An African Perspective: Westerners Calm Down!

It’s always a pleasure to see a comic whose jokes can span the nations, and Daliso Chaponda's certainly do that. This is made more impressive by his choice of subject matter: telling his audience that their countrymen are overreacting to everything. It's a fair point, and the Malawian comic has the good grace to make it amusingly, his witty, heartfelt writing being delivered with the flair of a true professional.

Covering subjects as varied as the financial crisis, racism, the obesity epidemic and various hang-ups about sexual performance, Chaponda demonstrates solid comic ability, consistently bashing out the laughs throughout his performance. His interaction with the audience seems entirely natural as he gently rips us apart, but without causing too much offence.

His observations ring true and take the edge off Westerners’ ‘problems’ – which, according to him, pale in comparison to other parts of the world. But whilst it’s all well and good getting some comic relief, Chaponda loses some laughs when he attempts to belittle subjects, such as the financial crisis, which are doubtless affecting some audience members quite severely. The show is further let down by one too many references to an ex-girlfriend and some crude innuendo.

Still, the big laughs Chaponda gives to his own deliberately awful puns indicate that this man takes nothing seriously – which, given the problems currently besetting the Western world, is probably a lesson we'd all do well to learn.