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Tahir Bilgic.
 While diehard Fat Pizza fans would be familiar with the character of Habib, most punters out there would love to know just who the flip Tahir Bilgic is. Well, the two are one and the same and the full-time stand up comedian, performer and all-round entertainer is part the nationally-touring comic showcase 'Show Us Your Roots!' a tour boasting the best and brightest of Australia's ethnic stand-up comedians and tying in with the DVD of the same name.
Bilgic hails from Turkey, familiar to most of us as the land of Delight. But there's much more to the country than a sickly sweet jelly confection. Bilgic is passionate about showcasing comedians with an international flavour to them to broaden people's minds about racial and cultural stereotypes, as well as generally just get a good laugh. To that end, I'm on the phone with Bilgic - only to find a rather strange sound sensation to his voice. "I'm actually in a toilet at the moment, so I must apologise for all the echoing in here!"
Fortunately we here at dB Magazine are sturdy folk, not averse to taking interviews in any shape or form, so it's full steam ahead. How's Bilgic doing? "I'm feeling pretty good, we've just finished four weeks of filming overseas [with Fat Pizza] and then straight over here to film some more so I'm pretty tired," he responds, with an almost audible sigh.
I asked him how difficult it was to put the DVD together and how he went about organising the whole thing. "It's pretty cool, we didn't think it'd get to this DVD stage. The whole thing [the tour] kicked off a few years ago and the shows have been received really well, people are saying, 'We get a laugh, we get a story, we learn something at the same time,' so eventually through a series of shows in different cities it lead to doing something like this," he explains.
It's no easy task getting comedians on board for these sort of shows and it would take a lot of time to get clearance from each artist to have their material put onto a DVD. I ask how much input he got from the comedians themselves in getting this project together. "Basically we recorded everyone over the few years and then we chose the best nine and then they had a look, they're only showcasing ten or twelve minutes of their material. Then I helped to do all the links [commentary] in between and made up some improvisation so I had some input on there. Most people were pretty cool about it, although one or two didn't let us use the footage."
There's a dearth of comediennes on this DVD and I wondered whether this was really indicative of our society or just some sort of glaring omission on Bilgic's part. "Unfortunately in this country we have more male stand-ups than female. We did have Jackie Loeb [on the tour], who has an Israeli background, but obviously she must have not have agreed to do the DVD," he sighs. "It's a good point, but I'm not really sure if I can come up with a good answer to that one."
There are some familiar names on the DVD, including Dave Callan: genial bearded Irish host of Triple J's Graveyard Shift and now the Daytime Graveyard Shift on Sunday arvos. His ten minute routine is side-splitting in its oddball hilarity, explaining among other things why Irishmen aren't sexy (it's apparently the potatoes, and being drunk all the time). "Dave is a great comedian, he's very well received because he's such a lovable character on stage," Bilgic enthuses. "He's one of my favourites, I love listening to him even though I hear him night after night on the road."
Is the diverse line up on the DVD representative of Australia as a culture today? "I think so. People love that, when you turn up you want to hear this Vietnamese guy [Hung Le], like, 'What's he got to say?' or a Greek or Spanish bloke from different backgrounds. People have really commented on that, they've turned up and really learnt something about other Australians; I mean how often do you get to hear a Turkish comedian? You think, 'That's a bit weird; why isn't he running a kebab shop?'"
Lauren Boxhall
 | 'Show Us Your Roots' continues at the Dunstan Playhouse until Sat 14 Jan, and the 'Show Us Your Roots' DVD is out now through Acmec. |
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