It's hard to watch the news and not feel depressed or anxious or miserable or have what I call apocalypse anxiety.

The news will constantly reinforce that feeling.

No shade.

And so for me it's just about providing a counter narrative which says, OK, even if these things are happening, let's at least find some humour within that reality.

You talked about the George Floyd aftermath, Black Lives Matter.

To what extent do you think we are now in a sort of a backlash to that period?

I'm sort of just advocating for a world in which we're not being knobs to each other.

Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.

I'm Christian Gary Murphy, and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them.

My guest this week is a satirist who became famous on social media, but he's now very big on television and is also doing stand up on stage.

In fact, he's also making making serious documentaries, including about his own origins in Zimbabwe, where he grew up.

Munya Chihuahua, welcome to Ways to change the world.

Thank you very much.

I'm excited.

How do you want to change the world?

That's a big old question, but I, I was thinking about it and I would really love us to sort of get back to a time where we're more sort of in touch with our instinctual human empathy.

You know, it's so crazy now just looking at the political and social landscape and seeing how something as arbitrary, as right and wrong have now been sort of reskinned as political opinions.

It's so strange to me.

You know, the leaders we have in power, the policies they put out.

I think we just need to scale back and go back to a time where we really tap into human instinct about how would I like to be treated and how do I want to treat others.

I mean, in, in a, in a social media world and you're, and you're a success story of, of that world, you know, empathy or emotion is, is a really important part of it.

But is there, is that the human empathy you're talking about?

Because what social media does is it kind of like organises people into emotional responses to things and turns them into tribes.

It's slightly different to sort of a face to face emotional empathy, isn't it?

I mean, it's, it's absolutely the right observation.

You know, that the talk about, you know, tribes when I was doing my, you know, psychology degree, we talk about the in Group and the out group.

And it's almost always the case that the out group sort of are oppressed by the in Group.

That's just the natural dynamic for me at least, social media started out as like an arrangement of tribes where there wasn't necessarily any conflict between them.

You know, it was more this idea of if you go on social media, you can just pick one of the in groups.

Whereas now it's sort of the balance is turning so that it's like, where are the out groups that we can now unite against?

You know, what are the minorities that we control?

We can bully and we can, you know, bombard with sort of bots.

So yeah, the we, we have become more tribal, you know, in a, in a social media landscape and, you know, even doing satire online, because for me, I always did satire as a means of kind of expressing frustration I was seeing in regards to sort of power dynamics or politicians stepping out of line or doing things that felt so obviously wrong.

And I think the reason I had so much success with it is because people felt seen when I did call out a politician who was kind of was not abiding by their duty as an elected leader.

We all felt on the same side.

We all sort of felt this joint collective feeling of anger and frustration.

But now, because the lines between right and wrong have been blurred, there's now more of a discourse in comments where people go, is there a right or wrong?

Or is right just an opinion you know is the right thing?

Is it this situation?

Just your opinion.

I mean, your your comedy became popular during a particular phase of chaotic British politics from, you know, from the various different conservative administrations, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, all of that COVID, Matt Hancock.

I mean, how, how, how, how reliant were you on politics in this country being crazy and and funny?

Oh, I mean massively, but not necessarily deliberately.

More so just because I wanted to satirise the world in front of me.

And so much of it was to do with politics.

And COVID was the first time I think your every man realized, oh, this is how politics affects me.

A politician can say something and I can't go to my granddad's funeral.

A politician can say something and suddenly I can't be in a room with more than seven people.

So in some ways it was a really beneficial, it was a really beneficial part of British history because it was a time when people maybe who are typically politically apathetic suddenly realized the implications of, for example, voting or being engaged with politics.

And, you know, it makes me it, it makes me chuckle when people will sort of jump in my comments and it's only ever a few people, but they'll be like, you know, this left TOEFL Ghisling wokey or whatever.

And I sort of think I don't really know if I'm, you know, left or right.

Like I, I don't really align myself with any position on that spectrum.

It was just the case that all the politicians who were messing up on a colossal level were on the right.

And so that's a coincidence that I can't help now that things, you know, now that Labour and Keir Starmer are in power, I've got no problem criticizing.

Is it as easy now to to be a satirist with with this lot in power?

Hell no.

Well, obviously you have to be more nuanced in the in the satire you do make.

But I think for me, like, what's been more important than, you know, just making the funniest joke is kind of creating content that gives people a space in which they feel, you know, seen.

I went to university, I did psychology.

And I only took on that degree because I kind of thought at the end of it, I would be able to sit, you know, opposite someone on the couch and just listen to them and know what to say to make them feel better, You know, Munya.

Munya is a Zimbabwean name, and Zimbabwean names have meaning.

And my name actually means comforter because at the time I was born, my dad's mum passed away and that was something I was told very early on.

