Riaad Moosa answers the phone, and after a millisecond, it’s on to the laughs following the formalities of introductions.
The funny man is, er, really funny - on stage, off stage, and even talking into a phone from Heathfield to Blouberg.
“Okay, you can start the interrogation,” he says, explaining that his show at the CTICC this weekend will be his last “before the baby comes”.
“I have three children already and a foetus,” he says, adding
that his life is dominated by his “minions”.
“When I am away for more than a night my wife starts to get that glazed look in her eyes, so (here’s a tip), I need to be very systematic about my out-of-town trips and time them to fit in with the school runs - I can’t miss the school ferry!”
Moosa, as most people know, is a qualified doctor - with both parents medical practitioners. But, as he tells it, from an early age, while he may have been a quiet person (hard to believe), he always “did funny voices”.
In high school he literally started making magic after graduating from the College of Music, enchanting captive audiences with a special blend of magic and comedy.
Everybody got to know him and he was called on to perform at birthday parties. Tormented uncles, he says (of which there were many), asked him, “Hey, Mr Magician, you gonna make my wife disappear?”
It was as a fourth-year medical student that he saw the light.
“I saw my first stand-up comedy show and I was mesmerised.
“At kind of the same time, the Cape Comedy Collective came about.”
He doesn’t say it himself, but he proved to be an instant hit, and while the magic was part of the acts, he gradually made it disappear - along with his uncles’ nagging wives!
“I love writing jokes and performing them.
“It’s always a bit of a risk that what you think is funny may not be a success, but once people laugh, then you carry on. And one thing led to another and yes, I changed directions in my profession.”
Moosa is being quite modest - just two months after he started performing stand-up at the Cape Comedy Collective’s free Comedy Lab workshops, he was the winner of the hotly contested One City, Many Comics Talent Competition held as part of the One City Festival in 1999.
Being one of the first members of the Cape Comedy Collective, he became a regular headliner on the comedy circuit during his rookie year, when he was also invited to perform on Pieter Dirk Uys’s Evita Live and Dangerous e.tv comedy show.
Moosa is a regular headliner on comedy circuits all over South Africa, and was part of the largest stand-up show in the history of South African television, Laugh Out Loud, where he joined nine of the country’s top comics to raise half a million rand for the Reach for a Dream Foundation in 2002.
He has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and 10 years ago put on his first one-man show, Strictly Halaal, at the Nelson Mandela Civic Theatre, which played to packed houses there and in Durban and Cape Town.
Over the years there have been dozens of other sold-out shows, and he has put his experiences of child-rearing to good comedic use.
In Riaad Moosa For The Baracka, he demonstrated the adventures and misadventures, the pitfalls and pratfalls of raising his son in a world that appeared to be on the brink of disaster.
“And that’s not even counting the domestic woes of sleep deprivation, psychological torture and marital strife,” he says. “But in the end, maybe it was all just a blessing in disguise, a ‘baracka’ of sorts.” (Baracka means a blessing or gift in Arabic Muslim culture. Count yours, he advises.)
Moosa has starred in the award-winning movie Material, presented the popular health and fitness TV show Doctor’s Orders, and been in the acclaimed Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, playing the role of Ahmed Kathrada.
Now he’s back for one show only in Life Begins, on Saturday. His hilarious one-man show gives a snapshot into his life as a 40-year-old father, husband, comedian and actor, with all the cultural and political issues thrown in.
“It’s very personal,” he says. “I’m getting older - I’ve been married for 14 years and this also reflects how, even though I’m now 40, in many ways I feel like I’m still crawling, and I’m looking back at my journey from being an aspirational doctor to becoming a stand-up comedian.
“The show is very philosophical and existential,” he adds. “It involves the normal issues of getting older while at the same time experiencing, at a maturity where I’m supposed to be wise, a world that is completely turned on its head - with Trump, with Brexit, and in South Africa with state capture and FeesMustFall.
“And it’s about how I negotiate all these things happening around me while trying to maintain a positive attitude. Through my comedic lens I hope to put a different spin on that and hopefully my next 40 years will be lived with renewed vigour and excitement.” Watch him and learn.
* Life Begins is rated PG for language and takes place this Saturday at Auditorium 1 at the CTICC.
Doors open at 7.30pm and the show starts at 8.30pm. Tickets, from R150, are available at Computicket.