Those Indian guys are back

It's the end of January and time for a few laughs. Sans Moonsamy and Kaseran Pillay step up to the plate, with two helpings of humour.
FUNNYMEN Sans Moonsamy and Kaseran Pillay, otherwise known as Those Indian Guys, gear up to belt out their jokes and bring their alter egos to life on stage at Gold Reef City’s Globe Theatre for a limited run of shows in January and February.

Funnymen Sans Moonsamy and Funnymen Sans Moonsamy and Kasaran Pillay are Those Indian Guys!Promising to be ridiculously hilarious, Moonsamy assures audiences they will be engulfed by the slick humour, which is set to take the comedians to a new level. Those Indian Guys 1: Comedy with an East Infection runs from 27 to 29 January, followed by the sequel, Those Indian Guys 2: Bigger, Browner & Twice as Funny, from 3 to 12 February.

He adds that before coming to the show, audiences should consult their doctors to make sure they will be able to laugh for 75 minutes non-stop.

“Carry an asthma pump even if you don’t have asthma,” he says. The clever, very naughty sketches are described as “a zany exploration of Indian identity and culture”.

Both these hit comedies have played to packed houses all over the country, including sell-out runs at Gold Reef City Casino, and both Moonsamy and Pillay have been nominated for Best Performance in a Comedy for Those Indian Guys in The Mercury Durban Theatre Awards.

They have also recently released their debut CD, Funny Choons. According to Moonsamy, it “has all original songs with original lyrics and is very tongue in cheek and a little bit risqué, so if you’ve seen the shows you know it’s definitely representative of us”.

Explaining the origins of the CD, he says: “Funny Choons started as a project when we started conceptualising our second sketch comedy project Those Indian Guys 2. We were sitting around reminiscing about stuff that we missed from when we were growing up, like playing yo-yos, tops, swingball in the backyard and even those huge family functions that we hated going to as laaities but would give an arm and a leg to be able to revive those traditions today … And thus our first track came to fruition – Good Old Days featuring Proverb.”

Biography
Moonsamy was born in Durban in 1978, before moving to Joburg. He runs his own entertainment company called SandMan Productions, which he started 10 years ago.

He studied drama and performance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and has been involved in local soapies and various television advertisements, local films, radio drama, corporate videos and theatre.

His credits include Curry on Laughing and Karma Komedian, which he wrote and produced; as well as appearances on Eastern Mosaic, Binnelanders and ads for Standard Bank, CTM, Cell C, Chicken Licken, Willards and Dial Direct.

Pillay is an actor, a comedian, a voice artist, director and writer, and is known for SABC3’s series, Going Nowhere Slowly, from 2005 to 2007.

He has appeared in numerous television shows, including Bay of Plenty (2007), The History of Bunny Chow from Uhuru Productions (2005-2007) and the M-Net drama Innocent Times, in 2008.

Apart from television, he has appeared in theatre productions such as Snow White and Several Dwarfs, Hamlet, My Cousin Brother and Abbamaniacs.

He has been performing stand-up comedy since 1997, mainly at corporate functions. In October 2008, he began playing the role of Ricky in the SABC2 comedy series On the Couch. Pillay was also one of the celebrity contestants on M-Net’s Survivor South Africa: Santa Carolina, in 2010.

Tickets for Those Indian Guys are priced at R120 and are available at the Gold Reef City Casino box office on 011 248 5000 or at Computicket.