So in a way maybe it's like a sort of self fulfilling prophecy.

But I I get a lot of gratification from providing comfort.

And it just turns out that satire has been an unexpected way in which I've been able to do that.

That's really interesting then.

So your your comedy is a way of comforting people.

Just just unpack that for me a bit.

Well, for instance, maybe it's also indicated by the the topics I don't cover.

You know, sometimes, for example, a story will come out and I actually don't know what the right thing to say or I don't know a way in which to make people feel better about it.

And so rather than sort of the vanity of being like, well, come on, you know, I'm a satirist.

I'm going to find one way or another.

I just asked myself, right, Is the comedy I produce from this going to make people feel better or worse?

And if the answer is worse, then I'd rather step away from it.

Which sort of reminds me that actually the goal is to try and make people feel better.

I always think about it like I'm trying to take the sting out of something which actually is quite difficult to digest or, you know, quite painful or as you know, it has like a certain sting to it.

My goal is that you could mention a political figure or a certain policy which previously depressed you or made you miserable and then think, ah, but did you see that funny video when you did about it?

You know, it's like, you know, providing an antidote to what feels like just this bombardment of bad news.

I mean, let's go back to childhood then.

I mean, you mentioned Zimbabwe.

What was your family background?

You know what's what?

Was your life there?

So I was born in Derby and I don't really remember anything about being in Derby other than being in love with Baby Spice and I used to my parents say I used to wait for her.

I used to stand on the pavement every day after nursery just waiting for her, thinking she was just going to pull up and we were going to get married.

So that's my only memory of Derby.

That's not me calling out to Baby Spice, but that that is what happened.

And then we moved to Zimbabwe.

And we moved there for my dad's work.

And all I can remember about that place is just feeling like my spirit was totally, you know, connected to the place.

Zimbabweans, for all that you may have heard or seem, you know, portrayed, are just the best people, supernaturally comedic, very warm with one another.

I remember actually being a kid, and we were walking home from school and I saw two men holding hands.

I was probably about, you know, 6 or 7.

And I said, like, dad, how come those men are holding hands?

And he was just like, because they're just great friends.

That's what great friends do in Zimbabwe.

It was just a totally innocuous act where people physically wanted to show how, you know, connected what they were to others.

And I love that about the place.

And I always tell people one thing I also remember about Zimbabwe's or what was Zimbabwe's schooling is that a self esteem or self worth was like a vital part of the curriculum we were taught.

I always remember this image they had of this huge, I think it was like a baobab tree, this huge enormous trunk and dotted along various positions of the tree with like these, these Jelly men, these figures, right?

They look like Jelly babies.

And some were like, some were like proudly posed at the top of the tree, some were hanging from a branch somewhere at the bottom looking, you know, disheartened.

And the teachers would say, you know, which, which, which one are you?

And as kids, we were sort of thinking that forced us to think about things like self worth, self actualisation, where we are, where we want to be.

And that that stuff has really stuck with me.

The culture shift from England made meant I needed that kind of battle armour just to make it through the culture shock.

So were you an English boy growing up in Zimbabwe or, or were you a Zimbabwean boy?

I mean, I was just down for whatever adventures were on offer.

You know, what I loved about Zimbabwe is there's no health and safety.

So if you wanted to, I remember once my sister and I watched a programme which someone bungee jumped, right.

So I thought that bungee jumping is just done with the normal rope.

So I just climbed a tree in the garden and tied it around my waist and then jumped out of the tree.

Obviously the rope doesn't, you know, doesn't bounce.

So then I was just suspended like an ornament from the tree hanging by my waist.

But you know what, you were allowed to do that.

Zimbabwe.

To me, the unofficial motto felt like if you want an adventure, just go have the adventure.

So I really did feel like I adopted the spirit of the of the country.

Were you aware of all the political controversy around the time as well?

And Mugabe.

And no.

That's it.

In fact, that's musical.

Violence, basically.

Yes, that was the I we, we would do drills at school where they would say if anything happens, obviously we didn't know what anything alluded to.

Well, that was euphemism for get under the desks, we're going to barricade the door.

Something, something politics.

That's all I remember hearing.

And then the story goes, well, there's, there's two, there's two parts of the story.

The first thing I would significantly remember is I'd have this ice cream box full of, of coins, pocket money, right?

And my sister would always be spending hers on XYZ.

And I would save mine thinking, you know, if I save up enough, I'm going to be able to get this, that.

And I remember one day my mum walked into my room and she saw me putting money into my, my little Piggy Bank.

And she said, don't even bother because tomorrow it's going to be worth nothing.

So I'm thinking, no, this is actually a harsh life lesson.

Like what do I do to upset my mum's?

Now I understand it was the hyperinflation to the point where you could buy a loaf of bread in the supermarket and by the time you get to the tilt, the bread's gone up in price.

