In-between all the tomfoolery though, an interview did transpire and if you are a fan of comedy, looking to get into comedy or just really want to listen to one of South Africa’s greatest creative minds, strap yourself in, Lazola has got you covered.

If you don’t know who Lazola Gola is, the man is so vastly talented and has so many accolades as well as projects that he has worked on, that this paragraph would look like the opening 3 chapters of Homer’s Iliad, but to sort of summarize, here’s my best attempt…

Laz is an award-winning comedian who performed his first show while he was still in high school. He has also performed at multiple comedy shows and festivals, from Rocking the Daisies to the Wits “Haha” Comedy festival. He is no stranger to the theatre and was involved in his brother’s (Loyiso Gola) show “Loyiso Gola Runs for president”. You may think that it ends there but you would be absolutely wrong. Laz also has many feathers in his cap when it comes to writing for television and has featured in multiple adverts. Do you remember when Rodwell Tshabalala needed to restock the International Space Station with Chicken Licken? Well, that was all Laz! When he isn’t busting his ass off in the entertainment scene, Laz is also an incredibly talented copy-writer. 

Lazola, tell us how you have been? How was your 2020/2021?

“I have been good, this year is a lot better than last year. I feel like it’s weird to be negative about my shit when everyone has had their own. With comedy, and the film industry pretty much closing down for a time, I went from someone that could juggle multiple careers and forms of creative output, to ‘wham’  everything just being cut. I’m not going to lie, the first 2 weeks were like a well-needed holiday that I haven’t taken since I started comedy in 2007. It was weird because I never had that anxiety that I wasn’t on stage or anything so  because the whole world was chilled I thought  ‘lemme chill the fuck out too’ ” 

Was there a point during the lockdown where you thought, “Maybe I need to go into looking different career paths?” 

 “No no no, all this was a blessing; I have always seen myself as a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. I am not a person that ever tried to focus on just one thing so between the comedy and TV writing, directing and copy-writing, only 2 of those things were affected hard. Having my writing was a blessing to fall back on but I will always love comedy as an art form and as a form of entertainment.

I feel like this is a good segue to dive headfirst into questions about comedy. You started your comedy career at the YFM show case in 2007 and pretty much haven’t stopped since then. In your opinion, how has Comedy changed from 2007 to 2021. 

“Before I answer I that, quick story about that YFM Comedy Showcase; so I had to basically choose between doing all-nighters studying for my Economics degree that I was doing at Wits at the time or, to go through to Rosebank where YFM was based to compete in the showcase. You can guess which one I chose! Back to the question though, which is a  great question, and it’s of the assumption that whilst my point of view has stayed the same, my perception of comedy then and now is completely different. To simply put it, there are way more comedians around which is incredible, and for the younger comedians coming through to work in comedy, it is a tangible goal that you can earn money doing it. Back then it wasn’t the same, everyone followed the same sort of path whereas now you can get there in so many different ways.”

We digress. If you were to join a cult, which one tickles your fancy? Heaven’s Gate, The Rajneeshees or the Manson Family?

“Sheesh I am not too clued up on cults. Ummm, I would have to say that one that was on Netflix, about the country or something…”Wild Wild Country”, yea I think that was the Rajneeshees, right? I watched that documentary and saw the guy had like 10 Bentleys and I thought ‘Damn, maybe this isn’t so bad.’ Also, a side note, I think it’s mainly sexually repressed people that start these cults, because it’s always like, to get further in the cult, you need to do some kind of weird, creepy shit to go up a level or something. It’s strange. About those Bentleys though…call me a Rajneeshee”

Next question… If you were to rank the most irritating people on Earth between vegans, cyclists and Crossfitters, how do you place them from 1 to 3?

“These questions don’t get any less weird  but, I would probably put cyclists at the top. Cycling and cyclists are the real cult. It’s just the arrogance for me man, especially about coffee and the obscene amount of space they take up in coffee shops. I remember chilling on the Atlantic Seaboard once and there was this one dude cycling all on his own but literally in the middle of the road and I thought to myself, ‘how damn confident are you to just take up not one lane, but both, really?!’. Next I’d have to say Crossfitters, like I don’t need to hear about your weekend in kilograms, just tell me if you went away or not dude. Lastly vegans, I have nothing bad to say about vegans, my girlfriend is a vegan. Or vegetarian. Something like that.

Going back to how comedy has changed, what about the content of your comedy, are people more easily offended by sets now days?

