October 17, 2025 • 46 mins
Munya Chawawa wants to make you laugh, but not at the expense of someone else. Through his sharp satire and viral sketches, his comedy explores the line between humour and harm, showing how you can illuminate difficult truths without tearing people down.
In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Munya joins Krishnan Guru-Murthy to talk about comedy, kindness, and the power of perspective. He reflects on growing up in Zimbabwe, navigating early experiences of bullying, and the challenge of finding empathy in a world that often rewards outrage. He shares his thoughts on how laughter can connect us and help us make sense of chaos, and gives advice to aspiring social media stars.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
It's hard to watch the news and not feel depressed or anxious or
miserable or have what I call apocalypse anxiety.
The news will constantly reinforce that feeling.
No shade. And so for me it's just about
providing a counter narrative which says, OK, even if these
things are happening, let's at least find some humour within
(00:20):
that reality. You talked about the George
Floyd aftermath, Black Lives Matter.
To what extent do you think we are now in a sort of a backlash
to that period? I'm sort of just advocating for
a world in which we're not beingknobs to each other.
Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.
I'm Christian Gary Murphy, and this is the podcast in which we
(00:41):
talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their
lives and the events that have helped shape them.
My guest this week is a satiristwho became famous on social
media, but he's now very big on television and is also doing
stand up on stage. In fact, he's also making making
serious documentaries, includingabout his own origins in
(01:02):
Zimbabwe, where he grew up. Munya Chihuahua, welcome to Ways
to change the world. Thank you very much.
I'm excited. How do you want to change the
world? That's a big old question, but
I, I was thinking about it and Iwould really love us to sort of
get back to a time where we're more sort of in touch with our
(01:22):
instinctual human empathy. You know, it's so crazy now just
looking at the political and social landscape and seeing how
something as arbitrary, as rightand wrong have now been sort of
reskinned as political opinions.It's so strange to me.
You know, the leaders we have inpower, the policies they put
out. I think we just need to scale
(01:44):
back and go back to a time wherewe really tap into human
instinct about how would I like to be treated and how do I want
to treat others. I mean, in, in a, in a social
media world and you're, and you're a success story of, of
that world, you know, empathy oremotion is, is a really
important part of it. But is there, is that the human
empathy you're talking about? Because what social media does
(02:06):
is it kind of like organises people into emotional responses
to things and turns them into tribes.
It's slightly different to sort of a face to face emotional
empathy, isn't it? I mean, it's, it's absolutely
the right observation. You know, that the talk about,
you know, tribes when I was doing my, you know, psychology
degree, we talk about the in Group and the out group.
(02:28):
And it's almost always the case that the out group sort of are
oppressed by the in Group. That's just the natural dynamic
for me at least, social media started out as like an
arrangement of tribes where there wasn't necessarily any
conflict between them. You know, it was more this idea
of if you go on social media, you can just pick one of the in
groups. Whereas now it's sort of the
(02:48):
balance is turning so that it's like, where are the out groups
that we can now unite against? You know, what are the
minorities that we control? We can bully and we can, you
know, bombard with sort of bots.So yeah, the we, we have become
more tribal, you know, in a, in a social media landscape and,
you know, even doing satire online, because for me, I always
(03:10):
did satire as a means of kind ofexpressing frustration I was
seeing in regards to sort of power dynamics or politicians
stepping out of line or doing things that felt so obviously
wrong. And I think the reason I had so
much success with it is because people felt seen when I did call
out a politician who was kind ofwas not abiding by their duty as
(03:34):
an elected leader. We all felt on the same side.
We all sort of felt this joint collective feeling of anger and
frustration. But now, because the lines
between right and wrong have been blurred, there's now more
of a discourse in comments wherepeople go, is there a right or
wrong? Or is right just an opinion you
know is the right thing? Is it this situation?
Just your opinion. I mean, your your comedy became
(03:55):
popular during a particular phase of chaotic British
politics from, you know, from the various different
conservative administrations, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, all
of that COVID, Matt Hancock. I mean, how, how, how, how
reliant were you on politics in this country being crazy and and
(04:20):
funny? Oh, I mean massively, but not
necessarily deliberately. More so just because I wanted to
satirise the world in front of me.
And so much of it was to do withpolitics.
And COVID was the first time I think your every man realized,
oh, this is how politics affectsme.
A politician can say something and I can't go to my granddad's
(04:41):
funeral. A politician can say something
and suddenly I can't be in a room with more than seven
people. So in some ways it was a really
beneficial, it was a really beneficial part of British
history because it was a time when people maybe who are
typically politically apathetic suddenly realized the
implications of, for example, voting or being engaged with
politics. And, you know, it makes me it,
(05:03):
it makes me chuckle when people will sort of jump in my comments
and it's only ever a few people,but they'll be like, you know,
this left TOEFL Ghisling wokey or whatever.
And I sort of think I don't really know if I'm, you know,
left or right. Like I, I don't really align
myself with any position on thatspectrum.
It was just the case that all the politicians who were messing
up on a colossal level were on the right.
(05:26):
And so that's a coincidence thatI can't help now that things,
you know, now that Labour and Keir Starmer are in power, I've
got no problem criticizing. Is it as easy now to to be a
satirist with with this lot in power?
Hell no. Well, obviously you have to be
more nuanced in the in the satire you do make.
But I think for me, like, what'sbeen more important than, you
(05:50):
know, just making the funniest joke is kind of creating content
that gives people a space in which they feel, you know, seen.
I went to university, I did psychology.
And I only took on that degree because I kind of thought at the
end of it, I would be able to sit, you know, opposite someone
on the couch and just listen to them and know what to say to
make them feel better, You know,Munya.
(06:12):
Munya is a Zimbabwean name, and Zimbabwean names have meaning.
And my name actually means comforter because at the time I
was born, my dad's mum passed away and that was something I
was told very early on. So in a way maybe it's like a
sort of self fulfilling prophecy.
But I I get a lot of gratification from providing
comfort. And it just turns out that
satire has been an unexpected way in which I've been able to
(06:34):
do that. That's really interesting then.
So your your comedy is a way of comforting people.
Just just unpack that for me a bit.
Well, for instance, maybe it's also indicated by the the topics
I don't cover. You know, sometimes, for
example, a story will come out and I actually don't know what
the right thing to say or I don't know a way in which to
(06:55):
make people feel better about it.
And so rather than sort of the vanity of being like, well, come
on, you know, I'm a satirist. I'm going to find one way or
another. I just asked myself, right, Is
the comedy I produce from this going to make people feel better
or worse? And if the answer is worse, then
I'd rather step away from it. Which sort of reminds me that
actually the goal is to try and make people feel better.
(07:16):
I always think about it like I'mtrying to take the sting out of
something which actually is quite difficult to digest or,
you know, quite painful or as you know, it has like a certain
sting to it. My goal is that you could
mention a political figure or a certain policy which previously
depressed you or made you miserable and then think, ah,
but did you see that funny videowhen you did about it?
(07:38):
You know, it's like, you know, providing an antidote to what
feels like just this bombardmentof bad news.
I mean, let's go back to childhood then.
I mean, you mentioned Zimbabwe. What was your family background?
You know what's what? Was your life there?
So I was born in Derby and I don't really remember anything
(08:00):
about being in Derby other than being in love with Baby Spice
and I used to my parents say I used to wait for her.
I used to stand on the pavement every day after nursery just
waiting for her, thinking she was just going to pull up and we
were going to get married. So that's my only memory of
Derby. That's not me calling out to
Baby Spice, but that that is what happened.
(08:22):
And then we moved to Zimbabwe. And we moved there for my dad's
work. And all I can remember about
that place is just feeling like my spirit was totally, you know,
connected to the place. Zimbabweans, for all that you
may have heard or seem, you know, portrayed, are just the
best people, supernaturally comedic, very warm with one
(08:45):
another. I remember actually being a kid,
and we were walking home from school and I saw two men holding
hands. I was probably about, you know,
6 or 7. And I said, like, dad, how come
those men are holding hands? And he was just like, because
they're just great friends. That's what great friends do in
Zimbabwe. It was just a totally innocuous
act where people physically wanted to show how, you know,
(09:07):
connected what they were to others.
And I love that about the place.And I always tell people one
thing I also remember about Zimbabwe's or what was
Zimbabwe's schooling is that a self esteem or self worth was
like a vital part of the curriculum we were taught.
I always remember this image they had of this huge, I think
it was like a baobab tree, this huge enormous trunk and dotted
(09:29):
along various positions of the tree with like these, these
Jelly men, these figures, right?They look like Jelly babies.
And some were like, some were like proudly posed at the top of
the tree, some were hanging froma branch somewhere at the bottom
looking, you know, disheartened.And the teachers would say, you
know, which, which, which one are you?
And as kids, we were sort of thinking that forced us to think
about things like self worth, self actualisation, where we
(09:52):
are, where we want to be. And that that stuff has really
stuck with me. The culture shift from England
made meant I needed that kind ofbattle armour just to make it
through the culture shock. So were you an English boy
growing up in Zimbabwe or, or were you a Zimbabwean boy?
I mean, I was just down for whatever adventures were on
(10:12):
offer. You know, what I loved about
Zimbabwe is there's no health and safety.
So if you wanted to, I remember once my sister and I watched a
programme which someone bungee jumped, right.
So I thought that bungee jumpingis just done with the normal
rope. So I just climbed a tree in the
garden and tied it around my waist and then jumped out of the
tree. Obviously the rope doesn't, you
(10:32):
know, doesn't bounce. So then I was just suspended
like an ornament from the tree hanging by my waist.
But you know what, you were allowed to do that.
Zimbabwe. To me, the unofficial motto felt
like if you want an adventure, just go have the adventure.
So I really did feel like I adopted the spirit of the of the
country. Were you aware of all the
(10:52):
political controversy around thetime as well?
And Mugabe. And no.
That's it. In fact, that's musical.
Violence, basically. Yes, that was the I we, we would
do drills at school where they would say if anything happens,
obviously we didn't know what anything alluded to.
Well, that was euphemism for getunder the desks, we're going to
barricade the door. Something, something politics.
(11:14):
That's all I remember hearing. And then the story goes, well,
there's, there's two, there's two parts of the story.
The first thing I would significantly remember is I'd
have this ice cream box full of,of coins, pocket money, right?
