Churchill Show… Why This Aging Television Show Urgently Needs To Hire A Fresh Team Of Comedy Writers! ASAP!

The Churchill Show juggernaut has been in existence for a pretty decade now. That’s a very long time for a show to still be stuck in the past,stuck in a creative rut and stuck in a hole. Which is,sadly,what the comedy powerhouse seems to be going through; an inability to surge forward,break new ground,reinvent itself and offer progressive comedy and performances.

We would excuse The Churchill Show blunders back in the early,formative years when the whole team was just assembling,trying out a virgin laughter industry and attempting to introduce themselves to the market. But it’s 2016! And Churchill Show,the premier humor trendsetter,cannot be excused to carry on the disastrous comedy of errors they’re increasingly becoming notorious for.

Watching Churchill Show last night,a pompous event recorded in front of a giant,ebullient audience in Mombasa,among whom sat the Mombasa Governor himself Hassan Joho and other reputable names,I cringed and gasped at the absolute lack of creativity exemplified by these so-called Comics who tottered onto the stage,uproarious,only to screw up 30 seconds into their act,lame joke after another.

First came Lucky Balaa,a comedian who started his journey of comedy on the Top Comic show that once aired on NTV back in 2009. Balaa,a Coast-based comedian who,having been in the business for close to a decade,should know better. Or act better. But he was sadly a disaster after another. All of his jokes were shamelessly derived from Facebook and WhatsApp. The ‘Alahamdulilahi’ joke he started with had been doing rounds on WhatsApp for weeks. The other joke about some guy farting after bending over to view gold rings was a stale,Facebook joke that expired around November 2015. But Lucky Balaa wasn’t so lucky at originality. He came onto stage with the same regurgitated trash we’d seen and forwarded to each other across social media. And thought we’d never notice.

Obviously,the Mombasa audience would laugh itself lame. And for an audience so famous for lethargy,I didn’t expect them to NOT laugh.

Next on was Butita,one of Churchill Show’s lifeline. But Butita,his Nairobi popularity notwithstanding,was another mess. His act was a sorry,lame joke. He painfully struggled through a routine that was plain,humorless and bland. His whole act was a struggle at lack of punchlines and tact. Despite being a Churchill Show staple for over three years,Butita’s banal act in Mombasa was something you wished never made it on TV. Or another town. And yet,it was.

Njoro was next up. When you see Njoro,you’ve pretty much seen his whole act. Before he speaks,you know what’s up. You know what you’re about to be served with – a dish of cold,stale Kiambu Jokes. Throughout his unmemorable tenure at the Churchill Academy,Njoro has refused to grow and reinvent himself,overhaul his act and venture deeper to a much wider spectrum and creative arena. He has,for years,relied on those predictable ‘Kiambu’ versus the rest of Kenya jokes and doesn’t look like he’s about to let the stale act go. In Mombasa,he stuck to himself. Kiambu this,Kiambu that. Mombasa this,Kiambu that. Same old petty lines. Nothing new. Just stuff you can cook up too with your chang’aa-selling Auntie.

Resident Mombasa comedian Maji Moto came too. And said stuff I forgot the minute he stepped off the stage,amid a hail of applause.

And that’s just what I saw last night. Such comedic blunders are really what personifies the Churchill Show. Starting from the Show’s President,Churchill,to the subjects,there seems to be a serious lack of creativity and tact in this vaunted humor power plant. They’re not funny anymore. Not that they were ever funny anyway.

I am privy to the mechanisms of the Churchill Show. And I do have firsthand information on how this team works,who runs things here,the rehearsal process,fountain of jokes,etc.

Every Tuesday,some chaps who work for the Laugh Industry,which is Churchill’s entertainment company,converge at The Carnivore where they meet prospective comics who’ve traveled from around the Country for auditions. These comics,jobless young men and women with a desire to be noticed,launch comedy careers and hopefully appear on TV,are required to come along with their own jokes. And after fumbling through their act,the amateur audition is over and some guys are told, ‘Kujeni kesho rehearsal’. Others who weren’t so funny,or didn’t bring along outstanding material are sent back home,some as far as Nakuru,and asked to show up next Tuesday for another such rehearsal.

The process to enter the Churchill Academy and finally end up on TV,or with some little pay,is an arduous,grueling task that is as excruciating as it is unrewarding.

The top guys at the Churchill Academy insit that YOU have to craft your own jokes and perform them-something that greatly contributes to the garbage that ends up on TV. Passing as comedy.

It should be known that NOT everyone who can write a joke can perform it. Creating a joke is a totally different process from telling it on stage. Alot of people who can craft a masterpiece of a joke are probably too shy,awkward or unconfident to tell the same joke on stage in front of a massive crowd.

The Churchill Show management seems to NOT understand that there is a whole different arm of WRITING JOKES. And another for telling the jokes.

What kills the Churchill Show comics,most of them young anxious men who are still in college or have little income is the insistence from the authorities that THEY show up with their own jokes.

Creating something funny needs a relaxed,open and calm mind…. Something these kids we see on TV don’t have.

When they are not on TV, they’re out here running around,trying to combine classes and hassling,worrying about family,girlfriends,the sudden trappings of fame,their future,longevity and a whole lot of other things. These boys barely have time to be relaxed,they can barely have time to be creative. What with the crazy,struggling boy schedules they have.

And that is why,after a long week of worry and struggle and pettiness, these boys show up with rubbish on stage. Because they were REQUIRED to bring along their own Joe’s.

Also,there is something called ‘Burning Out’ which is something creatives do a lot. They burn out. 98% of the comics on the Churchill Show burned out in 2014. All they are doing now is struggling through a routine just to afford rent and to afford food.

The Laugh Industry,a huge entertainment company owned by Churchill,should start investing in COMEDY WRITERS. AND a

serious,competent crew of creative people not the sort of clueless,drunk bastards who have routinely been hired to ‘audition’ comedians every Tuesday at Carnivore.

Churchill himself,more than anyone else,needs a COMEDY SCRIPT and a team of writers as soon as yesterday. Neither him nor his platitudinous cast of boys seem to be adept at creativity anymore. Maybe they can tell a joke. But they can’t write it. Or create it.

Big Television Comedy shows fronted by legendary comics,the likes of Jon Stewart,Jay Leno,David Letterman,Stephen Colbert,Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon DO have a special creative team that specifically writes the jokes that end up being told by these seasoned television comedy stars.

The likes of James Corden,Trevor Noah,Andy Cohen,Bill Maher and others DO NOT create their own jokes. They just tell them.

We need to move from asking our not-so-creative performers to create their own jokes. Churchill needs to,as a matter of urgency,recruit a background team of funny experts who write jokes and then pass them off to Butita, Njoro,YY,Mc Jessy,Karis,Sleepy etc.

Maybe these kids can perform the jokes on stage. But surely, they CANNOT write them.

And knowing Churchill,and how much millions he makes off this brand and show,he can surely afford to hire a fresh robust team of comedy writers… Butita and his ilk can no longer be trusted with what’s funny and what’s not.

Sure,he can tell the joke on stage. But he can’t create it. They’ve,for years now,proved so.

The show needs quick salvation. But to be honest,with the sort of sickening cronyism that has consistently plagued our entertainment industry,you can be assured that the chaps who will be hired to write jokes are dumb blokes who either schooled with Mc Jessy or struggled through Kenya National Theater with him. Not fresh,virgin talents.

Disastrous.