Pinehas Nakaziko
Windhoek-Multi-award winning Namibian stand-up comedian, Mitch Gaoseb, known as Big Mitch in comic circles, is right to describe himself a comedy guru. Pinehas Nakaziko explains why.
Big Mitch made history last year when he joined the comedy scene professionally with his first sold out one-man show titled ‘The Nama with a Wambo Attitude’, hosted at the Franco-Namibia Cultural Centre (FNCC).
His act won him the award of Last Comic Standing at the Free Your Minds Last Comic Standing Awards the same year, when he battled it out against eight local comics competing for three comedy awards on the same night.
This year Big Mitch surprised many locals when he managed to pull off the first ever countrywide comedy tour called ‘The Son of a Mitch Tour 2017’, where he performed at the coast, in the north and wound up in Rundu in the northeast.
The aim of the tour was to scout for new talent in the respective towns where he performed.
“This was because we have so many good comedians in Namibia, but they didn’t have a platform to tell their jokes like we did in the capital,” Big Mitch says.
Beginning this month, he made history again when he scooped the award of Favourite Comedian of the Year at the Simply You Magazine (SYM) Lifestyle and Fashion Awards, hosted at the National Theatre of Namibia (NTN).
He was nominated alongside veteran comedians Slick the Dick, Courage the Comedian, Mark and Fernando Ta Fish but pipped them all to the award.
“Winning the award was life changing, it was the one of the best things to happen to me this year,” he says.
Apart from all these successes, this year he also released a comedy sketch titled, Oucie Regulinde, which trended on social media, and made him the talk of town.
The sketch has since gone viral. It started with only 4,000 views on the first day of its release.
The sketch came to him one day when he was missing his late sister Sabina Gaoses.
“I just thought to myself if she was alive now, what would she be talking about? So I dressed up as her and did the first video titled ‘Say something’, which attracted more viewers,” Big Mitch relates.
He adds Oucie Regulinde is a character he created because he did not want to break down and cry because of missing his sister, but rather pay tribute to her.
He is planning a one-man show for November 4, with more details about the event to be announced later.
“I have a lot of exciting projects planned for Mitch Nation that I can’t mention now due to funny reasons, but it looks like we are going continental next year,” he says with enthusiasm.
Big Mitch started telling jokes at primary school with a comedy style called ‘Kogel’ or as we now say ‘Gwara’ in street slang.
“Back then I never knew there was something like stand-up comedy until one of my friends I use to sing with in the Harmony acapella group, told me to try out comedy,” he says, adding that his friend gave him a gig at a restaurant run by a friend.
“From there he got me in touch with Slick the Dick from Free You Mind.”
He started with comedy in 2010, but only took it up as a profession in 2015 and then rose to fame in 2016.