And my sister would always be spending hers on XYZ.
And I would save mine thinking, you know, if I save up enough,
I'm going to be able to get this, that.
(11:35):
And I remember one day my mum walked into my room and she saw
me putting money into my, my little Piggy Bank.
And she said, don't even bother because tomorrow it's going to
be worth nothing. So I'm thinking, no, this is
actually a harsh life lesson. Like what do I do to upset my
mum's? Now I understand it was the
hyperinflation to the point where you could buy a loaf of
(11:57):
bread in the supermarket and by the time you get to the tilt,
the bread's gone up in price. That's the level of inflation
we're talking. So you know, here in UK when we
say there's terrible inflation, it means Alfredo has gone up by
20 P. So that was the first memory.
And then the second one is I just remember coming home from
school. I'm getting ready for the last
week of of term before I go to high school.
You know, in my mind, this is going to be where my life
(12:19):
begins. I'm going to join the basketball
team. I'm going to get a girlfriend.
I'm going to be like a Zimbabwean, you know, Zac Efron
in High School Musical. And my parents just go, we're
leaving. Pack your things, pack like
we've got to go. Because at the time for them,
the, the, the price, the plane tickets to go to England were
obviously increasing everyday and the money they had to buy
(12:40):
the tickets was decreasing. So it was literally get out, go.
And then it's only I only got closure for that when I did my
first documentary, How to Survive a Dictator, which the
whole mission of that was to go back and figure out who, who was
Mugabe? Why was it?
Why did we have to leave in sucha an urgent panic?
Why do we have to abscond in thenight?
Who was this man? What had been happening whilst I
(13:01):
was oblivious as a kid? And that was my closure.
I. Mean why had they gone there in
the 1st place? I mean, it was just an odd
directions move from Britain to Zimbabwe.
It's my, where my, my dad was from.
And I think when, when you are faced with the, the constant
grey skies and whatever was happening in England at the
time, obviously he was very proud of his country the same
(13:24):
way I'm proud of it. And in his mind, taking a young
family there and, you know, taking his wife there was like a
sort of almost utopia in comparison.
And it was, you know, I was so happy there.
And that's my favorite. You know, my childhood is the
thing I protect most fairly. That meant that the fiercely,
the memories and the learnings Ihave from that.
So I think it made 100% the right choice.
(13:46):
And obviously, politics has always been volatile, you know,
in many African countries. But at the time, it was liveable
when we moved there, you know? Almost as volatile as Britain
during the post Brexit years. Yeah.
So, so when you came here back, I mean how, how bewildering was
(14:07):
Britain? Britain was, I mean, look, I'm
half British, right? But I wasn't equipped with the,
you know, just the, the natural flow of life here.
So for example, when I was getting ready to move to
Zimbabwe, to England, all of my friends said, you know, in
England they throw chairs at teachers.
That was like the rumour that went around Zimbabwe schools.
(14:27):
That's normal. This is poppycock.
I get to the school within two weeks.
I've seen a chair fly across theroom at the English, at the
English teacher. It was just such a culture
shock. It was just like a very, I'd
gone from like this very sort ofinterconnected supportive
network of classmates where, youknow, it was in Zimbabwe.
(14:47):
You know why we used to get detentions?
We used to get detentions because if the teacher asked a
question, people were so keen toanswer would stick up our hands
and start clicking at the teacher for her to pick us so
that we could answer the question.
So now I come to England, right,And the teacher asked a simple
maths question and my hand goes up.
I look around, there's no hands up.
Next thing I know I'm Public Enemy number one.
(15:08):
People are calling me a boffin. I'm thinking what's a boffin?
It sounds like one of them things that Harry Potter catches
in Quidditch. I'm thinking what's going on
here? And the most distinctive memory
I felt, and it is, you know, thinking back at it, I feel
quite sad, is I felt like I had to tuck in my extroversion and
my desire to be academic, you know, because I wasn't being
(15:28):
academic to spite anyone. It was just that I would, I
would train to think that was a valuable asset.
And you know, the, the school that I went to, I can remember
it being very similar to the, tothe school you see in
adolescence. I think it's episode 2 where
they go to the school. And so many people were struck
by that, so many parents becausethey thought surely this can't
be the way the schools are. It's like it's like a jungle in
(15:50):
here. And that I, I remember feeling
like that it was, it was a good school, but I just remember it
was unruly because, you know, inZimbabwe you start messing up.
You, you know, you start messingaround.
The teacher can pull out a cane.You know, there's no problem
with, you know, if you went homeand said, Mum, the teacher
smacked me, you get more smacks.It's like a multiplier on your
smacks. So, you know, we had a good
(16:11):
system of discipline. So, so that self-confidence that
you would learn in Zimbabwe, youbasically had to put away a.
100%, you know, I the, you know,I would get, I would get bullied
for, you know, trying to take part in class.
You know, if the drama teacher said right, I want everyone to
do a performance or music, I want everyone to try and play
this little piece on. I would do the task thinking
that's the way to avoid trouble and I would be bullied for the
(16:32):
task. So I absolutely tried to just
tuck in my personality and, and,and put my light under a lamp
and, you know, to keep my head down, keep my nose clean.
And, you know, comedy really wasa resurgence of who I really AM.
And it's taken a lot of time to tease that out of myself.
(16:52):
You know, this is not me saying,you know, well, it's me.
I came to England. It was horrible.
I'm just stating the facts because, you know, I was, I was
a student trying to do well and I was bullied.
And that was just a cultural shift.
So how how did the real you start coming out again?
I mean you know the the performer in you if you like.
Well, I was making videos onlinethat of, of about things that
(17:13):
interested me. You know, Jamie Oliver at the
time had released his jerk rice.Theresa May was exhibiting
inhumanly stiff dance moves whilst on a trip to Africa.
All of these things I found fascinating and I made videos
about them because they made me laugh.
Then all of a sudden you you, you find this magnetic force of
these videos pulling in people from all over.
(17:35):
But were you trying to get a following?
Were you trying to become? It was a bit famous on social
media. Yeah, it was a bit of both.
I, I really enjoy the feeling ofkind of skewing so things that
people cared about socially. But whilst trying to pursue a
career in television as a presenter, I was told by
commissioners, oh, look, we, we can see you can present, but
(17:56):
you're nobody. You need to go out there and
build a profile, you know, whichis why, you know, sometimes it's
funny to me when when people do try to, you know, box me in as
a, you know, TikTok or a social media star.
Because in my mind, I'm thinkingI only had to join social media
because TV commissioners were saying, if you don't forget
having a job in in television. So it was a little bit of both.
(18:16):
But I enjoyed comedy was connecting me with people I
could never dream of having met in the street.
You know, I remember like Armando, Armando Iannucci met
was, was retweeting my videos and I would hear so much about
him growing up, his work and hismind as a satirist and getting a
cosine like that, you know, celebrities that I've grown up
(18:39):
idolising all of this kind of thing, people from all different
academic fields, which was, you know, an academic approval I had
I'd been sort of starved of since joining school.
And I just realised the sort of connecting power of comedy.
I mean, you, you've sort of gonefrom being an insurgent on
social media to gradually being embraced by the comedy
establishment. Do you feel part of it now?
(19:01):
I do, I do and I don't because in some ways there was like a
that for a long time there's been like this sort of
schadenfreude between social comics and stand ups in that,
you know, social will look at the kind of the art form of
stand up and go, you know, why would I bother doing that?
You know, there's just old guys getting on stage every evening.
(19:21):
And then vice versa, you know, stand up comics who are, you
know, OG's in the game will lookat those on socials and think,
you know, you're just taking theshortcut.
And I encountered a lot of that when I started doing stand up.
But the very reason I started stand up is because, you know, I
really would love to be one of the best comics.
And I understand the, you know, the graft and the kind of the
art form. And I want to respect the art
(19:43):
form. So I was only gigging and I was
going to places where I was enlisted and stuff where I would
have happily been heckled and, you know, had a pint of Stella
thrown over me if that's what ittook to kind of earn my stripes.
So for me personally, I really admire all forms of comedy.
And do you feel that sort of social media is is choking off?
The kind of comedy that you weredoing.
(20:04):
I mean, we had Stuart Lee here recently.
Oh, yeah, I love that. Who was saying, you know, that
the comedians who had built their careers on social media
were we're we're dead because social media has been now, you
know, taken over, weaponized, now openly biased and is choking
off sort of anything that's sortof perceived as left wing or
local socially aware and is amplifying right wing messages.
(20:27):
Yeah, I think that's true. There's an element of truth in
that. And I think Stuart was was
dropping gems so, so many of thethe the points he was making
were so sort of on the on the money.
But I have found that while someof my content definitely has
been censored, and then I've been put on a sort of
metaphorical naughty step after some sketches, which is crazy.
Like what? OK, so for example, I made a
(20:51):
sketch about Trump selling his own action figurine.
And I remember I dropped the video, and it was just radio
silence. Because remember, even if you
drop a terrible video, it's still going to get engagement
because people are going to tellyou it's terrible, right?
You know, people are going to give you that slap on the wrist,
but there was just nothing. And I thought, OK, let me keep
(21:13):
it up for 24 hours. Maybe it's just a slow Newsday.
Maybe people are out in the sun.And the next day I had a
notification from the social media app saying, oh, your, your
video's been taken down for using copyrighted music.
Bearing in mind 2-3 years I've been making music on my videos,
you know, parodying popular songs, you know, Matt Hancock,
(21:33):
Shaggy, It wasn't me, this that the other, none of them have
ever been taken down. And it was the first and only
time I've ever had that message pop up.
And for the next few days, all of my analytics and my
engagement on everything Rock bottom.
And the maddest thing was I was trying to promote, promote a
show that week. And that was the first time I
thought, wow. That's censorship.
(21:54):
Yeah, because I'm, I'm not someone who sort of buys into
the, you know, I'm not someone who, if a, if a video on social
media doesn't do well, I go, I'mbeing censored.
You know, they're trying, they're trying to, you know,
they're trying to muffle me fromspeaking my truth.
You know, I roll with the punches.
But this just felt bleedingly obvious.
So, So what does that mean for for you?
Does that mean you've got to getaway from reliance on these
(22:16):
platforms? And, you know, is that why
you're sort of now focused on TVand stage?