That's the level of inflation we're talking.

So you know, here in UK when we say there's terrible inflation, it means Alfredo has gone up by 20 P.

So that was the first memory.

And then the second one is I just remember coming home from school.

I'm getting ready for the last week of of term before I go to high school.

You know, in my mind, this is going to be where my life begins.

I'm going to join the basketball team.

I'm going to get a girlfriend.

I'm going to be like a Zimbabwean, you know, Zac Efron in High School Musical.

And my parents just go, we're leaving.

Pack your things, pack like we've got to go.

Because at the time for them, the, the, the price, the plane tickets to go to England were obviously increasing everyday and the money they had to buy the tickets was decreasing.

So it was literally get out, go.

And then it's only I only got closure for that when I did my first documentary, How to Survive a Dictator, which the whole mission of that was to go back and figure out who, who was Mugabe?

Why was it?

Why did we have to leave in such a an urgent panic?

Why do we have to abscond in the night?

Who was this man?

What had been happening whilst I was oblivious as a kid?

And that was my closure.

I.

Mean why had they gone there in the 1st place?

I mean, it was just an odd directions move from Britain to Zimbabwe.

It's my, where my, my dad was from.

And I think when, when you are faced with the, the constant grey skies and whatever was happening in England at the time, obviously he was very proud of his country the same way I'm proud of it.

And in his mind, taking a young family there and, you know, taking his wife there was like a sort of almost utopia in comparison.

And it was, you know, I was so happy there.

And that's my favorite.

You know, my childhood is the thing I protect most fairly.

That meant that the fiercely, the memories and the learnings I have from that.

So I think it made 100% the right choice.

And obviously, politics has always been volatile, you know, in many African countries.

But at the time, it was liveable when we moved there, you know?

Almost as volatile as Britain during the post Brexit years.

Yeah.

So, so when you came here back, I mean how, how bewildering was Britain?

Britain was, I mean, look, I'm half British, right?

But I wasn't equipped with the, you know, just the, the natural flow of life here.

So for example, when I was getting ready to move to Zimbabwe, to England, all of my friends said, you know, in England they throw chairs at teachers.

That was like the rumour that went around Zimbabwe schools.

That's normal.

This is poppycock.

I get to the school within two weeks.

I've seen a chair fly across the room at the English, at the English teacher.

It was just such a culture shock.

It was just like a very, I'd gone from like this very sort of interconnected supportive network of classmates where, you know, it was in Zimbabwe.

You know why we used to get detentions?

We used to get detentions because if the teacher asked a question, people were so keen to answer would stick up our hands and start clicking at the teacher for her to pick us so that we could answer the question.

So now I come to England, right, And the teacher asked a simple maths question and my hand goes up.

I look around, there's no hands up.

Next thing I know I'm Public Enemy number one.

People are calling me a boffin.

I'm thinking what's a boffin?

It sounds like one of them things that Harry Potter catches in Quidditch.

I'm thinking what's going on here?

And the most distinctive memory I felt, and it is, you know, thinking back at it, I feel quite sad, is I felt like I had to tuck in my extroversion and my desire to be academic, you know, because I wasn't being academic to spite anyone.

It was just that I would, I would train to think that was a valuable asset.

And you know, the, the school that I went to, I can remember it being very similar to the, to the school you see in adolescence.

I think it's episode 2 where they go to the school.

And so many people were struck by that, so many parents because they thought surely this can't be the way the schools are.

It's like it's like a jungle in here.

And that I, I remember feeling like that it was, it was a good school, but I just remember it was unruly because, you know, in Zimbabwe you start messing up.

You, you know, you start messing around.

The teacher can pull out a cane.

You know, there's no problem with, you know, if you went home and said, Mum, the teacher smacked me, you get more smacks.

It's like a multiplier on your smacks.

So, you know, we had a good system of discipline.

So, so that self-confidence that you would learn in Zimbabwe, you basically had to put away a.

100%, you know, I the, you know, I would get, I would get bullied for, you know, trying to take part in class.

You know, if the drama teacher said right, I want everyone to do a performance or music, I want everyone to try and play this little piece on.

I would do the task thinking that's the way to avoid trouble and I would be bullied for the task.

So I absolutely tried to just tuck in my personality and, and, and put my light under a lamp and, you know, to keep my head down, keep my nose clean.

And, you know, comedy really was a resurgence of who I really AM.

And it's taken a lot of time to tease that out of myself.

You know, this is not me saying, you know, well, it's me.

I came to England.

It was horrible.

I'm just stating the facts because, you know, I was, I was a student trying to do well and I was bullied.

And that was just a cultural shift.

So how how did the real you start coming out again?

I mean you know the the performer in you if you like.

Well, I was making videos online that of, of about things that interested me.

You know, Jamie Oliver at the time had released his jerk rice.

