Anglo-Greek Katerina Vrana makes finals of Funniest Person in The World

Anglo-Greek comedian Katerina Vrana has made it to the finals of a competition to find the funniest person in the world.

She will appear in the final in Finland tonight, after making the final five, with the winner chosen from online votes in the subsequent 24 hours.

Representing Greece, Vrana is up against India’s Mino Van Nassau, Israel’s David Kilimnick, Malaysia’s Harith Iskander and Alex Calleja from the Philippines.

In a video posted from the Lapland ice fishing trip this morning, she said the odds in the competition – run by the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles –  were against her.

’India has billion and a half [citizens] ten million in Greece,’ she said. ‘I need everyone to vote all the time…’

She told Chortle: ‘I am so unbelievably excited to have made the finals, I genuinely wasn't expecting to at all as the scoring in the semi-finals was 50 per cent online votes and 50% judges' scores and the top two comedians got 5 and 6 million online votes – you can't compete with that!

‘So I’m super chuffed to be here! It's been an amazing experience so far, especially meeting comedians from all over the world, and as you can see from the semi-finals, this competition is benefitting the countries that have only just started developing comedy scenes I'm hoping that this helps open up the global comedy market to the point where we can all be gigging from Mexico to Singapore and Ulan Bator to New York.’

Vrana was born and raised in Greece but went to the UK to study 16 years ago and ended up staying here. She now divides her time between London and Athens and gigs extensively in both Greek and English. In 2014, she opened the only comedy club in Athens. Here is her semi-final set:

The final footage will be broadcast live on the Laugh Factory’s YouTube from 7pm and then made available for voting. (UPDATE: Voting is now open here).

Earlier in the competition, Nina Conti and Kai Humphries represented England; Fred MacAulay and Mark Nelson for Scotland; Tommy Rowson for Wales and Jimeoin and Eleanor Tiernan for Ireland.

Other British-based acts representing their homelands included Prince Abdi for Somalia, Daliso Chaponda for Malawo, Njambi McGrath for Kenya and George Zacharopoulos, also for Greece.

A total of 56 nationalities were represented, with organisers claiming: ‘Laughter brings people closer, succeeding where diplomacy and democracy have failed.’

Published: 8 Dec 2016