I have not experienced any significant drop in the traction
of my satire. You know, even after lockdown,
if it was like a sort of flavourof the month type thing, you
would expect there to be some sort of decline.
Whereas actually, you know, my following has continued to grow.
(22:37):
Some of the biggest videos I've had have been this year.
And what that tells me is even though there's an extremely loud
minority, there is a majority ofpeople who still kind of abide
by the principles of right and wrong and calling out stuff that
seems so obviously wrong. Who will gather almost in like a
sort of a town square, which thevideos represent to, to just say
(23:01):
I feel the relief in that. You can see this too.
I'm glad we can all recognise this.
Thankfully I have not been centred to the point where I
can't even express express a differing opinion.
If I was in America, I don't know what that's like.
And what do you mean when you say you know your comedy is
about you know you want people to feel seen?
Well, it's, it's the feeling of it's hard not to watch the news
(23:26):
and it's hard to watch the news and not feel depressed or
anxious or miserable or have what I call apocalypse anxiety.
I don't know if I've entered thephrase.
I hope so because I'm going to cash that in.
But when I made my second documentary, which was about Kim
Jong Un and the threat that he, you know, whether the
documentary was an investigationas to whether this is a man who
(23:46):
at any second will press the bigred button and then the world, I
was really utilising this term apocalypse anxiety, which just
is this impending feeling of doom that the world is on the
brink of ending. The news will constantly
reinforce that feeling. No shade.
And so for me, it's just about providing a counter narrative
which says, OK, even if these things are happening, A, there
(24:10):
is good news here, here and here.
Here are small pockets of light.But B, if this is our reality,
let's at least find some humour within that reality.
The same way that, you know, in 1984, you know, the main
character, you know, absconds tothis secret den with his lover
just to find the simple pleasures to acknowledge
actually that that we're, we're shrouded in this very depressing
(24:33):
orb of our reality. But we have to find the light
within that. That's what I would like my
comedy to do. Yeah.
I mean, it serves another purpose as well potentially,
doesn't it? In that, in that it's, it
suggests that things aren't quite as catastrophic.
You know if if you can laugh at things, if you can have the time
to laugh at things, you you can reveal you can take away their
(24:55):
power. Oh, massively.
Look it it, it is the dichotomy.It's as simplistic as the
dichotomy of if you don't laugh,you cry.
You know, at any one point my output on stage, on social
media, on a show like this can either make you feel worse about
the world or slightly better. So if anything, I I, I obtain a
bit of, I obtain a bit of purpose from thinking I am the
latter, you know? And and so how?
(25:20):
I mean, you, you're not tribal, you say politically, but you
are, I suppose, progressive. Yeah.
I, I I. Think so?
I'd like to think so. Yeah, you know, I mean, you, you
poke fun at sort of at racism and sexism, all sorts of things.
So. But does that mean that your
audience is woken progressive, basically.
Well, for example, let's talk about the debut show that I
(25:42):
made, right? So it was a non scripted show
that YouTube commissioned and itwas called Race Around Britain,
right? And it was an exploration as to
what Britain knows about black culture following a very tense
period after the George Floyd protests.
Now, I had no intention to make a finger wagging programme
(26:03):
because I would like to make comedy that kind of invites
people in. And so when we did these
episodes, we went to, for example, Kent and we asked
people what they knew about sortof black cuisine by hosting A
spoof cookery show called the Great British Jerk Off, which
you probably won't be able to Google Now due to the Online
(26:23):
Safety Act. But you know, it was that kind
of thing. It was like a, for example, when
when we went through this periodwhere tabloids were constantly
accidentally confusing black celebrities in front of their
papers, we got Man City fans into a room telling them they
were going to meet Raheem Sterling.
Then just found this guy that looked nothing like Raheem
(26:44):
Sterling and had him sat signingbooks with these fans.
And all of the fans went, that'snot Raheem Sterling.
And we were like, well, if you can tell, why can't established
journalists tell? And then the people would go,
maybe, maybe it's deliberate then just bringing people around
to the idea of kind of, you know, racial politics and maybe
institutional racism through their own discovery and through
(27:06):
comedy. And the the the magnum opus of
the show was exploring this ideaof white privilege, which, you
know, was really pertinent term at the time, by investigating,
for example, right. Black musicians who make drill
music are being demonized and, you know, stifled.
A lot of them are getting, you know, sort of police
investigations. If 3 white ladies named Karen
(27:28):
made a drill song, if the theoryof white privilege is correct,
then the song should perform extremely well and people should
actually celebrate the song. So found I held a Karen
convention of women named Karen and then picked 3 three of the
most Karenist Karens and got them to record a drill song.
We put the drill song out and in24 hours it had a million views.
(27:50):
And off the back of that those ladies said, I, I kind of, I
kind of get it, you know, and that's all it was.
It was just inviting people in to make their own discovery and
then hopefully go out and spreadthe good word.
So if you want to call that, forexample, liberal or
left-leaning, maybe it falls within that categorisation.
(28:12):
But my intent whilst making the show was not let me make a show
like that. It was just let me make a feel
good show. And, and how much sort of quiet
anger is there behind your ideas?
You know, when you look at, are you sort of trying to hit
something that that annoys you about society or are you doing
something else? Yeah, that's a great question.
(28:34):
Well, I don't feel like an angryperson, but I feel like a person
who, and maybe it comes from theexperience of bullying.
You can be bullied and not necessarily instantly feel like
you want to punch the person in the face, but you can know
something. An injustice has been committed
against you. And I think that's how I have
always been. You know, I've had a lot of
(28:54):
bullies throughout my life. I've never punched any of them
in the face. I don't know, think I've ever
even punched anyone, right. But I, I, I felt anger and I
felt sadness and I felt upset. And my vehicle to kind of
getting around that has often been sort of like a more witty
and intellectual approach to, you know, how, how do I, how do
I showcase? How do I show these are the bad
(29:15):
guys and show there are more good guys than bad guys?
And and so is the bullying just a childhood thing or is that?
I I think predominantly, yes. And that's the, the, the, that's
the bullying we all remember. Yeah.
You know, did you get bullied? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I, I did try and punch
back once. Unfortunately I had a broken arm
(29:37):
at the time so it was possibly the worst.
And your instinct was the time with the broken arm.
No, I tried to punch with the other arm, but it was, it was
not a good time to have the one fight that I had decided to pick
with the school bully. And, and I, if I've talked about
this before, is it He did actually.
He became a teacher bully and hewrote to me after his training
(29:59):
to apologise and I ignored it. And do I not reply?
I respect that. That is better than a broken
armed punch. Let me tell you that.
But you can agree that bullying is a, you know, very formative
experience. And even if you're someone who
doesn't necessarily sort of wallow in it, I, I, I, I don't
know whether I've been on a showor a podcaster mentioned it,
(30:19):
right? Because, you know, I don't feel
like it's a key part of my story.
But actually, when I look back and I think about what made me
me as an entertainer, that definitely plays a big role, you
know, and it how it, it brought me a lot of solutions to, to
problems I had. I think having to work through
that experience as a kid becauseyou're just confused and you
don't know what it means. But it's a very early
(30:40):
introduction to the fact that there may be people in life who
may be the going to become politicians, teachers, important
figures, who, you know, but who,who, you know, impose their will
and their policy through bullying.
You know, and I guess it's just about how do you stand up to
bullying as you get older? So as as you as you are now sort
of in, in the TV industry to a large degree, you know what,
(31:03):
what do you think of TV comedy? I mean, you know, lots of people
are very worried about TV comedybeing, you know, less risk
taking, less innovative, you know, British comedy used to be,
you know, world leading. Yeah.
Is it still? Yeah, well, I remember very
early on in my career, whilst things were still, whilst I had
(31:25):
a lot of traction and momentum, still pitching a sketch show and
being told by the commissioners in the room.
Oh, you know, British TV doesn'treally do sketch shows.
Like there's not really a cultural or an appetite for
sketch shows. And I'm thinking, bro, we had a
trade, sorry, big trade. We had Mitchell and Webb, We had
(31:45):
all these amazing sketch shows. Like what are you talking about
with the Ogs, with the with the sketch originators and feeling
like maybe we're just going through a phase.
If we are going through a phase.What I am most excited about is
social media and comics on social media are having a field
day with just having great ideasand making them happen.
(32:06):
I saw a group of young boys who made their own travelogue
because basically they were all from different parts of the
world and they made they, they got a couple of handheld cameras
and they decided to do a travelogue in which they each
visited each of their home countries.
And it blew up on socials and everyone went, this should be on
TV. And it's like, yeah, perhaps it
should be on TV, but what you'rewatching right now is TV, just
(32:29):
not on a television. So I would, I love the fact that
there are no gatekeepers now, that you are not looking for
that one person to give you the green light to make your idea.
When I started out, you know what I used to do?
I used to, because I thought I need an agent to make TVI would
e-mail agents saying I was IdrisAlbertson because, you know, in
(32:51):
Gmail, it's got that tiny littlepicture of you.
I thought if they just see one drop of melody, they might think
it's true. And I would get in the room.
I would get in the room and thenit would just be a never ending
sequence of impressing the rightperson.
And if at any point during that journey I dropped the ball, that
was my chance to make ATV show gone.
So I would like to think that the, the tenacity and the the
(33:13):
the sheer kind of volume of great ideas we see on social
media will ignite something backin traditional television.
That we will start to work more with those people, that those
young boys will get their own show.
And if that takes a while, that's fine because they're
still honing their craft as theygo along.
But I think that TV has to change.
I mean, it's about money largely, isn't it?
Because when you make ATV program, the resources thrown
(33:36):
into it are huge by comparison to you making your first videos.
Totally, yeah. And that seems to be sort of the
the hurdle between sort of commissioning programmes because
they cost money. Do we we need to find a way of
making things that don't cost much money?
Are they or? We can.
Well, look, there are various ways of doing that.
You know, I'm not an expert in television scheduling, but you
(33:59):
know, if we're having 70 series of something or it's the same
rinse and repeat format, yes, it's a surefire.
But that is sort of just clinging to what is safe and you
know what the status. I mean when you started, I mean,
The thing is your videos were very high production.
Values. Oh yeah, totally.