Theresa May was exhibiting inhumanly stiff dance moves whilst on a trip to Africa.

All of these things I found fascinating and I made videos about them because they made me laugh.

Then all of a sudden you you, you find this magnetic force of these videos pulling in people from all over.

But were you trying to get a following?

Were you trying to become?

It was a bit famous on social media.

Yeah, it was a bit of both.

I, I really enjoy the feeling of kind of skewing so things that people cared about socially.

But whilst trying to pursue a career in television as a presenter, I was told by commissioners, oh, look, we, we can see you can present, but you're nobody.

You need to go out there and build a profile, you know, which is why, you know, sometimes it's funny to me when when people do try to, you know, box me in as a, you know, TikTok or a social media star.

Because in my mind, I'm thinking I only had to join social media because TV commissioners were saying, if you don't forget having a job in in television.

So it was a little bit of both.

But I enjoyed comedy was connecting me with people I could never dream of having met in the street.

You know, I remember like Armando, Armando Iannucci met was, was retweeting my videos and I would hear so much about him growing up, his work and his mind as a satirist and getting a cosine like that, you know, celebrities that I've grown up idolising all of this kind of thing, people from all different academic fields, which was, you know, an academic approval I had I'd been sort of starved of since joining school.

And I just realised the sort of connecting power of comedy.

I mean, you, you've sort of gone from being an insurgent on social media to gradually being embraced by the comedy establishment.

Do you feel part of it now?

I do, I do and I don't because in some ways there was like a that for a long time there's been like this sort of schadenfreude between social comics and stand ups in that, you know, social will look at the kind of the art form of stand up and go, you know, why would I bother doing that?

You know, there's just old guys getting on stage every evening.

And then vice versa, you know, stand up comics who are, you know, OG's in the game will look at those on socials and think, you know, you're just taking the shortcut.

And I encountered a lot of that when I started doing stand up.

But the very reason I started stand up is because, you know, I really would love to be one of the best comics.

And I understand the, you know, the graft and the kind of the art form.

And I want to respect the art form.

So I was only gigging and I was going to places where I was enlisted and stuff where I would have happily been heckled and, you know, had a pint of Stella thrown over me if that's what it took to kind of earn my stripes.

So for me personally, I really admire all forms of comedy.

And do you feel that sort of social media is is choking off?

The kind of comedy that you were doing.

I mean, we had Stuart Lee here recently.

Oh, yeah, I love that.

Who was saying, you know, that the comedians who had built their careers on social media were we're we're dead because social media has been now, you know, taken over, weaponized, now openly biased and is choking off sort of anything that's sort of perceived as left wing or local socially aware and is amplifying right wing messages.

Yeah, I think that's true.

There's an element of truth in that.

And I think Stuart was was dropping gems so, so many of the the the points he was making were so sort of on the on the money.

But I have found that while some of my content definitely has been censored, and then I've been put on a sort of metaphorical naughty step after some sketches, which is crazy.

Like what?

OK, so for example, I made a sketch about Trump selling his own action figurine.

And I remember I dropped the video, and it was just radio silence.

Because remember, even if you drop a terrible video, it's still going to get engagement because people are going to tell you it's terrible, right?

You know, people are going to give you that slap on the wrist, but there was just nothing.

And I thought, OK, let me keep it up for 24 hours.

Maybe it's just a slow Newsday.

Maybe people are out in the sun.

And the next day I had a notification from the social media app saying, oh, your, your video's been taken down for using copyrighted music.

Bearing in mind 2-3 years I've been making music on my videos, you know, parodying popular songs, you know, Matt Hancock, Shaggy, It wasn't me, this that the other, none of them have ever been taken down.

And it was the first and only time I've ever had that message pop up.

And for the next few days, all of my analytics and my engagement on everything Rock bottom.

And the maddest thing was I was trying to promote, promote a show that week.

And that was the first time I thought, wow.

That's censorship.

Yeah, because I'm, I'm not someone who sort of buys into the, you know, I'm not someone who, if a, if a video on social media doesn't do well, I go, I'm being censored.

You know, they're trying, they're trying to, you know, they're trying to muffle me from speaking my truth.

You know, I roll with the punches.

But this just felt bleedingly obvious.

So, So what does that mean for for you?

Does that mean you've got to get away from reliance on these platforms?

And, you know, is that why you're sort of now focused on TV and stage?

I have not experienced any significant drop in the traction of my satire.

You know, even after lockdown, if it was like a sort of flavour of the month type thing, you would expect there to be some sort of decline.

Whereas actually, you know, my following has continued to grow.

Some of the biggest videos I've had have been this year.

And what that tells me is even though there's an extremely loud minority, there is a majority of people who still kind of abide by the principles of right and wrong and calling out stuff that seems so obviously wrong.

