Their next Wollongong gig is titled the Big Fat Wog Comedy Show, but don’t call George Kapiniaris and Tahir Bilgic “ethnic comedians”.
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The pair have been making jokes about baklava and tabouli for decades but both admit they’re just making people laugh the Australian way by taking the mickey out of themselves.
“We make fun of our culture, we make fun of our parents, these are our stories and how we grew up and our perspectives on growing up in Australia,” Bilgic said.
“My family’s of Turkish origin and we migrated here [when I was] three or four.”
The former school teacher-turned-Fat Pizza star said there’s too much seriousness in the world so he takes the lighter side and admits he does make jokes about Islamic State.
“That’s the Aussie way, we’re just going to joke about it. That’s how we deal with things here,” he said.
Bilgic is proud to have become mates one of his heroes, Kapiniaris, whom he loved watching on the ‘90s sitcom Acropolis Now.
The show revolved around a fictional Greek cafe in Melbourne and ran from 1989 to 1992 on the Seven Network.
Kapiniaris lamented on being in his 20s and “holding up a flag for multicultural TV in Australia”. He still sells the box-sets at his shows.
Before that, Kapiniaris was working with Simon Palomares doing stand-up comedy and commenting on the differences between their family barbecues compared to the Aussie barbecue (that is, a lamb on a spit versus a few snags).
“We weren’t even trying to do ethnic comedy, we were just talking about ourselves … doing all the stuff that’d make us laugh around the dinner table we were sharing with the audience,” he said.
A newspaper article about the duo at the time declared in the headline “ethnic comedy arrives at last”.
“Simon and I looked at each other and said, ‘oh is that what we do’ … so all of a sudden we were labelled as something even though it wasn’t our intention,” he said.
Both Kapiniaris and Bilgic are still favourites on the Australian comedy scene with a big following in Wollongong. Kapiniaris has performed at a string of Illawarra weddings, five in the same family.
The pair will perform to at least one sell-out crowd on the weekend and another near sell-out, before “everyone heads to the lighthouse to do burnouts”.
Bilgic would love to see that happen, admitting he’ll persuade the audience by telling them it’s safety in numbers.
Big Fat Wog Comedy Show, The Builders Club in Wollongong, Friday May 5 8pm and Saturday May 6 (SOLD OUT). Tickets $39 via www.wollongongcomedy.com.au