Maria catches up with London based comedian Chris Marco K as he prepares for his new show Behind the Mask.
How did you get into comedy?
Basically I saw someone and I was like “you’re rubbish, I could do a better job! No, I’m joking!”.
Ahh, I was about to say really?? Tell me who!
Actually, I went to see some comedy at a new comedy night opening up in Palmers Green, London and I thought I might give that a go, and my friend said, you’re quite funny, why don’t you try, so I spoke to the promoter and I was like, I haven’t done this before, but I want to give it a go.
Was this stand up?
Yeah, stand-up comedy.
And you just thought you’d give it a go?
Yeah, I just thought I’ll give it a go and he was like, ok write three to five minutes and I’ll let you on the next show. I said I’ll bring some friends and family along, and he was like, ok cool. On the day I was so nervous. I even fell asleep before I was due to go on stage. When we got there, I noticed Neil from the Inbetweeners was in the audience, and I was like oh my God, Neil from the inbetweeners is in the audience, how am I going to do this? I went on and did my three minutes, smashed it and did really well, came off and I met him and he said, that wasn’t your first time doing stand up, and I said I swear to God it is and he said it was really good, keep it up and gave me the boost to think maybe I am quite funny, maybe this is supposed to be for me. Fast forward a year later and I went to The Inbetweeners book signing and in front of everyone he said oh you’re that funny comedian I went and watched. Everyone was looking at me like, who’s this guy?
You should have given out your card…
Haha yeah, follow me on Myspace…
Myspace? Was it that long ago??
No, no I think it was more the Twitter days, but yeah from there I just started going for it.
When did you realise you were funny, because it must take guts to just get up and do stand up?
I think in school, I was giving it and I was told off, like really badly and they said, look if you don’t pull your socks up, you’re gonna get kicked out, and that’s when I stopped being funny and started being serious and then later on I thought maybe I should be funny. Look I’ve always been a joker, but now I’m a bit more relaxed and leave it to the stage, but I like joking around and I don’t take anything too seriously.
Would you say you’ve always wanted to be a comedian or is it something that just happened?
I wanted to be an actor. My mum took me to acting when I was about 5 or 6 and there was a scene where everyone was crying and apparently I started fake crying and everyone was like who is this kid? He’s amazing! My parents looked at each other and said we need to stop him going here because he’s getting too good at lying and pretending! So I could have been the next Robert De-Niro but my parents stopped me from that, so then I started comedy.
They stopped you because you were too good?
I like to think so yeah. If they were here, they’d tell you something else.
How have your family and friends reacted to you going into comedy?
They’re all very supportive and if I wasn’t good, they would tell me. But I haven’t had that yet. They’ve always been very supportive. Constantly pushing me.
Do they ask you to tell them jokes all the time?
No, cos it doesn’t really work like that. I just tell them to get a ticket and see me on stage.
Where do you draw your inspiration from for your shows and material?
Day to day life, life experiences and stuff that’s happened to me. I just write it down and go from there. If I find something funny, I’ll remember it and then send it to someone and they’ll say that’s really funny, you should say it on stage, so I try it out.
Do you ever get anyone saying, hang on a minute this situation you’re talking about sounds a bit familiar!
It’s more about me. I do English shows and Greek shows. My English shows are about me and my experiences, and my Greek shows are about my Yiayia and Bapou (Grandma and Grandad). So it’s more me and my family.
Have your Grandparents watched your shows? What did they think?
When they were alive yes. My Bapou came to my first show and he didn’t say anything until later and the he said “you should write a joke book” and that was it. Then I did write a book, ‘Learning Greek from behind the bins’, so he inspired me to do that as I had that thought in the back of my head. My Yiayia watched and she just laughed. I’ve got a nice clip of her watching my comedy on TV and her smiling when she was in the final stages before she passed away. It was nice, so yeah they didn’t really disapprove of it or anything like that. She used to do drama and stuff she used to say.