Who will gather almost in like a sort of a town square, which the videos represent to, to just say I feel the relief in that.

You can see this too.

I'm glad we can all recognise this.

Thankfully I have not been centred to the point where I can't even express express a differing opinion.

If I was in America, I don't know what that's like.

And what do you mean when you say you know your comedy is about you know you want people to feel seen?

Well, it's, it's the feeling of it's hard not to watch the news and it's hard to watch the news and not feel depressed or anxious or miserable or have what I call apocalypse anxiety.

I don't know if I've entered the phrase.

I hope so because I'm going to cash that in.

But when I made my second documentary, which was about Kim Jong Un and the threat that he, you know, whether the documentary was an investigation as to whether this is a man who at any second will press the big red button and then the world, I was really utilising this term apocalypse anxiety, which just is this impending feeling of doom that the world is on the brink of ending.

The news will constantly reinforce that feeling.

No shade.

And so for me, it's just about providing a counter narrative which says, OK, even if these things are happening, A, there is good news here, here and here.

Here are small pockets of light.

But B, if this is our reality, let's at least find some humour within that reality.

The same way that, you know, in 1984, you know, the main character, you know, absconds to this secret den with his lover just to find the simple pleasures to acknowledge actually that that we're, we're shrouded in this very depressing orb of our reality.

But we have to find the light within that.

That's what I would like my comedy to do.

Yeah.

I mean, it serves another purpose as well potentially, doesn't it?

In that, in that it's, it suggests that things aren't quite as catastrophic.

You know if if you can laugh at things, if you can have the time to laugh at things, you you can reveal you can take away their power.

Oh, massively.

Look it it, it is the dichotomy.

It's as simplistic as the dichotomy of if you don't laugh, you cry.

You know, at any one point my output on stage, on social media, on a show like this can either make you feel worse about the world or slightly better.

So if anything, I I, I obtain a bit of, I obtain a bit of purpose from thinking I am the latter, you know?

And and so how?

I mean, you, you're not tribal, you say politically, but you are, I suppose, progressive.

Yeah.

I, I I.

Think so?

I'd like to think so.

Yeah, you know, I mean, you, you poke fun at sort of at racism and sexism, all sorts of things.

So.

But does that mean that your audience is woken progressive, basically.

Well, for example, let's talk about the debut show that I made, right?

So it was a non scripted show that YouTube commissioned and it was called Race Around Britain, right?

And it was an exploration as to what Britain knows about black culture following a very tense period after the George Floyd protests.

Now, I had no intention to make a finger wagging programme because I would like to make comedy that kind of invites people in.

And so when we did these episodes, we went to, for example, Kent and we asked people what they knew about sort of black cuisine by hosting A spoof cookery show called the Great British Jerk Off, which you probably won't be able to Google Now due to the Online Safety Act.

But you know, it was that kind of thing.

It was like a, for example, when when we went through this period where tabloids were constantly accidentally confusing black celebrities in front of their papers, we got Man City fans into a room telling them they were going to meet Raheem Sterling.

Then just found this guy that looked nothing like Raheem Sterling and had him sat signing books with these fans.

And all of the fans went, that's not Raheem Sterling.

And we were like, well, if you can tell, why can't established journalists tell?

And then the people would go, maybe, maybe it's deliberate then just bringing people around to the idea of kind of, you know, racial politics and maybe institutional racism through their own discovery and through comedy.

And the the the magnum opus of the show was exploring this idea of white privilege, which, you know, was really pertinent term at the time, by investigating, for example, right.

Black musicians who make drill music are being demonized and, you know, stifled.

A lot of them are getting, you know, sort of police investigations.

If 3 white ladies named Karen made a drill song, if the theory of white privilege is correct, then the song should perform extremely well and people should actually celebrate the song.

So found I held a Karen convention of women named Karen and then picked 3 three of the most Karenist Karens and got them to record a drill song.

We put the drill song out and in 24 hours it had a million views.

And off the back of that those ladies said, I, I kind of, I kind of get it, you know, and that's all it was.

It was just inviting people in to make their own discovery and then hopefully go out and spread the good word.

So if you want to call that, for example, liberal or left-leaning, maybe it falls within that categorisation.

But my intent whilst making the show was not let me make a show like that.

It was just let me make a feel good show.

And, and how much sort of quiet anger is there behind your ideas?

You know, when you look at, are you sort of trying to hit something that that annoys you about society or are you doing something else?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Well, I don't feel like an angry person, but I feel like a person who, and maybe it comes from the experience of bullying.

You can be bullied and not necessarily instantly feel like you want to punch the person in the face, but you can know something.

An injustice has been committed against you.

And I think that's how I have always been.

You know, I've had a lot of bullies throughout my life.

I've never punched any of them in the face.

I don't know, think I've ever even punched anyone, right.