So how how did you achieve that kind of feel on presumably no
(34:20):
budget? How to spend money, you know,
these videos they cost, you know, they cost money like, and
it's, it's crazy because so manyof the platforms don't allow you
to monetise, right. But with my videos, you know,
I'm, I'm paying editors if I, I pay animators, if I'm working
with another writer on a really big story, you know, they get
(34:40):
paid as well. So effectively, we're running
our own production companies. I have a production company in
order to, to continue my output.So, you know, that's what we can
achieve on 1/10 of, of telebudgets.
So it's not as if we're saying, please give us the budget of a
traitors or, or what not. It's just just something more to
take A to contact people alreadylike to a slightly higher level.
(35:03):
And do you think that the opportunity is there for for
other young people who want to do this or, or were you a
creature of a moment in which social media was open and you
know, was an opportunity and that that's that's a moment
that's passed? Oh, dude, yeah, social media,
that door is still wide open. If you turned to me after this
podcast and said, Munya, I'm actually a sick dancer, you
(35:24):
could upload a TikTok of you throwing it back today.
And that's the beginning of yourjourney, you know, and you'll
build from there. So that door is still wide open.
And that's why I think it's justan amazing creative democracy at
the moment where if you've got agood idea, social socials will
decide whether it's going to flyor not.
And that's a great impetus to just keep trying new things.
(35:44):
And that for me, is how TV used to feel.
Sure, maybe not. Maybe some of the programs were
clangers. But I remember a time, you know,
you could turn on TV. And, you know, some of the early
shows I remember of watching when I was a kid in Zimbabwe on
British TV were things like, youknow, Laddet to Lady Faking It
was another show, you know, justvery simple concepts.
But I remember laughing my head off and it drew the family to
(36:07):
the couch. Some of those shows were were
risky and were stupid and were mischievous.
But I think that's what I loved about TV then, you know?
Now you, you talked about that, that period during COVID and the
George Floyd aftermath, Black Lives Matter.
It was quite important for your growth and giving you stuff to
talk about. To what extent do you think we
(36:28):
are now in a sort of a backlash to that period?
Well, the pendulum, OK. So it definitely feels like, you
know, people are done with diversity in the sense that if
you look at sort of marketing, for example, or advertising
agencies, it's there has felt like a sort of collective exhale
(36:49):
where people feel they don't necessarily need to be very
inclusive anymore. A lot of Trump's policies seem
to be sort of giving that green flag to care less about, say,
minority or marginalised communities.
My feeling towards that is it's sad in so much as I don't think
(37:10):
that movement was ever about saying please give us
opportunities for the sake of it.
I always think that, for example, you know, when you
think about even an example likeThe Little Mermaid character,
when Hallie Bailey was was cast as The Little Mermaid and there
was this huge backlash of peoplesaying that she'd been selected
purely on the basis of her of her skin.
(37:32):
You know, Hallie's an incrediblesinger.
You know, there's every chance that she could have gone into
that audition room and just beenthe best auditionee.
She might have hit the notes better than anyone and, and
delivered the lines with a certain heft that just wasn't
mirrored in the room. There is a possibility that
people of colour or minorities are, are just good in the room
(37:52):
or are just the best in the room.
And so it feels sad to have perhaps removed the process by
which we even give them the chance to get in the room.
That's my sentiment. I, I, I've always sort of gone
by the idea that of course I want to, you know, I want to
earn whatever spot I have. And I would really, I would
really advocate that most peopleof colour or from minority
(38:12):
background also operate by the operate by the same logic.
It's like, give me a chance justso I can at least show you how
good I am. I, I always think of it like
this. When people used to argue online
or in person, you would disagreeon so many things, right?
But there was always this kind of thing I would always see come
up where people would be like, but Hitler was a bad guy, right?
(38:33):
People would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can agree on that.
Now it's like you're having an argument with someone and you
go, yeah, but Hitler was a bad guy, right?
And they're like, well, that is a mad state of play.
You know, that's a crazy place to be in, I think because we've
now start to go back in time andand think about things that we
felt collectively were subjectively wrong and go, but
(38:56):
was it wrong or are you just being woke?
And you know, woke is is such a funny word to me because
ordinarily, ordinarily it's a description of somebody telling
somebody saying something racist, misogynistic or just
sort of type thing. You shouldn't say.
You shouldn't be saying that. You know, almost always when you
hear that word, it's because someone's saying the wrong thing
(39:17):
is being told off. Yes.
And so, I mean, I mean, and, andobviously it's what political
correctness was in the 80s and 90s.
And it, it's not going to go away because there's always
going to be, you know, but it's going to have to find a new way
of describing itself, isn't it? I suppose.
Look, I mean, I think your average person on the street is,
(39:38):
is never shoving down the throattheir political ideology.
You know, I think sometimes whenwe talk about culture wars,
there's this feeling that peoplewho have slightly more liberal
ideas or on the left are absolutely insistent that you
believe or see things from wherethey see them.
(39:58):
You know, myself, I, I, I'm, I'msort of just advocating for a
world in which we're not being knobs to each other.
You know, I'm not going to forcethat on anyone, but ideally,
that's the world we'd be living in.
And I just think cultural, you know, culture wars were used as
a very effectively as a political tool by which
politicians could divert attention from stuff that really
(40:20):
matters. And like Stuart Lee was saying
on the episode you did with him,unfortunately, that box has now
opened. Maybe the politicians who
utilize culture wars thought they could shut the lid on it,
but now it's, it's out of control.
And so we can end up in a situation where instead of
figuring out realistic solutionsto get people housed and to
rebalance the economy, it's it's, it's about people's gender
(40:42):
and race and, and all of this, this stuff.
So does that leave you very pessimistic about the future
then? Well, I'm going to try and I
will. I mean, it's funny, you know,
because you, you say the news, the news is sort of apocalyptic,
correct? And as soon as you have a sort
of a serious conversation about anything, you end up in the same
zone. Well, we're just talking about
the layer of the land, you know,objectively we're looking at,
(41:05):
we're looking out and saying does anyone really feel good
about where we are right now? I don't think we do, but I will
try to continue to mine humour from that and also try to create
things in the world which advocate for more positivity,
you know, in different spaces. The projects that I will work on
now, I'm going to try and leave a little bit of light behind.
(41:25):
You know, weirdly, theatre is something that I have grown very
passionate about. It's a place that I seek
creative refuge, for example, when I, you know, struggle with
writer's block and stuff. And you know, I'm developing a
project in the theatrical space,which I would like to think is
going to instill install a massive kind of positive change
(41:46):
for the future generation of young black boys who are a
demographic that, you know, manytime we see portrayed in the
wrong light in press. You know I want to be part of
the solution to that. Yeah, I mean, you're, you're
organising a way for black boys to go to the theatre.
That's right. You know, this is not, you know,
in a world where we hear them interms like DEI and work this and
(42:07):
you know, you're excluding XY and Z group.
This is not about that at all for me.
It's about the it's that theatreactually is employing so many
incredible young Black actors atthe moment on stage.
Shooter Gatwa, who you may have seen as Doctor Who, Paparoseidu,
who's been cast as the new Snapein the upcoming Harry Potter
(42:28):
series, Just so much incredible young Black male talent is
taking centre stage because of what we spoke about earlier.
They're just fantastic. And I've been to see so many of
these plays and I look around and there's no young Black boys
in the audience and it makes me sad because we're always having
a conversation about where are the role models after
(42:48):
adolescence? People are asking, yes, but
where, where, where do our boys look when they go online?
All they see is Andrew Tate or XY and Z streamer.
And in my mind I'm thinking, well, actually a lot of these
role models are in theatre. And so I want to find a way to
reduce that gap between young black boys and the theatre.
You could say, for example, well, why not young white boys?
Absolutely fantastic point. Maybe one day it will expand
(43:11):
into that. But actually culturally within
the black community, sometimes arts are seen as being quite
whimsical. You know, there's the age-old
joke where you know if you tell a Nigerian or a Zimbabwe or a
gun and parent, I want to be an artist, I want to be an actor, I
want to be a dancer. You're instantly chastised as
not for not wanting to be a lawyer or a doctor.
You know, arts can be seen as quite flamboyant and sometimes
(43:33):
there is a stereotype amongst young black men that they'll be
ridiculed for attending. And so they just happen to be a
group who sort of really would benefit from a deliberate
introduction to theatre. And boys more than girls, yes,
need this kind of a focus. Only because of the, the
barricade that masculinity and young masculinity provides
(43:53):
between them and theatre. When I go to the theatre, I love
to see, you know, pairs and groups of young black women
going to watch Players. And I always do never see young
black boys. And when I ask the boys on my
trips, would you ever go with your boys to watch theatre?
Like, no, of course I wouldn't do that.
No, no way. I do that.
That's, you know, and I know what they want to say.
And it's like, OK, cool. How how do we change that?
So I think by going to the theatre and seeing actors laugh,
(44:18):
cry, fight scenes choreographed,you know, yeah, we went to see,
we went to see Noughts and Crosses at Regency Outdoor
Theatre. And afterwards we met the cast
and the boys were so fascinated,saying stuff like, you know,
when you kissed on stage, was itreal?
How do you not fall in love? You know, really sort of sweet,
naive questions. But I love to see it.
(44:40):
I love to see young black boys feeling welcome to explore and
welcome to feel intrigued by a space that wouldn't
traditionally be in. So where do you see yourself in
that whole masculinity projection?
You know, how important is it for you to sort of be in that?
(45:01):
Well, I would love to be, I would really love to be, you
know, a role, a positive role model to young men.
Sometimes I think about it very consciously and then other times
I just try to let my work do thetalking.
But it is absolutely important to me.
You know, I think that it's not been a great few years for men,
(45:22):
you know, really so many of the kind of modern day evils we can
trace back to bad men. And you know, it does start
somewhere young boys in, in the UK don't have.
I've not been given exercises like the ones I was in school
where it was like, how do you, how is yourself esteem?
Where are you on this tree? And so it's up to kind of young
(45:43):
men like myself, I think to provide those sort of thoughtful
opportunities and to kind of like interrogate the bombardment
of ideas they're being given from very sort of right wing
manosphere influencers. So yes, it is a goal of mine and
it's something that I would liketo leave behind.
I I would love for, you know, one or two boys in future to be
able to go many two hours like agood blueprint of, you know,
(46:07):
getting your head down working something you believe in sort of
peddling A predominantly positive message.
And I reckon I'm going to, I'm going to try that.
