When Comedy Central needed a Thai comedian for an Asian stand-up series, they had to hunt through the archives. And YouTube.
Since the vast majority of Thai comedy comes in ensemble form — Note Udom being the most notable exception — those behind the eight-part special Stand-Up, Asia! had to do some digging. They found Chris Wright, a British-Thai motivational speaker, TV host and teacher known for mixing English lessons with jokes. He is also an emerging stand-up who has played at the Bangkok Comedy Club and is in the process of developing a new two-hour show.
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“They wanted ideally a comedian from every Asian country,” Wright said. “Stand-up’s still a bit of a Western thing.”
The producers got in touch, he told a few jokes and anecdotes from his repertoire, and they said, “Let’s do this.”
Soon enough, he was in Kuala Lumpur with 23 other comedians — many he unashamedly acknowledges are far more professional — filming the eight-part series. Each would get an eight-minute slot at Kuala Lumpur’s LOL @ Live House comedy venue where they had to impress an invited crowd.
The result can be seen on Tuesdays at 7.55pm. The series premiered last week, and Wright’s performance will be featured in October.
Wright had performed stand-up without the lessons before, and he had been on TV before, but this will be his first time on screen purely as a comedian. After whittling his material down, and making some last-minute alterations after a practice run in front of tables and empty chairs, he chose to tell as many jokes as possible in that time.
“I’m pretty satisfied with what I did. I had the crowd laughing.”
With the two-hour show, which he’s calling Chris’s TITs as in This is Thailand, on the way, an appearance on Comedy Central has left him feeling as if “everything’s falling into place on this front”.
“It should be a good springboard.”
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.