But I, I, I felt anger and I felt sadness and I felt upset.

And my vehicle to kind of getting around that has often been sort of like a more witty and intellectual approach to, you know, how, how do I, how do I showcase?

How do I show these are the bad guys and show there are more good guys than bad guys?

And and so is the bullying just a childhood thing or is that?

I I think predominantly, yes.

And that's the, the, the, that's the bullying we all remember.

Yeah.

You know, did you get bullied?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, I, I, I did try and punch back once.

Unfortunately I had a broken arm at the time so it was possibly the worst.

And your instinct was the time with the broken arm.

No, I tried to punch with the other arm, but it was, it was not a good time to have the one fight that I had decided to pick with the school bully.

And, and I, if I've talked about this before, is it He did actually.

He became a teacher bully and he wrote to me after his training to apologise and I ignored it.

And do I not reply?

I respect that.

That is better than a broken armed punch.

Let me tell you that.

But you can agree that bullying is a, you know, very formative experience.

And even if you're someone who doesn't necessarily sort of wallow in it, I, I, I, I don't know whether I've been on a show or a podcaster mentioned it, right?

Because, you know, I don't feel like it's a key part of my story.

But actually, when I look back and I think about what made me me as an entertainer, that definitely plays a big role, you know, and it how it, it brought me a lot of solutions to, to problems I had.

I think having to work through that experience as a kid because you're just confused and you don't know what it means.

But it's a very early introduction to the fact that there may be people in life who may be the going to become politicians, teachers, important figures, who, you know, but who, who, you know, impose their will and their policy through bullying.

You know, and I guess it's just about how do you stand up to bullying as you get older?

So as as you as you are now sort of in, in the TV industry to a large degree, you know what, what do you think of TV comedy?

I mean, you know, lots of people are very worried about TV comedy being, you know, less risk taking, less innovative, you know, British comedy used to be, you know, world leading.

Yeah.

Is it still?

Yeah, well, I remember very early on in my career, whilst things were still, whilst I had a lot of traction and momentum, still pitching a sketch show and being told by the commissioners in the room.

Oh, you know, British TV doesn't really do sketch shows.

Like there's not really a cultural or an appetite for sketch shows.

And I'm thinking, bro, we had a trade, sorry, big trade.

We had Mitchell and Webb, We had all these amazing sketch shows.

Like what are you talking about with the Ogs, with the with the sketch originators and feeling like maybe we're just going through a phase.

If we are going through a phase.

What I am most excited about is social media and comics on social media are having a field day with just having great ideas and making them happen.

I saw a group of young boys who made their own travelogue because basically they were all from different parts of the world and they made they, they got a couple of handheld cameras and they decided to do a travelogue in which they each visited each of their home countries.

And it blew up on socials and everyone went, this should be on TV.

And it's like, yeah, perhaps it should be on TV, but what you're watching right now is TV, just not on a television.

So I would, I love the fact that there are no gatekeepers now, that you are not looking for that one person to give you the green light to make your idea.

When I started out, you know what I used to do?

I used to, because I thought I need an agent to make TVI would e-mail agents saying I was Idris Albertson because, you know, in Gmail, it's got that tiny little picture of you.

I thought if they just see one drop of melody, they might think it's true.

And I would get in the room.

I would get in the room and then it would just be a never ending sequence of impressing the right person.

And if at any point during that journey I dropped the ball, that was my chance to make ATV show gone.

So I would like to think that the, the tenacity and the the the sheer kind of volume of great ideas we see on social media will ignite something back in traditional television.

That we will start to work more with those people, that those young boys will get their own show.

And if that takes a while, that's fine because they're still honing their craft as they go along.

But I think that TV has to change.

I mean, it's about money largely, isn't it?

Because when you make ATV program, the resources thrown into it are huge by comparison to you making your first videos.

Totally, yeah.

And that seems to be sort of the the hurdle between sort of commissioning programmes because they cost money.

Do we we need to find a way of making things that don't cost much money?

Are they or?

We can.

Well, look, there are various ways of doing that.

You know, I'm not an expert in television scheduling, but you know, if we're having 70 series of something or it's the same rinse and repeat format, yes, it's a surefire.

But that is sort of just clinging to what is safe and you know what the status.

I mean when you started, I mean, The thing is your videos were very high production.

Values.

Oh yeah, totally.

So how how did you achieve that kind of feel on presumably no budget?

How to spend money, you know, these videos they cost, you know, they cost money like, and it's, it's crazy because so many of the platforms don't allow you to monetise, right.

But with my videos, you know, I'm, I'm paying editors if I, I pay animators, if I'm working with another writer on a really big story, you know, they get paid as well.

So effectively, we're running our own production companies.

I have a production company in order to, to continue my output.

So, you know, that's what we can achieve on 1/10 of, of telebudgets.

