Funny in any language

Comic Nee Ridge performs stand-up in ten languages

Step aside Eddie Izzard! Nee Ridge has just completed stand-up in his TENTH language,

The comic has now performed in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hindi, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Mandarin and the Indian language of Konkani.

It has taken him five years to complete the challenge, and now says: ‘While "never say never", the tenth language will be my last for a long while. I see more benefit in improving my existing language and comedy skills rather than moving on to another one.’

He told Chortle: ‘Even before I started comedy, I could already speak English, French, Spanish and Konkani – the language spoken in Goa – fluently, German and Italian conversationally, and Dutch, Hindi and Portuguese at a basic level. Mandarin was the only totally new language I had to learn for this.’

Ridge started performing comedy in English and at French language gigs in London, as well as Konkani for a community show, before widening his horizons.

He said: ’In December 2019, a business trip took me to Barcelona, and thought I can't come here and not perform in Spanish, then did just that.

‘It wasn't until a trip to Sardinia in December 2020 I considered the challenge in Italian. At the time, I genuinely believed you had to be fluent in a language to perform comedy. I could hold a functional conversation in Italian, but no way fluent.

‘Even now, I’m not fluent. I went there for language lessons, but saw an Italian comedy night advertised. I thought I'd sign up to perform in case I reached a certain level within a week, thinking I could always back out if my Italian fell short. But I did it. And then again in London at the Puma Italian comedy later that year.

‘Fast-forward to January 2023. I was in Pune, near Mumbai, and performing in English. And thought ever there's a time to perform in Hindi, now's the chance. So I brushed up on Hindi, with the sole intention of learning a comedy script. And somehow, I performed in Hindi.

'So I was up to six languages. Then I thought, well, may as well, perform in the rest that I know – so did stand-up in Dutch in Belgium, German in Frankfurt and Lisbon in Portuguese.

‘I then thought 10 is a nice round number and decided to learn Mandarin. It definitely helped that we have a Mandarin speaking comedy club here in London. So I was able to test out material here in English, then speak a few words in Mandarin. And last month, I performed fully in Mandarin. ‘

He said he might continue to use his language skills, but probably not exclusively, explaining: ‘I could tour around European countries, throwing in their local language. I learnt that in India it's more effective when I perform 90 per cent in English, then 10 per cent act-outs or conversations in Hindi.’

Here are extracts from all the performances:

Internationalist Izzard has been a pioneer of performing stand-up in foreign languages and has done shows in French, German, Russian, Arabic and Spanish to various degrees of fluency.