23-year old student Adriaan de Klerk (@droos009) won the laurels in the latest heat of Comedy Central’s amateur stand-up comedy contest. Joking his way through to the final of Comedy Central (DStv Channel 122)’s open mic challenge, a confident de Klerk beat 35 year old sound engineer Nkosana Twala during the event, staged at The Box Comedy Night (28 April).
De Klerk scored high marks from the judges and audience thanks to his cool, calm delivery, sharp observational humour and witty yarns, generating much merriment from a story about his experiences shopping at the China Mall, and his tightly constructed anecdote about the inherent racism in South African washing powder ads. Commented Evert van der Veer, Head of Comedy Central, Africa, “This week’s auditions was the best one yet: the venue was sold out and we had to turn people away at the door. Both our comic wannabes went in hard and brought their biggest guns to bear on a diverse audience of all ages, but in the end Adriaan had the edge in terms of comedy firepower.”
De Klerk joins Pretoria’s Mo Mothebe and Zakkiya Khan, Killarney’s Glen Biderman-Pam and Joburg’s Lumkile Tyese in the finale, to be held on 2 June. Five further finalists remain to be chosen in the weeks to come, with the ultimate winner getting their break at Comedy Central Presents…Live at Parker’s on 26 June, hosted by comedy legend Joe Parker. The episode featuring the winner will broadcast on Comedy Central on Friday 16 August at 20:55 CAT. Auditions for the Comedy Central talent search take place at The Box Comedy Nights, POPArt Theatre, (@POPArtJHB), Maboneng Precinct, Johannesburg every Sunday until 26 May. For your chance to try out your comedy skills before a live audience and to see if you have what it takes to make it on the stand-up comedy scene, go to http://www.comedycentralafrica.com and follow the application instructions.