Sounds like Britain could learn from a Zimbabwean education.
Hey, you said it. Manya, thank you very much
indeed. Thank you man, it's been a
pleasure. I hope you enjoyed that.
You can watch all of these interviews on the Channel 4 News
YouTube channel. Until next time, bye bye.
It's hard to watch the news and not feel depressed or anxious or
miserable or have what I call apocalypse anxiety.
The news will constantly reinforce that feeling.
No shade. And so for me it's just about
providing a counter narrative which says, OK, even if these
things are happening, let's at least find some humour within
(00:20):
that reality. You talked about the George
Floyd aftermath, Black Lives Matter.
To what extent do you think we are now in a sort of a backlash
to that period? I'm sort of just advocating for
a world in which we're not beingknobs to each other.
Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.
I'm Christian Gary Murphy, and this is the podcast in which we
(00:41):
talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their
lives and the events that have helped shape them.
My guest this week is a satiristwho became famous on social
media, but he's now very big on television and is also doing
stand up on stage. In fact, he's also making making
serious documentaries, includingabout his own origins in
(01:02):
Zimbabwe, where he grew up. Munya Chihuahua, welcome to Ways
to change the world. Thank you very much.
I'm excited. How do you want to change the
world? That's a big old question, but
I, I was thinking about it and Iwould really love us to sort of
get back to a time where we're more sort of in touch with our
(01:22):
instinctual human empathy. You know, it's so crazy now just
looking at the political and social landscape and seeing how
something as arbitrary, as rightand wrong have now been sort of
reskinned as political opinions.It's so strange to me.
You know, the leaders we have inpower, the policies they put
out. I think we just need to scale
(01:44):
back and go back to a time wherewe really tap into human
instinct about how would I like to be treated and how do I want
to treat others. I mean, in, in a, in a social
media world and you're, and you're a success story of, of
that world, you know, empathy oremotion is, is a really
important part of it. But is there, is that the human
empathy you're talking about? Because what social media does
(02:06):
is it kind of like organises people into emotional responses
to things and turns them into tribes.
It's slightly different to sort of a face to face emotional
empathy, isn't it? I mean, it's, it's absolutely
the right observation. You know, that the talk about,
you know, tribes when I was doing my, you know, psychology
degree, we talk about the in Group and the out group.
(02:28):
And it's almost always the case that the out group sort of are
oppressed by the in Group. That's just the natural dynamic
for me at least, social media started out as like an
arrangement of tribes where there wasn't necessarily any
conflict between them. You know, it was more this idea
of if you go on social media, you can just pick one of the in
groups. Whereas now it's sort of the
(02:48):
balance is turning so that it's like, where are the out groups
that we can now unite against? You know, what are the
minorities that we control? We can bully and we can, you
know, bombard with sort of bots.So yeah, the we, we have become
more tribal, you know, in a, in a social media landscape and,
you know, even doing satire online, because for me, I always
(03:10):
did satire as a means of kind ofexpressing frustration I was
seeing in regards to sort of power dynamics or politicians
stepping out of line or doing things that felt so obviously
wrong. And I think the reason I had so
much success with it is because people felt seen when I did call
out a politician who was kind ofwas not abiding by their duty as
(03:34):
an elected leader. We all felt on the same side.
We all sort of felt this joint collective feeling of anger and
frustration. But now, because the lines
between right and wrong have been blurred, there's now more
of a discourse in comments wherepeople go, is there a right or
wrong? Or is right just an opinion you
know is the right thing? Is it this situation?
Just your opinion. I mean, your your comedy became
(03:55):
popular during a particular phase of chaotic British
politics from, you know, from the various different
conservative administrations, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, all
of that COVID, Matt Hancock. I mean, how, how, how, how
reliant were you on politics in this country being crazy and and
(04:20):
funny? Oh, I mean massively, but not
necessarily deliberately. More so just because I wanted to
satirise the world in front of me.
And so much of it was to do withpolitics.
And COVID was the first time I think your every man realized,
oh, this is how politics affectsme.
A politician can say something and I can't go to my granddad's
(04:41):
funeral. A politician can say something
and suddenly I can't be in a room with more than seven
people. So in some ways it was a really
beneficial, it was a really beneficial part of British
history because it was a time when people maybe who are
typically politically apathetic suddenly realized the
implications of, for example, voting or being engaged with
politics. And, you know, it makes me it,
(05:03):
it makes me chuckle when people will sort of jump in my comments
and it's only ever a few people,but they'll be like, you know,
this left TOEFL Ghisling wokey or whatever.
And I sort of think I don't really know if I'm, you know,
left or right. Like I, I don't really align
myself with any position on thatspectrum.
It was just the case that all the politicians who were messing
up on a colossal level were on the right.
(05:26):
And so that's a coincidence thatI can't help now that things,
you know, now that Labour and Keir Starmer are in power, I've
got no problem criticizing. Is it as easy now to to be a
satirist with with this lot in power?
Hell no. Well, obviously you have to be
more nuanced in the in the satire you do make.
But I think for me, like, what'sbeen more important than, you
(05:50):
know, just making the funniest joke is kind of creating content
that gives people a space in which they feel, you know, seen.
I went to university, I did psychology.
And I only took on that degree because I kind of thought at the
end of it, I would be able to sit, you know, opposite someone
on the couch and just listen to them and know what to say to
make them feel better, You know,Munya.
(06:12):
Munya is a Zimbabwean name, and Zimbabwean names have meaning.
And my name actually means comforter because at the time I
was born, my dad's mum passed away and that was something I
was told very early on. So in a way maybe it's like a
sort of self fulfilling prophecy.
But I I get a lot of gratification from providing
comfort. And it just turns out that
satire has been an unexpected way in which I've been able to
(06:34):
do that. That's really interesting then.
So your your comedy is a way of comforting people.
Just just unpack that for me a bit.
Well, for instance, maybe it's also indicated by the the topics
I don't cover. You know, sometimes, for
example, a story will come out and I actually don't know what
the right thing to say or I don't know a way in which to
(06:55):
make people feel better about it.
And so rather than sort of the vanity of being like, well, come
on, you know, I'm a satirist. I'm going to find one way or
another. I just asked myself, right, Is
the comedy I produce from this going to make people feel better
or worse? And if the answer is worse, then
I'd rather step away from it. Which sort of reminds me that
actually the goal is to try and make people feel better.
(07:16):
I always think about it like I'mtrying to take the sting out of
something which actually is quite difficult to digest or,
you know, quite painful or as you know, it has like a certain
sting to it. My goal is that you could
mention a political figure or a certain policy which previously
depressed you or made you miserable and then think, ah,
but did you see that funny videowhen you did about it?
(07:38):
You know, it's like, you know, providing an antidote to what
feels like just this bombardmentof bad news.
I mean, let's go back to childhood then.
I mean, you mentioned Zimbabwe. What was your family background?
You know what's what? Was your life there?
So I was born in Derby and I don't really remember anything
(08:00):
about being in Derby other than being in love with Baby Spice
and I used to my parents say I used to wait for her.
I used to stand on the pavement every day after nursery just
waiting for her, thinking she was just going to pull up and we
were going to get married. So that's my only memory of
Derby. That's not me calling out to
Baby Spice, but that that is what happened.
(08:22):
And then we moved to Zimbabwe. And we moved there for my dad's
work. And all I can remember about
that place is just feeling like my spirit was totally, you know,
connected to the place. Zimbabweans, for all that you
may have heard or seem, you know, portrayed, are just the
best people, supernaturally comedic, very warm with one
(08:45):
another. I remember actually being a kid,
and we were walking home from school and I saw two men holding
hands. I was probably about, you know,
6 or 7. And I said, like, dad, how come
those men are holding hands? And he was just like, because
they're just great friends. That's what great friends do in
Zimbabwe. It was just a totally innocuous
act where people physically wanted to show how, you know,
(09:07):
connected what they were to others.
And I love that about the place.And I always tell people one
thing I also remember about Zimbabwe's or what was
Zimbabwe's schooling is that a self esteem or self worth was
like a vital part of the curriculum we were taught.
I always remember this image they had of this huge, I think
it was like a baobab tree, this huge enormous trunk and dotted
(09:29):
along various positions of the tree with like these, these
Jelly men, these figures, right?They look like Jelly babies.
And some were like, some were like proudly posed at the top of
the tree, some were hanging froma branch somewhere at the bottom
looking, you know, disheartened.And the teachers would say, you
know, which, which, which one are you?
And as kids, we were sort of thinking that forced us to think
about things like self worth, self actualisation, where we
(09:52):
are, where we want to be. And that that stuff has really
stuck with me. The culture shift from England
made meant I needed that kind ofbattle armour just to make it
through the culture shock. So were you an English boy
growing up in Zimbabwe or, or were you a Zimbabwean boy?
I mean, I was just down for whatever adventures were on
(10:12):
offer. You know, what I loved about
Zimbabwe is there's no health and safety.
So if you wanted to, I remember once my sister and I watched a
programme which someone bungee jumped, right.
So I thought that bungee jumpingis just done with the normal
rope. So I just climbed a tree in the
garden and tied it around my waist and then jumped out of the
tree. Obviously the rope doesn't, you
(10:32):
know, doesn't bounce. So then I was just suspended
like an ornament from the tree hanging by my waist.
But you know what, you were allowed to do that.
Zimbabwe. To me, the unofficial motto felt
like if you want an adventure, just go have the adventure.
So I really did feel like I adopted the spirit of the of the
country. Were you aware of all the
(10:52):
political controversy around thetime as well?
And Mugabe. And no.
That's it. In fact, that's musical.
Violence, basically. Yes, that was the I we, we would
do drills at school where they would say if anything happens,
obviously we didn't know what anything alluded to.
Well, that was euphemism for getunder the desks, we're going to
barricade the door. Something, something politics.
(11:14):
That's all I remember hearing. And then the story goes, well,
there's, there's two, there's two parts of the story.
The first thing I would significantly remember is I'd
have this ice cream box full of,of coins, pocket money, right?
And my sister would always be spending hers on XYZ.
And I would save mine thinking, you know, if I save up enough,
I'm going to be able to get this, that.
(11:35):
And I remember one day my mum walked into my room and she saw
me putting money into my, my little Piggy Bank.
