Malawi’s comedy export Daliso Chaponda is hosting free online comedy shows in a bid to lighten up the mood of his fans due to the devastating effects of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19).
Being streamed daily on Facebook, YouTube and Twitch, the comedian says the shows will run for “free until coronavirus is defeated”.
“I was happily doing my 60-city UK tour then coronavirus hit and the tour had to stop and because live audiences are a risk, all my shows were cancelled.
“Not to give in to despair, I started doing a daily comedy show streamed from my flat. It’s called the Coronacast Comedy show. Malawi comes up a lot,” he said in an interview.
Chaponda said the idea is to make people laugh for the next few months while dealing with the effects of Covid-19.
He said: “I have faith we will all get through it. Coronavirus has probably cancelled about 20 shows so far and will be around 20 more not happening this month because of no public gatherings. A few of those were TV and radio recordings too.
“But in the grand scheme of things, I’ve lost very little and a lot of comedians are doing far worse off. I at least had the privilege of not living gig to gig. It’s keeping me sane, helping a few people get half an hour of entertainment in this weird life we have found ourselves in.”
On the impact of the Coronacast Comedy shows, Chaponda said he is happy with it.
“I am entertaining about 2 000 people on average across all platforms. It’s a lot of work and also I have no idea of the ripple effects,” he said.
Besides the free shows, Chaponda has released his series; What the African Said for free on YouTube temporarily during the coronavirus pandemic. Usually, fans have to buy it off Amazon.
To keep the shows interesting, Chaponda has been challenging his fans on both Facebook and Twitter to suggest a topic and he will make it funny.
“I’ve written more jokes in the last 37 days than I have in some years. They are not all good, but there’s at least 10 minutes of solid material every day. Check out an episode or two,” he claims.
Some of the areas of interest from his fans both locally and internationally are football, love and politicians, among others.
One of this fans, Daniel Tatarsky, on Saturday wrote: “The Premier League being voided and Liverpool having waited 30 years to win it being denied.“ Chaponda has been doing the Coronacast Comedy shows for over a month with 38 episodes so far, as of yesterday.