So it's not as if we're saying, please give us the budget of a traitors or, or what not.

It's just just something more to take A to contact people already like to a slightly higher level.

And do you think that the opportunity is there for for other young people who want to do this or, or were you a creature of a moment in which social media was open and you know, was an opportunity and that that's that's a moment that's passed?

Oh, dude, yeah, social media, that door is still wide open.

If you turned to me after this podcast and said, Munya, I'm actually a sick dancer, you could upload a TikTok of you throwing it back today.

And that's the beginning of your journey, you know, and you'll build from there.

So that door is still wide open.

And that's why I think it's just an amazing creative democracy at the moment where if you've got a good idea, social socials will decide whether it's going to fly or not.

And that's a great impetus to just keep trying new things.

And that for me, is how TV used to feel.

Sure, maybe not.

Maybe some of the programs were clangers.

But I remember a time, you know, you could turn on TV.

And, you know, some of the early shows I remember of watching when I was a kid in Zimbabwe on British TV were things like, you know, Laddet to Lady Faking It was another show, you know, just very simple concepts.

But I remember laughing my head off and it drew the family to the couch.

Some of those shows were were risky and were stupid and were mischievous.

But I think that's what I loved about TV then, you know?

Now you, you talked about that, that period during COVID and the George Floyd aftermath, Black Lives Matter.

It was quite important for your growth and giving you stuff to talk about.

To what extent do you think we are now in a sort of a backlash to that period?

Well, the pendulum, OK.

So it definitely feels like, you know, people are done with diversity in the sense that if you look at sort of marketing, for example, or advertising agencies, it's there has felt like a sort of collective exhale where people feel they don't necessarily need to be very inclusive anymore.

A lot of Trump's policies seem to be sort of giving that green flag to care less about, say, minority or marginalised communities.

My feeling towards that is it's sad in so much as I don't think that movement was ever about saying please give us opportunities for the sake of it.

I always think that, for example, you know, when you think about even an example like The Little Mermaid character, when Hallie Bailey was was cast as The Little Mermaid and there was this huge backlash of people saying that she'd been selected purely on the basis of her of her skin.

You know, Hallie's an incredible singer.

You know, there's every chance that she could have gone into that audition room and just been the best auditionee.

She might have hit the notes better than anyone and, and delivered the lines with a certain heft that just wasn't mirrored in the room.

There is a possibility that people of colour or minorities are, are just good in the room or are just the best in the room.

And so it feels sad to have perhaps removed the process by which we even give them the chance to get in the room.

That's my sentiment.

I, I, I've always sort of gone by the idea that of course I want to, you know, I want to earn whatever spot I have.

And I would really, I would really advocate that most people of colour or from minority background also operate by the operate by the same logic.

It's like, give me a chance just so I can at least show you how good I am.

I, I always think of it like this.

When people used to argue online or in person, you would disagree on so many things, right?

But there was always this kind of thing I would always see come up where people would be like, but Hitler was a bad guy, right?

People would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can agree on that.

Now it's like you're having an argument with someone and you go, yeah, but Hitler was a bad guy, right?

And they're like, well, that is a mad state of play.

You know, that's a crazy place to be in, I think because we've now start to go back in time and and think about things that we felt collectively were subjectively wrong and go, but was it wrong or are you just being woke?

And you know, woke is is such a funny word to me because ordinarily, ordinarily it's a description of somebody telling somebody saying something racist, misogynistic or just sort of type thing.

You shouldn't say.

You shouldn't be saying that.

You know, almost always when you hear that word, it's because someone's saying the wrong thing is being told off.

Yes.

And so, I mean, I mean, and, and obviously it's what political correctness was in the 80s and 90s.

And it, it's not going to go away because there's always going to be, you know, but it's going to have to find a new way of describing itself, isn't it?

I suppose.

Look, I mean, I think your average person on the street is, is never shoving down the throat their political ideology.

You know, I think sometimes when we talk about culture wars, there's this feeling that people who have slightly more liberal ideas or on the left are absolutely insistent that you believe or see things from where they see them.

You know, myself, I, I, I'm, I'm sort of just advocating for a world in which we're not being knobs to each other.

You know, I'm not going to force that on anyone, but ideally, that's the world we'd be living in.

And I just think cultural, you know, culture wars were used as a very effectively as a political tool by which politicians could divert attention from stuff that really matters.

And like Stuart Lee was saying on the episode you did with him, unfortunately, that box has now opened.

Maybe the politicians who utilize culture wars thought they could shut the lid on it, but now it's, it's out of control.

And so we can end up in a situation where instead of figuring out realistic solutions to get people housed and to rebalance the economy, it's it's, it's about people's gender and race and, and all of this, this stuff.

So does that leave you very pessimistic about the future then?