And she said, don't even bother because tomorrow it's going to
be worth nothing. So I'm thinking, no, this is
actually a harsh life lesson. Like what do I do to upset my
mum's? Now I understand it was the
hyperinflation to the point where you could buy a loaf of
(11:57):
bread in the supermarket and by the time you get to the tilt,
the bread's gone up in price. That's the level of inflation
we're talking. So you know, here in UK when we
say there's terrible inflation, it means Alfredo has gone up by
20 P. So that was the first memory.
And then the second one is I just remember coming home from
school. I'm getting ready for the last
week of of term before I go to high school.
You know, in my mind, this is going to be where my life
(12:19):
begins. I'm going to join the basketball
team. I'm going to get a girlfriend.
I'm going to be like a Zimbabwean, you know, Zac Efron
in High School Musical. And my parents just go, we're
leaving. Pack your things, pack like
we've got to go. Because at the time for them,
the, the, the price, the plane tickets to go to England were
obviously increasing everyday and the money they had to buy
(12:40):
the tickets was decreasing. So it was literally get out, go.
And then it's only I only got closure for that when I did my
first documentary, How to Survive a Dictator, which the
whole mission of that was to go back and figure out who, who was
Mugabe? Why was it?
Why did we have to leave in sucha an urgent panic?
Why do we have to abscond in thenight?
Who was this man? What had been happening whilst I
(13:01):
was oblivious as a kid? And that was my closure.
I. Mean why had they gone there in
the 1st place? I mean, it was just an odd
directions move from Britain to Zimbabwe.
It's my, where my, my dad was from.
And I think when, when you are faced with the, the constant
grey skies and whatever was happening in England at the
time, obviously he was very proud of his country the same
(13:24):
way I'm proud of it. And in his mind, taking a young
family there and, you know, taking his wife there was like a
sort of almost utopia in comparison.
And it was, you know, I was so happy there.
And that's my favorite. You know, my childhood is the
thing I protect most fairly. That meant that the fiercely,
the memories and the learnings Ihave from that.
So I think it made 100% the right choice.
(13:46):
And obviously, politics has always been volatile, you know,
in many African countries. But at the time, it was liveable
when we moved there, you know? Almost as volatile as Britain
during the post Brexit years. Yeah.
So, so when you came here back, I mean how, how bewildering was
(14:07):
Britain? Britain was, I mean, look, I'm
half British, right? But I wasn't equipped with the,
you know, just the, the natural flow of life here.
So for example, when I was getting ready to move to
Zimbabwe, to England, all of my friends said, you know, in
England they throw chairs at teachers.
That was like the rumour that went around Zimbabwe schools.
(14:27):
That's normal. This is poppycock.
I get to the school within two weeks.
I've seen a chair fly across theroom at the English, at the
English teacher. It was just such a culture
shock. It was just like a very, I'd
gone from like this very sort ofinterconnected supportive
network of classmates where, youknow, it was in Zimbabwe.
(14:47):
You know why we used to get detentions?
We used to get detentions because if the teacher asked a
question, people were so keen toanswer would stick up our hands
and start clicking at the teacher for her to pick us so
that we could answer the question.
So now I come to England, right,And the teacher asked a simple
maths question and my hand goes up.
I look around, there's no hands up.
Next thing I know I'm Public Enemy number one.
(15:08):
People are calling me a boffin. I'm thinking what's a boffin?
It sounds like one of them things that Harry Potter catches
in Quidditch. I'm thinking what's going on
here? And the most distinctive memory
I felt, and it is, you know, thinking back at it, I feel
quite sad, is I felt like I had to tuck in my extroversion and
my desire to be academic, you know, because I wasn't being
(15:28):
academic to spite anyone. It was just that I would, I
would train to think that was a valuable asset.
And you know, the, the school that I went to, I can remember
it being very similar to the, tothe school you see in
adolescence. I think it's episode 2 where
they go to the school. And so many people were struck
by that, so many parents becausethey thought surely this can't
be the way the schools are. It's like it's like a jungle in
(15:50):
here. And that I, I remember feeling
like that it was, it was a good school, but I just remember it
was unruly because, you know, inZimbabwe you start messing up.
You, you know, you start messingaround.
The teacher can pull out a cane.You know, there's no problem
with, you know, if you went homeand said, Mum, the teacher
smacked me, you get more smacks.It's like a multiplier on your
smacks. So, you know, we had a good
(16:11):
system of discipline. So, so that self-confidence that
you would learn in Zimbabwe, youbasically had to put away a.
100%, you know, I the, you know,I would get, I would get bullied
for, you know, trying to take part in class.
You know, if the drama teacher said right, I want everyone to
do a performance or music, I want everyone to try and play
this little piece on. I would do the task thinking
that's the way to avoid trouble and I would be bullied for the
(16:32):
task. So I absolutely tried to just
tuck in my personality and, and,and put my light under a lamp
and, you know, to keep my head down, keep my nose clean.
And, you know, comedy really wasa resurgence of who I really AM.
And it's taken a lot of time to tease that out of myself.
(16:52):
You know, this is not me saying,you know, well, it's me.
I came to England. It was horrible.
I'm just stating the facts because, you know, I was, I was
a student trying to do well and I was bullied.
And that was just a cultural shift.
So how how did the real you start coming out again?
I mean you know the the performer in you if you like.
Well, I was making videos onlinethat of, of about things that
(17:13):
interested me. You know, Jamie Oliver at the
time had released his jerk rice.Theresa May was exhibiting
inhumanly stiff dance moves whilst on a trip to Africa.
All of these things I found fascinating and I made videos
about them because they made me laugh.
Then all of a sudden you you, you find this magnetic force of
these videos pulling in people from all over.
(17:35):
But were you trying to get a following?
Were you trying to become? It was a bit famous on social
media. Yeah, it was a bit of both.
I, I really enjoy the feeling ofkind of skewing so things that
people cared about socially. But whilst trying to pursue a
career in television as a presenter, I was told by
commissioners, oh, look, we, we can see you can present, but
(17:56):
you're nobody. You need to go out there and
build a profile, you know, whichis why, you know, sometimes it's
funny to me when when people do try to, you know, box me in as
a, you know, TikTok or a social media star.
Because in my mind, I'm thinkingI only had to join social media
because TV commissioners were saying, if you don't forget
having a job in in television. So it was a little bit of both.
(18:16):
But I enjoyed comedy was connecting me with people I
could never dream of having met in the street.
You know, I remember like Armando, Armando Iannucci met
was, was retweeting my videos and I would hear so much about
him growing up, his work and hismind as a satirist and getting a
cosine like that, you know, celebrities that I've grown up
(18:39):
idolising all of this kind of thing, people from all different
academic fields, which was, you know, an academic approval I had
I'd been sort of starved of since joining school.
And I just realised the sort of connecting power of comedy.
I mean, you, you've sort of gonefrom being an insurgent on
social media to gradually being embraced by the comedy
establishment. Do you feel part of it now?
(19:01):
I do, I do and I don't because in some ways there was like a
that for a long time there's been like this sort of
schadenfreude between social comics and stand ups in that,
you know, social will look at the kind of the art form of
stand up and go, you know, why would I bother doing that?
You know, there's just old guys getting on stage every evening.
(19:21):
And then vice versa, you know, stand up comics who are, you
know, OG's in the game will lookat those on socials and think,
you know, you're just taking theshortcut.
And I encountered a lot of that when I started doing stand up.
But the very reason I started stand up is because, you know, I
really would love to be one of the best comics.
And I understand the, you know, the graft and the kind of the
art form. And I want to respect the art
(19:43):
form. So I was only gigging and I was
going to places where I was enlisted and stuff where I would
have happily been heckled and, you know, had a pint of Stella
thrown over me if that's what ittook to kind of earn my stripes.
So for me personally, I really admire all forms of comedy.
And do you feel that sort of social media is is choking off?
The kind of comedy that you weredoing.
(20:04):
I mean, we had Stuart Lee here recently.
Oh, yeah, I love that. Who was saying, you know, that
the comedians who had built their careers on social media
were we're we're dead because social media has been now, you
know, taken over, weaponized, now openly biased and is choking
off sort of anything that's sortof perceived as left wing or
local socially aware and is amplifying right wing messages.
(20:27):
Yeah, I think that's true. There's an element of truth in
that. And I think Stuart was was
dropping gems so, so many of thethe the points he was making
were so sort of on the on the money.
But I have found that while someof my content definitely has
been censored, and then I've been put on a sort of
metaphorical naughty step after some sketches, which is crazy.
Like what? OK, so for example, I made a
(20:51):
sketch about Trump selling his own action figurine.
And I remember I dropped the video, and it was just radio
silence. Because remember, even if you
drop a terrible video, it's still going to get engagement
because people are going to tellyou it's terrible, right?
You know, people are going to give you that slap on the wrist,
but there was just nothing. And I thought, OK, let me keep
(21:13):
it up for 24 hours. Maybe it's just a slow Newsday.
Maybe people are out in the sun.And the next day I had a
notification from the social media app saying, oh, your, your
video's been taken down for using copyrighted music.
Bearing in mind 2-3 years I've been making music on my videos,
you know, parodying popular songs, you know, Matt Hancock,
(21:33):
Shaggy, It wasn't me, this that the other, none of them have
ever been taken down. And it was the first and only
time I've ever had that message pop up.
And for the next few days, all of my analytics and my
engagement on everything Rock bottom.
And the maddest thing was I was trying to promote, promote a
show that week. And that was the first time I
thought, wow. That's censorship.
(21:54):
Yeah, because I'm, I'm not someone who sort of buys into
the, you know, I'm not someone who, if a, if a video on social
media doesn't do well, I go, I'mbeing censored.
You know, they're trying, they're trying to, you know,
they're trying to muffle me fromspeaking my truth.
You know, I roll with the punches.
But this just felt bleedingly obvious.
So, So what does that mean for for you?
Does that mean you've got to getaway from reliance on these
(22:16):
platforms? And, you know, is that why
you're sort of now focused on TVand stage?
I have not experienced any significant drop in the traction
of my satire. You know, even after lockdown,
if it was like a sort of flavourof the month type thing, you
would expect there to be some sort of decline.
Whereas actually, you know, my following has continued to grow.
(22:37):
Some of the biggest videos I've had have been this year.
