![]() (“The first thing I do when I get there is rent a bike and go around Stanley Park,” he says. (“the weather!”), is especially excited about his inaugural JFL performance taking place in Vancouver, his favourite Canadian city. Youssef, who says he loves living in L.A. And he has filmed a show called Ask Bassem, focusing on his passion for veganism and nutrition, for Saudi-owned television station Asharq. (Check out his mock commercial below on “Breathe Easy”, a Breathalyzer-type device that allows Americans to determine how radical their Muslim neighbours are, on a scale from “likes hummus” to “supporter of ISIS”.) Youssef is a published author, Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring having come out in 2017. His story is the subject of the 2017 documentary Tickling Giants. On Fusion Networks’ F-Comedy digital platform, he has hosted a series called The Democracy Handbook. Over the last several years in his adopted country, Youssef has served as a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F Kennedy School of Government, appeared as a Senior Middle East Correspondent on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and hosted the 2015 International Emmy Awards gala. So for the show, it doesn’t matter what they do or what their ethnicity or nationality is, because at the end of the day, we’re all travellers. “It’s relatable to people who may find themselves in very difficult situations, especially if they are always required to hold certain expectations when they want to do their own thing. “It’s a very personal story, but it’s also very relatable,” Youssef says. While his journey has been nothing if not remarkable, Youssef says that his show is, in fact, one that people can relate to. The year 2013 turned out to be a big one for other reasons: Youssef hosted Stewart on AlBernameg in Cairo was included on Time magazine’s most influential list under the “Pioneers” category received the International Press Freedom Award from Citizens for Public Justice and was named a global thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. He appeared opposite his idol on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 20. (“I’m happy people come to me at their best times, not at their worst,” he says.) International recognition followed. Making his Just for Laughs Vancouver debut this month, Youssef gave up his career as a highly respected heart surgeon about a year after trying his hand at comedy full-time. “I don’t need to invent or make up anything for my material,” he adds. And then I came to America to find Donald Trump becoming president. “The regime changed, the show got cancelled a couple of times, and I went from being a public hero to public enemy number one, and I had to escape Egypt. ![]() “Because we were trying to crack jokes in a very difficult political climate, I ended up being arrested and having to be questioned about my jokes for six hours in an interrogation room, which at the time… It wasn’t that great,” Youssef says on the line from the California home he shares with his wife and two school-aged kids. The show also got Youssef into a lot of trouble. ![]() (It’s still accessible on YouTube, Youssef’s channel having amassed close to 362 million views to date.) AlBernameg (“ The Show”) became the region’s first online-to-TV conversion and continued attracting new viewers-some 30 million each week. ![]() The first of its kind in the Middle East, the program blew up, with millions of people tuning in. ![]() After the Arab Spring erupted, he took to YouTube and, in 2011, began satirizing political leaders and other powerful people and critiquing the misinformation coming from mainstream media. Long before the vegan Muslim funnyman became known as “the Jon Stewart of the Arab world”, Youssef spent many years working as a cardiothoracic surgeon in Cairo. EGYPTIAN-BORN, LOS ANGELES-based comedian Bassem Youssef comes up with material for his shows by mining his own life story-and what a story it is. ![]()
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