Well, I'm going to try and I will.

I mean, it's funny, you know, because you, you say the news, the news is sort of apocalyptic, correct?

And as soon as you have a sort of a serious conversation about anything, you end up in the same zone.

Well, we're just talking about the layer of the land, you know, objectively we're looking at, we're looking out and saying does anyone really feel good about where we are right now?

I don't think we do, but I will try to continue to mine humour from that and also try to create things in the world which advocate for more positivity, you know, in different spaces.

The projects that I will work on now, I'm going to try and leave a little bit of light behind.

You know, weirdly, theatre is something that I have grown very passionate about.

It's a place that I seek creative refuge, for example, when I, you know, struggle with writer's block and stuff.

And you know, I'm developing a project in the theatrical space, which I would like to think is going to instill install a massive kind of positive change for the future generation of young black boys who are a demographic that, you know, many time we see portrayed in the wrong light in press.

You know I want to be part of the solution to that.

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're organising a way for black boys to go to the theatre.

That's right.

You know, this is not, you know, in a world where we hear them in terms like DEI and work this and you know, you're excluding XY and Z group.

This is not about that at all for me.

It's about the it's that theatre actually is employing so many incredible young Black actors at the moment on stage.

Shooter Gatwa, who you may have seen as Doctor Who, Paparoseidu, who's been cast as the new Snape in the upcoming Harry Potter series, Just so much incredible young Black male talent is taking centre stage because of what we spoke about earlier.

They're just fantastic.

And I've been to see so many of these plays and I look around and there's no young Black boys in the audience and it makes me sad because we're always having a conversation about where are the role models after adolescence?

People are asking, yes, but where, where, where do our boys look when they go online?

All they see is Andrew Tate or XY and Z streamer.

And in my mind I'm thinking, well, actually a lot of these role models are in theatre.

And so I want to find a way to reduce that gap between young black boys and the theatre.

You could say, for example, well, why not young white boys?

Absolutely fantastic point.

Maybe one day it will expand into that.

But actually culturally within the black community, sometimes arts are seen as being quite whimsical.

You know, there's the age-old joke where you know if you tell a Nigerian or a Zimbabwe or a gun and parent, I want to be an artist, I want to be an actor, I want to be a dancer.

You're instantly chastised as not for not wanting to be a lawyer or a doctor.

You know, arts can be seen as quite flamboyant and sometimes there is a stereotype amongst young black men that they'll be ridiculed for attending.

And so they just happen to be a group who sort of really would benefit from a deliberate introduction to theatre.

And boys more than girls, yes, need this kind of a focus.

Only because of the, the barricade that masculinity and young masculinity provides between them and theatre.

When I go to the theatre, I love to see, you know, pairs and groups of young black women going to watch Players.

And I always do never see young black boys.

And when I ask the boys on my trips, would you ever go with your boys to watch theatre?

Like, no, of course I wouldn't do that.

No, no way.

I do that.

That's, you know, and I know what they want to say.

And it's like, OK, cool.

How how do we change that?

So I think by going to the theatre and seeing actors laugh, cry, fight scenes choreographed, you know, yeah, we went to see, we went to see Noughts and Crosses at Regency Outdoor Theatre.

And afterwards we met the cast and the boys were so fascinated, saying stuff like, you know, when you kissed on stage, was it real?

How do you not fall in love?

You know, really sort of sweet, naive questions.

But I love to see it.

I love to see young black boys feeling welcome to explore and welcome to feel intrigued by a space that wouldn't traditionally be in.

So where do you see yourself in that whole masculinity projection?

You know, how important is it for you to sort of be in that?

Well, I would love to be, I would really love to be, you know, a role, a positive role model to young men.

Sometimes I think about it very consciously and then other times I just try to let my work do the talking.

But it is absolutely important to me.

You know, I think that it's not been a great few years for men, you know, really so many of the kind of modern day evils we can trace back to bad men.

And you know, it does start somewhere young boys in, in the UK don't have.

I've not been given exercises like the ones I was in school where it was like, how do you, how is yourself esteem?

Where are you on this tree?

And so it's up to kind of young men like myself, I think to provide those sort of thoughtful opportunities and to kind of like interrogate the bombardment of ideas they're being given from very sort of right wing manosphere influencers.

So yes, it is a goal of mine and it's something that I would like to leave behind.

I I would love for, you know, one or two boys in future to be able to go many two hours like a good blueprint of, you know, getting your head down working something you believe in sort of peddling A predominantly positive message.

And I reckon I'm going to, I'm going to try that.

Sounds like Britain could learn from a Zimbabwean education.

Hey, you said it.

Manya, thank you very much indeed.

Thank you man, it's been a pleasure.

I hope you enjoyed that.

You can watch all of these interviews on the Channel 4 News YouTube channel.

Until next time, bye bye.