Before his latest one-man show, White Whine, comedian, Deep Fried Man spoke to Helen Herimbi about comedy, complaints and Khanyi Mbau...
Deep Fried Man has a deep soft spot for Khanyi Mbau. For some reason, the actress whose life often makes for tabloid fodder always comes up in my conversations with the musical comedian whose parents named him Daniel Friedman.
This go-around, he tells me, “If I were friends with Khanyi on Facebook and had to say something about our relationship, I’d choose ‘it’s complicated’. I respect her in a way, but it’s not true what she said about me in her autobiography – about her nail being broken.”
Unfortunately, he won’t be expanding on this in his new oneman show, White Whine, at the Old Mutual Theatre On The Square in Joburg this month.
The pun in the title is obvious and Deep Fried Man says, “My first one-man show, Deeply Fried, was more quirky and weirder and more personal, but didn’t have a theme as such. This new show is based on what’s going on in South Africa.
“I’m looking at our cultures, it’s more political and it’s satire based on what’s going on around us.
“And, naturally, it’s about whining. That angle is more important than the flipside of the show’s title.
“I love wine,” says the guitar-wielding comedian. “One of my best friends is something of a wine connoisseur and he’s been trying to educate me about it, but I’m useless. I’m not fussy, I’ll buy anything under R50. It’s not like [if it’s expensive then] you take one sip of the stuff and your life changes. Maybe I just have a bad palate.”
Luckily for some comedy lovers, this former full-time journalist has a good way with words. Well, at least most people think he does. The ones who didn’t sent the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of SA his way.
Apparently, after DStv’s Comedy Central aired a clip of Deep Fried Man singing about small genitalia and rhyming it with Australia, “some people were offended about the small penis stereotype”. This comedian says: “People are so sen- sitive sometimes that they don’t even look at the concepts and comedy, but just that they don’t agree.”
He cites as an example a woman – so livid “she sent me like eight messages on Twitter” – who complained about his humorous, satirical apology for an apartheid song. But that hasn’t made him want to hang up his microphone quite yet. In fact, Deep Fried Man will bring his comic chops to Durban, Joburg and Cape Town next month and in November as a part of the Bafunny Bafunny comedy tour.
Before that though, inquiring minds must know, if Deep Fried Man were a wine, what would he be?
“I’d be a red. I don’t like white wine, it tastes too much like vine- gar. I’d be a flavour-filled, spicy red wine. No, in reality, I’d probably just be a Taffies (Tafelberg wine) really. Although,” he pauses, “Khanyi Mbau would probably say she doesn’t drink that.”
• See White Whine at the Old Mutual Theatre On the Square, Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton, on September 19-30. Tickets are available at www.strictlytickets.com