Aamer Rahman: how a YouTube video saved my comedy career

When good things happen, they often happen all at once. And in the case of Aamer Rahman, it was in the nick of time.

The Australian-Bengali comic was about to pull the pin on an acclaimed comedy career, during which he won the Best Newcomer Award as part of the comedy duo Fear of a Brown Planet with Nazeem Hussain at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2008, in addition to performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011.

“It was getting a little too hard,” he explains. “The touring and, in some cases, the lack of opportunities – but things changed pretty quickly.”

The turnaround began early last year, when a YouTube video in which Rahman riffed about the concept of “reverse racism” became an internet sensation.

Within a few weeks he was well-known within Australia and had started to build a cult fan-base in the United Kingdom. He was featured in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and Worldstar Hip-Hop, while the video clocked up well over a million views.

It was an apt encapsulation of what Rahman’s material is all about: incisive, cutting and controversial observations about society’s ills, sprinkled with sardonic humour and pop-culture references. The internet fame led to successful tours of the UK, United States and Canada.

The real cherry on top came when The Guardian named his show one of the best of the year and the news website Alternet listed his viral video as one of the year’s top moments in political comedy – he was in the number four spot, just behind major stars such as Chris Rock and Stephen Colbert.

Rahman tells us that part of the reason why his brand of humour has connected so well with an international audience is because of his own experiences growing up in the Arabian Gulf and Australia.

Original article by Saeed Saeed

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Aamer Rahman: how a YouTube video saved my comedy career