And what that tells me is even though there's an extremely loud
minority, there is a majority ofpeople who still kind of abide
by the principles of right and wrong and calling out stuff that
seems so obviously wrong. Who will gather almost in like a
sort of a town square, which thevideos represent to, to just say
(23:01):
I feel the relief in that. You can see this too.
I'm glad we can all recognise this.
Thankfully I have not been centred to the point where I
can't even express express a differing opinion.
If I was in America, I don't know what that's like.
And what do you mean when you say you know your comedy is
about you know you want people to feel seen?
Well, it's, it's the feeling of it's hard not to watch the news
(23:26):
and it's hard to watch the news and not feel depressed or
anxious or miserable or have what I call apocalypse anxiety.
I don't know if I've entered thephrase.
I hope so because I'm going to cash that in.
But when I made my second documentary, which was about Kim
Jong Un and the threat that he, you know, whether the
documentary was an investigationas to whether this is a man who
(23:46):
at any second will press the bigred button and then the world, I
was really utilising this term apocalypse anxiety, which just
is this impending feeling of doom that the world is on the
brink of ending. The news will constantly
reinforce that feeling. No shade.
And so for me, it's just about providing a counter narrative
which says, OK, even if these things are happening, A, there
(24:10):
is good news here, here and here.
Here are small pockets of light.But B, if this is our reality,
let's at least find some humour within that reality.
The same way that, you know, in 1984, you know, the main
character, you know, absconds tothis secret den with his lover
just to find the simple pleasures to acknowledge
actually that that we're, we're shrouded in this very depressing
(24:33):
orb of our reality. But we have to find the light
within that. That's what I would like my
comedy to do. Yeah.
I mean, it serves another purpose as well potentially,
doesn't it? In that, in that it's, it
suggests that things aren't quite as catastrophic.
You know if if you can laugh at things, if you can have the time
to laugh at things, you you can reveal you can take away their
(24:55):
power. Oh, massively.
Look it it, it is the dichotomy.It's as simplistic as the
dichotomy of if you don't laugh,you cry.
You know, at any one point my output on stage, on social
media, on a show like this can either make you feel worse about
the world or slightly better. So if anything, I I, I obtain a
bit of, I obtain a bit of purpose from thinking I am the
latter, you know? And and so how?
(25:20):
I mean, you, you're not tribal, you say politically, but you
are, I suppose, progressive. Yeah.
I, I I. Think so?
I'd like to think so. Yeah, you know, I mean, you, you
poke fun at sort of at racism and sexism, all sorts of things.
So. But does that mean that your
audience is woken progressive, basically.
Well, for example, let's talk about the debut show that I
(25:42):
made, right? So it was a non scripted show
that YouTube commissioned and itwas called Race Around Britain,
right? And it was an exploration as to
what Britain knows about black culture following a very tense
period after the George Floyd protests.
Now, I had no intention to make a finger wagging programme
(26:03):
because I would like to make comedy that kind of invites
people in. And so when we did these
episodes, we went to, for example, Kent and we asked
people what they knew about sortof black cuisine by hosting A
spoof cookery show called the Great British Jerk Off, which
you probably won't be able to Google Now due to the Online
(26:23):
Safety Act. But you know, it was that kind
of thing. It was like a, for example, when
when we went through this periodwhere tabloids were constantly
accidentally confusing black celebrities in front of their
papers, we got Man City fans into a room telling them they
were going to meet Raheem Sterling.
Then just found this guy that looked nothing like Raheem
(26:44):
Sterling and had him sat signingbooks with these fans.
And all of the fans went, that'snot Raheem Sterling.
And we were like, well, if you can tell, why can't established
journalists tell? And then the people would go,
maybe, maybe it's deliberate then just bringing people around
to the idea of kind of, you know, racial politics and maybe
institutional racism through their own discovery and through
(27:06):
comedy. And the the the magnum opus of
the show was exploring this ideaof white privilege, which, you
know, was really pertinent term at the time, by investigating,
for example, right. Black musicians who make drill
music are being demonized and, you know, stifled.
A lot of them are getting, you know, sort of police
investigations. If 3 white ladies named Karen
(27:28):
made a drill song, if the theoryof white privilege is correct,
then the song should perform extremely well and people should
actually celebrate the song. So found I held a Karen
convention of women named Karen and then picked 3 three of the
most Karenist Karens and got them to record a drill song.
We put the drill song out and in24 hours it had a million views.
(27:50):
And off the back of that those ladies said, I, I kind of, I
kind of get it, you know, and that's all it was.
It was just inviting people in to make their own discovery and
then hopefully go out and spreadthe good word.
So if you want to call that, forexample, liberal or
left-leaning, maybe it falls within that categorisation.
(28:12):
But my intent whilst making the show was not let me make a show
like that. It was just let me make a feel
good show. And, and how much sort of quiet
anger is there behind your ideas?
You know, when you look at, are you sort of trying to hit
something that that annoys you about society or are you doing
something else? Yeah, that's a great question.
(28:34):
Well, I don't feel like an angryperson, but I feel like a person
who, and maybe it comes from theexperience of bullying.
You can be bullied and not necessarily instantly feel like
you want to punch the person in the face, but you can know
something. An injustice has been committed
against you. And I think that's how I have
always been. You know, I've had a lot of
(28:54):
bullies throughout my life. I've never punched any of them
in the face. I don't know, think I've ever
even punched anyone, right. But I, I, I felt anger and I
felt sadness and I felt upset. And my vehicle to kind of
getting around that has often been sort of like a more witty
and intellectual approach to, you know, how, how do I, how do
I showcase? How do I show these are the bad
(29:15):
guys and show there are more good guys than bad guys?
And and so is the bullying just a childhood thing or is that?
I I think predominantly, yes. And that's the, the, the, that's
the bullying we all remember. Yeah.
You know, did you get bullied? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I, I did try and punch
back once. Unfortunately I had a broken arm
(29:37):
at the time so it was possibly the worst.
And your instinct was the time with the broken arm.
No, I tried to punch with the other arm, but it was, it was
not a good time to have the one fight that I had decided to pick
with the school bully. And, and I, if I've talked about
this before, is it He did actually.
He became a teacher bully and hewrote to me after his training
(29:59):
to apologise and I ignored it. And do I not reply?
I respect that. That is better than a broken
armed punch. Let me tell you that.
But you can agree that bullying is a, you know, very formative
experience. And even if you're someone who
doesn't necessarily sort of wallow in it, I, I, I, I don't
know whether I've been on a showor a podcaster mentioned it,
(30:19):
right? Because, you know, I don't feel
like it's a key part of my story.
But actually, when I look back and I think about what made me
me as an entertainer, that definitely plays a big role, you
know, and it how it, it brought me a lot of solutions to, to
problems I had. I think having to work through
that experience as a kid becauseyou're just confused and you
don't know what it means. But it's a very early
(30:40):
introduction to the fact that there may be people in life who
may be the going to become politicians, teachers, important
figures, who, you know, but who,who, you know, impose their will
and their policy through bullying.
You know, and I guess it's just about how do you stand up to
bullying as you get older? So as as you as you are now sort
of in, in the TV industry to a large degree, you know what,
(31:03):
what do you think of TV comedy? I mean, you know, lots of people
are very worried about TV comedybeing, you know, less risk
taking, less innovative, you know, British comedy used to be,
you know, world leading. Yeah.
Is it still? Yeah, well, I remember very
early on in my career, whilst things were still, whilst I had
(31:25):
a lot of traction and momentum, still pitching a sketch show and
being told by the commissioners in the room.
Oh, you know, British TV doesn'treally do sketch shows.
Like there's not really a cultural or an appetite for
sketch shows. And I'm thinking, bro, we had a
trade, sorry, big trade. We had Mitchell and Webb, We had
(31:45):
all these amazing sketch shows. Like what are you talking about
with the Ogs, with the with the sketch originators and feeling
like maybe we're just going through a phase.
If we are going through a phase.What I am most excited about is
social media and comics on social media are having a field
day with just having great ideasand making them happen.
(32:06):
I saw a group of young boys who made their own travelogue
because basically they were all from different parts of the
world and they made they, they got a couple of handheld cameras
and they decided to do a travelogue in which they each
visited each of their home countries.
And it blew up on socials and everyone went, this should be on
TV. And it's like, yeah, perhaps it
should be on TV, but what you'rewatching right now is TV, just
(32:29):
not on a television. So I would, I love the fact that
there are no gatekeepers now, that you are not looking for
that one person to give you the green light to make your idea.
When I started out, you know what I used to do?
I used to, because I thought I need an agent to make TVI would
e-mail agents saying I was IdrisAlbertson because, you know, in
(32:51):
Gmail, it's got that tiny littlepicture of you.
I thought if they just see one drop of melody, they might think
it's true. And I would get in the room.
I would get in the room and thenit would just be a never ending
sequence of impressing the rightperson.
And if at any point during that journey I dropped the ball, that
was my chance to make ATV show gone.
So I would like to think that the, the tenacity and the the
(33:13):
the sheer kind of volume of great ideas we see on social
media will ignite something backin traditional television.
That we will start to work more with those people, that those
young boys will get their own show.
And if that takes a while, that's fine because they're
still honing their craft as theygo along.
But I think that TV has to change.
I mean, it's about money largely, isn't it?
Because when you make ATV program, the resources thrown
(33:36):
into it are huge by comparison to you making your first videos.
Totally, yeah. And that seems to be sort of the
the hurdle between sort of commissioning programmes because
they cost money. Do we we need to find a way of
making things that don't cost much money?
Are they or? We can.
Well, look, there are various ways of doing that.
You know, I'm not an expert in television scheduling, but you
(33:59):
know, if we're having 70 series of something or it's the same
rinse and repeat format, yes, it's a surefire.
But that is sort of just clinging to what is safe and you
know what the status. I mean when you started, I mean,
The thing is your videos were very high production.
Values. Oh yeah, totally.
So how how did you achieve that kind of feel on presumably no
(34:20):
budget? How to spend money, you know,
these videos they cost, you know, they cost money like, and
it's, it's crazy because so manyof the platforms don't allow you
to monetise, right. But with my videos, you know,
I'm, I'm paying editors if I, I pay animators, if I'm working
with another writer on a really big story, you know, they get
(34:40):
paid as well. So effectively, we're running
our own production companies. I have a production company in
order to, to continue my output.So, you know, that's what we can
achieve on 1/10 of, of telebudgets.
