Weekend with Omar Badawy: ‘I don’t love nature, but I do love to slowly walk around a park’
The comedian on his debut Edinburgh Fringe show, walking in circles in cities and how he hates small plates
Omar Badawy is a British-Egyptian comedian and writer known as the Posh Arab. He gained a large online following through his satirical takedowns of Daily Mail articles, before joining the Saturday Night Live UK writing team this year.
In 2021 he won the new act competition at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and has since been nominated for a Chortle award and was a finalist for the BBC New Comedy Awards.
His debut stand-up show, Guided Detour, is currently on at the fringe.
Badawy lives in north London with his (spoiler alert for his show) wife.
How do you start your weekend?
I’m a standup, so Saturday is like my Monday. It’s prepping for what will be a heavy weekend of gigging around London where I’ll be doing five or six shows. So normally I’ll do absolutely nothing on a Saturday morning, just preparing for a perilous long night.
What about Sunday?
Related content
I was going to try to lie and say I read, but I just scroll on TikTok. I’m so brain dead at the moment. I watched a whole movie on TikTok the other day.
Early riser or late sleeper?
I think I am a morning person, but I am still a comedian. I think 10am is early. So to others, I’m probably not.
What would be your ideal weekend activity?
I really like doing absolutely nothing. I like to potter around in a city, get a coffee and walk in circles. Maybe we’ll go to a restaurant, but then you have to deal with interacting with people — “do you want a kitchen view?” No! I don’t!
Do you like to eat out?
I hate those small plate restaurants more than anything in the whole world. It exists now in every country, and no matter where you are, it feels like you’re in Hackney. I hate them with such a passion.
What restaurants do you like?
There’s this really good Iraqi-Kurdish restaurant called Azmar on Edgware Road. It’s really good value and the food is incredible. In north London where I am now, there’s loads of great Greek Cypriot restaurants. We love Turkish food as well, I still think Gökyüzü is probably the best value, you can get so much food for £25.
What do you do to relax?
I try to exercise. I’m not gonna say I love nature, but I do love to slowly walk around a park. My brother got into marathons recently and that’s been a big tragedy for us.
Where do you like to walk?
The area near Southgate is really nice. There are so many parks and green spaces there.
Have you always lived in London?
I was raised in the countryside, in a smallish town near Cambridge. So my childhood was going to the park and building a den. One year we built such a good den that when we came back to it a few months later it was full of needles and had been taken over by a whole heroin community.
But we took it as a compliment that it was that good of a den that people could actually live there.
Countryside or city?
I’m a city person. My family are all from Cairo, which is the most city of city you can really be. It’s absolute chaos, in a good way.
Tell us about your Edinburgh Fringe show
Related content
It’s all set in one day, on the 13th September last year. I was on my way to a fancy dress party and I didn’t realise that it was the day of Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom far-right march and I just found myself in it.
At the same time, I got a call from my then girlfriend to tell me she’d misread her visa expiry date and she was going to have to leave the UK. I think it’s a very specific show, but most people will see themselves in it.
You blew up online by mocking the way the Daily Mail writes headlines, in particular about Muslims. Why did you start doing that?
I wish I could say I had a pinboard with yarn and a big grand scheme of how to bring Muslims to the forefront of the media in a positive way, but it wasn’t really meant to be that. I was just trying to make something funny. At the end of the day, it’s just basic media literacy, in a more entertaining way.
The feedback has been amazing — I’ve had journalism lecturers play the videos at their universities. But at the forefront of it is joke writing and that’s the most important thing to me. That’s my job.
Omar Badawy: Guided Detour is on at Pleasance Courtyard, Bunker One at 4.35pm daily until 28 August.
