to tickle him and eventually I ended up working in his company Weirdass as head of corporate content and business development in 2014. Weirdass is like the Patni computers of the Indian English Standup comedy scene with many a future Infosys like AIB (All India Bakchod) originating from there. The semi-final was held at Bonobo, Bandra. Bonobo would also figure as an International comedy hub when it hosted the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2014, Indian leg. It was a competition to shortlist the best standup talent from India and had Australian comics come over and perform. An epic joke was by Australian comic Kate Mclennan about how she saw a driving school car in Mumbai with the name of “Good Luck”. We’ve all known the name for years but it took an outsider to notice the funny side of a rather morbid name for a driving school. Perhaps, our engineering and MBA colleges should all be re-named Good Luck. Of course, your arranged marriage market value will be higher if you graduate from Good Luck, Ahmedabad.

The Melbourne comedy fest is one of the holy trinity of International comedy festivals, the other one being Toronto and the rather well-known Edinburgh Fringe festival. Those seeking the true-blue experience of British comedy should certainly explore the Comedy Store which used to be at London and Manchester back in 2010. The Comedy Store, the UK, is the birthplace of the English-language standup comedy scene in India for they are the ones who introduced us to all the concepts of how to programme and produce a comedy show when they opened at the Palladium Mall, Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel in Mumbai. It was a dazzling site with high-end drinks and even higher-end tickets. Back then, it used to be only overseas comics with Indian comedians only later getting a few spots on a show called “Local Heroes”. I still remember my first open-mic performance there in September 2011, when they finally decided to give amateurs a shot at making the big league. My first open mic went okay but the second one in December 2011 landed well, eventually getting me a spot in the revered “Best in Standup”. As a first-generation English comedian, back in the day, getting a call from Charlotte, the daughter of Comedy store owner Don Ward, to do a spot was like receiving a casting call from Christopher Nolan.

The Comedy Store would eventually part ways with its Indian partners who would re-brand as the iconic, and now defunct, Canvas Laugh Club. The Comedy Store continued as a travelling format for some years at the iconic blueFROG in Mumbai and Pune before eventually shutting down in India.

Further east, my travels took me to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with the epic club KL Crackhouse, a brilliant underground venue run by Rizal Van Geyzel, where I had the privilege of performing to a global multi-ethnic audience of both Western and Asian descent. I did have to substitute the less-than-tony area of Klang for Kurla in one of my jokes. KL Crackhouse, unfortunately, shut down owing to a controversy. So, today, the KL comedy scene is centred around the Joke factory, which is co-owned by the Godfather of Malaysian comedy, Harith Isakander.  Fun fact, even my Uber driver, on the way to KL Crackhouse in 2016, had heard of him.

From KL, I went to Singapore where Comedy Masala, produced by Umar Rana, runs both a festival for international comics and also a lovely room, Hero’s, at Circular Road. I had the privilege of both performing for a global audience and also seeing the headline act, legendary Scottish comedian Stephen Carlin. Of course, in Malaysia, I made fun of Singaporeans and the reverse in Singapore.

My eastern journey did its last round before the pandemic in Hong Kong, where I performed with Comedy HK and producer Tamby Chan at this lovely little venue called “The Aftermath” on Wyndham Street. I swear there was a guy who looked exactly like Walter White in the audience and I regret not making a Breaking Bad joke. But, I certainly don’t regret doing the show because it was only a month prior the protests there, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It may never be the same Hong Kong I performed in ever again.

No mention of international venues though can be complete without a mention of the two places where many a comedian dreams of performing. The Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, and selling out a show at Carolines on Broadway, New York City. Fun Fact: In between the transition from Comedy Store, the Canvas Laugh Club was called Canvas Laugh Factory before the LA club sent a notice to them to stop the Indian Bollywood copying thing. What goes down in the comedy clubs and in the green rooms is a comedy of its own but, perhaps, that’s for another article. Happy New Year, folks. Keep laughing because the world in 2023 is about to go into Funnycontrol.