So it's not as if we're saying, please give us the budget of a
traitors or, or what not. It's just just something more to
take A to contact people alreadylike to a slightly higher level.
(35:03):
And do you think that the opportunity is there for for
other young people who want to do this or, or were you a
creature of a moment in which social media was open and you
know, was an opportunity and that that's that's a moment
that's passed? Oh, dude, yeah, social media,
that door is still wide open. If you turned to me after this
podcast and said, Munya, I'm actually a sick dancer, you
(35:24):
could upload a TikTok of you throwing it back today.
And that's the beginning of yourjourney, you know, and you'll
build from there. So that door is still wide open.
And that's why I think it's justan amazing creative democracy at
the moment where if you've got agood idea, social socials will
decide whether it's going to flyor not.
And that's a great impetus to just keep trying new things.
(35:44):
And that for me, is how TV used to feel.
Sure, maybe not. Maybe some of the programs were
clangers. But I remember a time, you know,
you could turn on TV. And, you know, some of the early
shows I remember of watching when I was a kid in Zimbabwe on
British TV were things like, youknow, Laddet to Lady Faking It
was another show, you know, justvery simple concepts.
But I remember laughing my head off and it drew the family to
(36:07):
the couch. Some of those shows were were
risky and were stupid and were mischievous.
But I think that's what I loved about TV then, you know?
Now you, you talked about that, that period during COVID and the
George Floyd aftermath, Black Lives Matter.
It was quite important for your growth and giving you stuff to
talk about. To what extent do you think we
(36:28):
are now in a sort of a backlash to that period?
Well, the pendulum, OK. So it definitely feels like, you
know, people are done with diversity in the sense that if
you look at sort of marketing, for example, or advertising
agencies, it's there has felt like a sort of collective exhale
(36:49):
where people feel they don't necessarily need to be very
inclusive anymore. A lot of Trump's policies seem
to be sort of giving that green flag to care less about, say,
minority or marginalised communities.
My feeling towards that is it's sad in so much as I don't think
(37:10):
that movement was ever about saying please give us
opportunities for the sake of it.
I always think that, for example, you know, when you
think about even an example likeThe Little Mermaid character,
when Hallie Bailey was was cast as The Little Mermaid and there
was this huge backlash of peoplesaying that she'd been selected
purely on the basis of her of her skin.
(37:32):
You know, Hallie's an incrediblesinger.
You know, there's every chance that she could have gone into
that audition room and just beenthe best auditionee.
She might have hit the notes better than anyone and, and
delivered the lines with a certain heft that just wasn't
mirrored in the room. There is a possibility that
people of colour or minorities are, are just good in the room
(37:52):
or are just the best in the room.
And so it feels sad to have perhaps removed the process by
which we even give them the chance to get in the room.
That's my sentiment. I, I, I've always sort of gone
by the idea that of course I want to, you know, I want to
earn whatever spot I have. And I would really, I would
really advocate that most peopleof colour or from minority
(38:12):
background also operate by the operate by the same logic.
It's like, give me a chance justso I can at least show you how
good I am. I, I always think of it like
this. When people used to argue online
or in person, you would disagreeon so many things, right?
But there was always this kind of thing I would always see come
up where people would be like, but Hitler was a bad guy, right?
(38:33):
People would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can agree on that.
Now it's like you're having an argument with someone and you
go, yeah, but Hitler was a bad guy, right?
And they're like, well, that is a mad state of play.
You know, that's a crazy place to be in, I think because we've
now start to go back in time andand think about things that we
felt collectively were subjectively wrong and go, but
(38:56):
was it wrong or are you just being woke?
And you know, woke is is such a funny word to me because
ordinarily, ordinarily it's a description of somebody telling
somebody saying something racist, misogynistic or just
sort of type thing. You shouldn't say.
You shouldn't be saying that. You know, almost always when you
hear that word, it's because someone's saying the wrong thing
(39:17):
is being told off. Yes.
And so, I mean, I mean, and, andobviously it's what political
correctness was in the 80s and 90s.
And it, it's not going to go away because there's always
going to be, you know, but it's going to have to find a new way
of describing itself, isn't it? I suppose.
Look, I mean, I think your average person on the street is,
(39:38):
is never shoving down the throattheir political ideology.
You know, I think sometimes whenwe talk about culture wars,
there's this feeling that peoplewho have slightly more liberal
ideas or on the left are absolutely insistent that you
believe or see things from wherethey see them.
(39:58):
You know, myself, I, I, I'm, I'msort of just advocating for a
world in which we're not being knobs to each other.
You know, I'm not going to forcethat on anyone, but ideally,
that's the world we'd be living in.
And I just think cultural, you know, culture wars were used as
a very effectively as a political tool by which
politicians could divert attention from stuff that really
(40:20):
matters. And like Stuart Lee was saying
on the episode you did with him,unfortunately, that box has now
opened. Maybe the politicians who
utilize culture wars thought they could shut the lid on it,
but now it's, it's out of control.
And so we can end up in a situation where instead of
figuring out realistic solutionsto get people housed and to
rebalance the economy, it's it's, it's about people's gender
(40:42):
and race and, and all of this, this stuff.
So does that leave you very pessimistic about the future
then? Well, I'm going to try and I
will. I mean, it's funny, you know,
because you, you say the news, the news is sort of apocalyptic,
correct? And as soon as you have a sort
of a serious conversation about anything, you end up in the same
zone. Well, we're just talking about
the layer of the land, you know,objectively we're looking at,
(41:05):
we're looking out and saying does anyone really feel good
about where we are right now? I don't think we do, but I will
try to continue to mine humour from that and also try to create
things in the world which advocate for more positivity,
you know, in different spaces. The projects that I will work on
now, I'm going to try and leave a little bit of light behind.
(41:25):
You know, weirdly, theatre is something that I have grown very
passionate about. It's a place that I seek
creative refuge, for example, when I, you know, struggle with
writer's block and stuff. And you know, I'm developing a
project in the theatrical space,which I would like to think is
going to instill install a massive kind of positive change
(41:46):
for the future generation of young black boys who are a
demographic that, you know, manytime we see portrayed in the
wrong light in press. You know I want to be part of
the solution to that. Yeah, I mean, you're, you're
organising a way for black boys to go to the theatre.
That's right. You know, this is not, you know,
in a world where we hear them interms like DEI and work this and
(42:07):
you know, you're excluding XY and Z group.
This is not about that at all for me.
It's about the it's that theatreactually is employing so many
incredible young Black actors atthe moment on stage.
Shooter Gatwa, who you may have seen as Doctor Who, Paparoseidu,
who's been cast as the new Snapein the upcoming Harry Potter
(42:28):
series, Just so much incredible young Black male talent is
taking centre stage because of what we spoke about earlier.
They're just fantastic. And I've been to see so many of
these plays and I look around and there's no young Black boys
in the audience and it makes me sad because we're always having
a conversation about where are the role models after
(42:48):
adolescence? People are asking, yes, but
where, where, where do our boys look when they go online?
All they see is Andrew Tate or XY and Z streamer.
And in my mind I'm thinking, well, actually a lot of these
role models are in theatre. And so I want to find a way to
reduce that gap between young black boys and the theatre.
You could say, for example, well, why not young white boys?
Absolutely fantastic point. Maybe one day it will expand
(43:11):
into that. But actually culturally within
the black community, sometimes arts are seen as being quite
whimsical. You know, there's the age-old
joke where you know if you tell a Nigerian or a Zimbabwe or a
gun and parent, I want to be an artist, I want to be an actor, I
want to be a dancer. You're instantly chastised as
not for not wanting to be a lawyer or a doctor.
You know, arts can be seen as quite flamboyant and sometimes
(43:33):
there is a stereotype amongst young black men that they'll be
ridiculed for attending. And so they just happen to be a
group who sort of really would benefit from a deliberate
introduction to theatre. And boys more than girls, yes,
need this kind of a focus. Only because of the, the
barricade that masculinity and young masculinity provides
(43:53):
between them and theatre. When I go to the theatre, I love
to see, you know, pairs and groups of young black women
going to watch Players. And I always do never see young
black boys. And when I ask the boys on my
trips, would you ever go with your boys to watch theatre?
Like, no, of course I wouldn't do that.
No, no way. I do that.
That's, you know, and I know what they want to say.
And it's like, OK, cool. How how do we change that?
So I think by going to the theatre and seeing actors laugh,
(44:18):
cry, fight scenes choreographed,you know, yeah, we went to see,
we went to see Noughts and Crosses at Regency Outdoor
Theatre. And afterwards we met the cast
and the boys were so fascinated,saying stuff like, you know,
when you kissed on stage, was itreal?
How do you not fall in love? You know, really sort of sweet,
naive questions. But I love to see it.
(44:40):
I love to see young black boys feeling welcome to explore and
welcome to feel intrigued by a space that wouldn't
traditionally be in. So where do you see yourself in
that whole masculinity projection?
You know, how important is it for you to sort of be in that?
(45:01):
Well, I would love to be, I would really love to be, you
know, a role, a positive role model to young men.
Sometimes I think about it very consciously and then other times
I just try to let my work do thetalking.
But it is absolutely important to me.
You know, I think that it's not been a great few years for men,
(45:22):
you know, really so many of the kind of modern day evils we can
trace back to bad men. And you know, it does start
somewhere young boys in, in the UK don't have.
I've not been given exercises like the ones I was in school
where it was like, how do you, how is yourself esteem?
Where are you on this tree? And so it's up to kind of young
(45:43):
men like myself, I think to provide those sort of thoughtful
opportunities and to kind of like interrogate the bombardment
of ideas they're being given from very sort of right wing
manosphere influencers. So yes, it is a goal of mine and
it's something that I would liketo leave behind.
I I would love for, you know, one or two boys in future to be
able to go many two hours like agood blueprint of, you know,
(46:07):
getting your head down working something you believe in sort of
peddling A predominantly positive message.
And I reckon I'm going to, I'm going to try that.
Sounds like Britain could learn from a Zimbabwean education.
Hey, you said it. Manya, thank you very much
indeed. Thank you man, it's been a
pleasure. I hope you enjoyed that.
You can watch all of these interviews on the Channel 4 News
YouTube channel. Until next time, bye bye.
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