Kae Kurd: ‘I started comedy when I realised no one was telling our stories’
The British-Kurdish comedian never thought he would have a career on stage. Now he’s about to take his show, What’s O’Kurd, around the UK
There is a standard blueprint for rising comedians in Britain: a few years in the dim backrooms of pubs, win a competition or two, make a radio appearance. Then hope to catch a producer’s eye and maybe, one day, land a Netflix special. Comedian Kae Kurd, whose real name is Korang Abdulla, has followed none of it.
A Muslim refugee born to Kurdish parents who fled Iraq, Kurd was raised in south London and started on the margins of the capital’s comedy circuit in his early 20s. “I’ve seen people kiss their teeth when an act’s been on stage,” he says. “You hear that and then silence — and then you know it’s bombed. Total stress.”
He built his career from self-produced podcasts and sharing sketches on Instagram. “I look back at some of the early stuff I did and I’m like, ‘Wow, we organised this from scratch with no budget, no money, just creativity.’ Honestly, I don’t know where I had the energy for it,” Kurd says.
Now, at 35, the comedian is at the tail end of a press run, the scale of which fits the fanfare around his latest show, What’s O’Kurd, which he is set to tour around the UK. It wasn’t in clubs or on stage that Kurd first moved towards comedy, but under the glare of fluorescent lights and between the racks of jeans at Next in Croydon, where colleagues at his part-time job pushed him to try.
“I didn’t think I was the funny type. I never thought I’d be the kind of person who does comedy. I thought comedy was something other people did,” he says. “I didn’t really think you could make money from it. It just never seemed like a viable career path. Most people from Muslim, working-class backgrounds don’t even see certain careers as options. They’re never something you contemplate.”
Over time, even his parents’ perspective shifted as they witnessed his growing success, appearing on TV shows including the BBC’s Live at The Apollo and Mock the Week.
“The only time my parents started being proud was when friends were like, ‘Oh my God, you’re Kurd’s mum,’ and they said, ‘Yeah, that’s my son,’” says Kurd.
“Another time was when they came to see me perform at the Hammersmith Apollo, my own headline show. They were shocked at how big the venue was. Now my dad will tell people on the bus, ‘Yeah, my son’s a comedian,’ and show them my Instagram. I don’t expect them to fully understand what it is but they’ve come to appreciate it in their own way.”
Kurd attributes his sense of humour and sharp writing to his immigrant experience. “Being the only person that looked like me in school and having to fit in everywhere I went meant I developed the skills to entertain,” he says. “I only started comedy when I realised no one was telling our stories.”
Kurd’s identity straddles his working-class background and that of the oat-milk-drinking millennial he has become — a gag he has refined on stage. He doesn’t punch down. He sticks with jokes about his community, family and faith. Every observation, irritation, every detail of life is treated as material.
“I hate the way certain things are in the world. Certain stuff really annoys me. My material always comes from a place of anger or annoyance, he says.
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Comedy, to Kurd, is about context. The room matters — “Hackney is different from Manchester” — and his words matter, too. “Your joke has to be worded correctly. It’s a thin line, and you’ve got to say it right,” he says.
Kurd’s trick seems to be taking everything entirely seriously. “I’m a lot more silly in real life than I am on stage,” he says. “On stage I’m a lot more serious.” Which is, of course, the point. For comics like Kurd, seriousness is just another punchline.
“I used to stand like Ronaldo taking a free kick when I first started out because I read somewhere it makes you more confident, and I’d whisper, ‘I’m funnier than Eddie Murphy’ about a hundred times to myself before going on stage when I was really nervous,” he says. “Nowadays I’m in my 30s, so my pre-show ritual is trying to drink something that stops me yawning.”
Kurd is quick to push back on any grand theorising about his upcoming tour. “Mainly I want people to come out and laugh. It would be nice to hear people say things like, ‘It’s funny because it’s true.’”
That’s also why he pays attention to who fills the seats. For Kurd, diversity is important, creating comedy that lands with anyone, anywhere. “When I look at my audience it isn’t just one age group or one set of people from a certain background. I always joke that it looks like people waiting in an airport,” he says.
“Just be true to yourself; people will gravitate to authenticity and humour anyway. There’s no point trying to be like something else that’s out there because you’ll be a bad copy.”
That stream of thought runs through What’s O’Kurd, a show that marks not just another tour, but a showcase for a performer who has carved his own path and, after years of building sideways, is finally taking centre stage.
Kae Kurd’s UK tour begins on 4 September.
