Ghanaian comedian OB Amponsah has disclosed how he breaks the ice to quickly build rapport with his international audiences.
Weeks before his fourth special at the National Theatre, the award-winning comic was in East Africa networking with local comics and performing.
Guesting on CTV’s Class Showbiz, he explained to host Sammy Flex how he used instances of his time in the various countries to create jokes to immediately win the audience over when he got on stage.
“Basically when you are performing at a different place, you try to find something relatable to the people, they accept you [and then] you go into your jokes,” he noted before sharing a joke inspired by a real life event in Rwanda.
“In Rwanda I found something relateble – they like to brag about their place. [For instance] the guy who was taking me around said, ‘This is the cleanest city [in the world]. In fact, what the Japanese are doing at the World Cup, we started it in Kigali a long time ago’,” OB narrated.
Ironically, “as he was speaking, we all spotted a man indiscriminately urinating by the roadside,” OB laughed, knocking the studio desk as he recollected the incident.
He continued by saying, enraged, his company on the tour barked, “Look, at this idiot!”
“I am showing a foreigner how clean Kigali is and this idiot…” the trained optometrist quoted the unnamed man attempting a Rwandese accent. He drew laughter from Sammy and his pundits.”
He added that he calmed the tour guide down by wittily saying: “It’s normal in Ghana.”
According to OB, when he narrated this funny situation to his Kigali audience, they were assured, “Ok, this guy knows our country,” and he was confident to perform his main material.
“So that’s how it works,” he concluded.
OB successfully hosted his fourth comedy special dubbed ‘Ghanaian by Card’ on Friday night, December 9, 2022. With streaming platform Pebble as a partner, OB offered his stage to local fellows like Jerry Ashinyo, Khemical, and Lexzy de Comic and South African sensation Trevor Gumbi.