So it runs in the family…
Yeah, maybe. I think they’re proud of it all. They like the acting thing on TV and it’s a bit different.
You mention TV, where would we have seen you?
I was on BBC3 on something called The World’s Oldest Joke, and then I did loads of YouTube stuff during the pandemic with Heavy D, who sadly passed away. I also did stuff with LadBible on their YouTube channel which was good fun. But mainly live shows.
Have you got a preference between live or recorded?
They’ve all got different buzzes. Comedy is my main thing. I love doing stand up comedy. It’s my favourite. But I also love doing YouTube, like Kebab Killer which is stupid food reviews, and I did a boxing one with Heavy D and some other work on other people’s channels. I’ve been in Virgin media adverts and small little parts. They all give me different feelings. Doesn’t feel like work which is good.
You mentioned Kebab Killer, how did the food reviews come about?
Everyone kept saying did I copy chicken connoisseur, but no, I didn’t. CeeLo Green did an album called The Lady Killer, and I thought it would be funny to recreate the album cover with my face on it as CeeLo Greek, The Kebab Killer cos I thought that was funny. Afterwards I thought I might start doing kebab reviews, and at the same time Chicken Connoisseur got really big and I thought maybe I could become the next one of them but there’s only so many different types of kebabs you can eat so…it is still going, it’s going well. It’s just something I enjoy doing. If I’m going to go out and eat somewhere I just make a quick movie about the food. It’s fun.
So if there’s any kebab houses reading, let’s get you out there
Yes, please any places, I’ll help promote. It’s a win, win.
Might have to join you for that I think!
Yeah, let’s do it!
What makes you laugh?
Silly things like people tripping up in the street.
Have you got a favourite comedian?
Me
Fair enough. A bit of self-love is good.
If I don’t make myself laugh and I don’t think I’m funny, there’s no point. I do like American comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle though.
What would you say the barriers have been getting into comedy?
It’s a long, long, long process to make it to the top. You go to auditions and email people. It’s like Kanye West went to music studios to show his music and he’s saying this is my music, what do you think of it? And they just weren’t interested at first. You start to think what’s the point, and then you blow up and the same people are like oh hi, do you remember when you came to my office and you say yeah, but you said I wasn’t ready. You get that a lot, that you’re not ready. I’ve always got “you’re not ready”. That’s the hardest bit, but every comedian will have got that at some point.
Who would you say is your biggest critic?
Myself. I’m never happy. I come off stage and I know where I’ve gone wrong. Out of all my performances I think I’ve been happy twice where I think that I have done the best of me. I’m still trying to perfect it. You practice how you stand, deliver and after the shows in your head you’re always thinking what you should have done, so there’s always something to work on.
What’s your proudest achievement out of everything you’ve done?
I’m proud of every show that I’ve done. This new one that’s coming up will be my fifth one, so I’m proud of myself for keeping going and not giving up.
Does you being Greek have a heavy influence on your material or do you worry that some people wont get it if it’s too Greek?
When I did my first show which was called ‘The Man That Can’t Be Moved’, it was English. Then I did ‘My Greek Life’ which was a mixture but mainly Greek, then I did ’Fifty Shades of K’ which was English, then I did ‘Being Greek’ which is online and is Greek and English. The new show, ‘Behind the Mask’ is in English. I talk a bit about being Greek but not that much.
The new show, tell us a bit about it
It’s 45 minutes long and it’s me talking about how I got through Covid, then relationships, food, being Greek, travelling. Basically my experiences and life – but funny. It’s my favourite show to date. There’s even a little song at the end. I’m a man of many talents. My last show I did a ‘Fatstreet Boys’ song so this is following on from that. A comedy song. It’s really good fun. Something for everyone and it’s for one night only.
Catch Chris Marco K in his brand new show, Behind the Mask on the 24th September at the Museum of Comedy, Holborn. Tickets are £8.50 and can be bought direct from www.chrismarkouk.com or from The Museum of Comedy’s website www.museumofcomedy.com
