Nigerian comedian, Basketmouth in a new interview has revealed that he’s a very shy person and that he does comedy just to make people laugh.
The award-winning comedian also talked on life as a comedian and his expectations from his fans, comedy industry, Nigeria and from himself.
See Excerpts from the interview below:
First of all, I know you are a very busy man and I consider it quite a privilege that you granted us this interview.
As a young man, Basket did you aspire to be a comedian or is it something that you stumbled along the way?
I’ve always wanted to be a comedian since I coincidentally bumped into… I think it was Eddie Murphy’s delirious performance, this was in… I think 1994, yeah 94.
I saw the tape… the VHS tape so I was like thrilling some of my friends, just making fun, cracking jokes and my elder brother’s friend was watching me and called me and was like dude have you seen Eddie Murphy’s performance? Then, I did not know Eddie Murphy was a standup comedian I thought he was just an actor cause the only thing I had seen then was coming to America.
I knew this is what I wanted to do and everything then just started… you know, The path just opened, and I just started the journey.
That’s wonderful, that means you were doing comedy when you were in Uniben yes?
Way before I started… before I even got to Uniben
How was it like performing then at a time when comedy wasn’t really as big as it now in Nigeria?
it was… the same thing, comedy gives you that same feeling of satisfaction the fact that you create an idea or a story in your head and you bring it to life and you tell people…
You know whether it’s from your experience or stories you’ve heard, and you make it a joke and you tell them and they actually you know laugh.
It’s that satisfaction that you’ve delivered the goods but the only difference between then and now is the fact that then it was a little bit tougher because it was a new act and people were just beginning to accept so… unlike now that’s it is now like a life style everyone wants to be funny everyone is now making skits.
The difference was, it wasn’t really embraced by that many people support wasn’t that much so the hustle was different, yeah the hustle was different but it’s still the same satisfactory feeling you get whenever you drop that joke or get that laughter.