“Okay so there is a pretty big misconception here. A comedian’s goal is to never insult the audience. A good comedian is always careful about their content. I can honestly say, for the most part, anything you hear on stage was carefully curated to avoid that feeling of offense. A good comic is also able to gauge if an audience is with them for a certain subject  and if they feel the audience is turning on them, they will know how to steer the punch line in a different way. Comedy is one of the most adaptive and sensitive art forms. The goal is to generally try get an audience to laugh at something they might not usually find funny or think about it in a different way. Through a set, the comments and jokes are all a litmus test to gauge an audience’s sensitivity. The one thing that’s for sure though, NO comedian is going to defend a joke that’s not funny.”

Is there anything that you yourself don’t particularly like to discuss or joke about?

“No, not at all. I think everything is fair play. There have been times in the past where I have talked about contentious issues. Let me break it down for you like this;  when I make or write a joke, I consider it ‘problem solving’ or ‘puzzle solving’ so when I get on stage and perform that joke, that is then me ‘presenting my puzzle’ to the audience. Whilst I am working on that joke, I’ll read something and then see that there could potentially be an interesting angle to broach the subject. In essence, by saying that there aren’t subjects that are off the table to joke about,  just means that there are things that are more taboo than others and that is just more of a challenge”.

That leads me into my next question. Are you naturally a funny person, or was this a skill that you had to hone and work on. Essentially what I am asking is, are you funny when you aren’t on stage?

“That is a great question and also a big misconception. I like to consider myself a funny person, but there are far funnier people that I hang out with. When I find myself in a situation where there is a lot of humour, there are 2 approaches I like to take; the one is to just take a step back and let other people be insanely hilarious and let the jokes fly, the other is to just join into that situation. The one thing is, when I am at a braai, I HATE mentioning that I am a comedian {or if someone mentions I am a comedian} because it brings out this weird social interaction where the guy that’s always the funny one at the braai sort of feels threatened or when they do something funny, they look to you for approval. I feel like Caesar in Gladiator where I need to either give the thumbs up or down to show my approval, or lack thereof, for a joke. So to answer your question briefly, I think I am pretty funny naturally but I am also able to turn on a different type of humour when I am on stage. 

So, now that we know you are naturally funny, has there ever been a performance where you absolutely bombed? 

“If any comedian tells you with a straight face that they haven’t bombed they are lying. There are so many different factors when doing a gig that change from place to place, whether it’s the demographic, the way the stage is set-up or even the lighting. All these things can lend to something going insanely wrong. You do get to a point though, where your mind set shifts to “Shit happens, I can’t blame the audience.” What that eventually does, is help in blocking out all the bad gigs, but the bad gigs don’t become bad gigs, but they become learning curves and almost like a ‘bad day at the office’.
HOWEVER, there is one gig…when I was still in high school, a friend of mine was doing job shadowing, and he shadowed a comedian, Cokey Falkow. So Cokey was performing a gig and asked if I wanted 5 minutes on stage, I obviously said yes, because any time on stage is good. The problem was that my time on stage was getting more and more delayed and I was having a beer here, and a shot there. So by the time I got on stage, I was LIT. I remember getting on stage and saying the punch lines before the jokes, and then getting lost in the middle of jokes. I remember my brain being like ‘where the fuck does this all go’ and the crowd was dead silent. I didn’t even leave the stage on a joke, I just said ‘thank you’ and walked off. The MC then had to address the elephant in the room and was like ‘Yea, so um, that dude was terrible’ and the entire club burst into applause. Comedy is the closest thing we have to a public execution.

I want to change gears on this entire interview quickly, why the fuck did you study economics?

“Man, I love economics, it’s an amazing subject but it’s the things around economics that I didn’t like, the whole idea of equipping students to be “business people”.  I think economics helped me to view the world differently. For example, something you learn in first year, opportunity cost, so what is the cost of certain decisions if given 2 options? I saw it as a philosophy as opposed to ‘Let’s get that bank boooy’”. 

So what does the future hold for you Laz, what are you going to be getting up to moving forward? I may have heard some things about getting into the director’s chair?

“So, I am getting quite heavily into directing which is exciting. What I found with comedy is that it is almost autonomous; when something goes right, you get all the praise, then moving into writing for TV as well as copywriting, you sort of have less autonomy and you would end up passing your work to someone else to finish, which is generally a director. So that is basically where the idea started percolating in my own head. Strangely because of COVID,  all these cool things and opportunities started cropping up. I was involved in a number of projects during last year. I am also incredibly into story-telling from a single source. So at the moment I am with 7Films where I am doing commercial directing, but they have also said they are open to anything where I can get involved and have fun with it. I am going to keep on writing too, and I’m obviously going to still be doing comedy”.  

“ I am just happy to be juggling all these things again”.

Written by: Duncan Bayne