Colon comedy

Gina Yashere talks shit for the
Nasty Girls show

FECAL MEANS FUNNY: Yashere

by ERIK LEIJON

When British comic Gina Yashere was selected to host the Just for Laughs comedy festival’s second annual Nasty Girls show, organizers likely envisioned the aggressive comedienne of Nigerian heritage explicitly recounting her sexual history as most nasty comics do, not describing in meticulously gruesome detail her recent experiences with colonic irrigation. Then again, there’s nothing nastier than the expelling of human waste.

“I have a scatological sense of humour,” says the 36-year-old resident of Los Angeles, by way of London. “I even took pictures of what came out of me and I love looking at that stuff. I was disappointed in what came out—I was hoping to pass out an anaconda.”

Although fashionable enemas sound like a decidedly Los Angeles thing to do, Yashere was into the intrusive cleansing process long before leaving dreary London for sunny Southern California two years ago. She’s dropped 70 pounds on a yearly schedule of fasting for seven days and then another seven of cleansing, and switched to a raw vegetable diet after she “saw what came out of my system.”

Even when factoring in the fecal humour, Yashere doesn’t consider herself your traditional nasty comic. She tends to stay away from raunchy and ribald jokes, but Yashere does have a razor sharp tongue and isn’t afraid to make audiences squirm in other ways. If not by threatening to bring a slideshow of her recent colonic detoxing adventure, then her attempts to curb her Lupus symptoms (a disease she’s had for over three years) or the difficulties of being a black British female comic navigating a still very comedically segregated America.

A well-known television and radio personality in her home country, Yashere won a spot on the 2007 edition of the U.S.-based TV show Last Comic Standing and decided to pack up her comfortable life in London for a chance at American success. “I went from a four-bedroom house and a Mercedes to a one-bedroom apartment and a Toyota,” she says. “I got a two-year work visa, so I put my house in London on sale and gave away everything I owned. I showed up in America with only two suitcases.”

Beyond her appearance on Last Comic Standing, she also became the first ever British comic to appear on Def Comedy Jam. Despite those successes, being both British and black has made it difficult for promoters to peg her, given how comedy clubs and patrons in America are separated along racial lines. “When I came to America, I couldn’t get my head around this urban scene and urban comics who do Def Comedy Jam and not much else,” she says, “I’ll do Def Comedy Jam, but I can do improv on a Friday night where I’m the only black person in the room.

“In America,” she adds, “they seem to be quite unaware of the sheer number of black British people there are in England.”

Beyond her family and chocolate, Yashere says she doesn’t miss anything about England, but growing up there under her strong-willed, disapproving Nigerian mother remains a frequently mined subject for new comedy. Her impersonation of her mom, complete with a thick Nigerian accent, is a crowd favourite, and not just among Africans. “I have a lot of Jewish people coming up to me after shows going, ‘Your Nigerian mother sounds exactly like mine,’” she says. “The stereotype of the overprotective mum is widespread.”