Chapter 1: Who is Paul Chowdhry and what is his significance in comedy?
On this episode of the Commercial Break.
America is first and foremost in the land of conspiracy theories and divisive thinking around conspiracy theories. But now it's bled into other parts of the world, like the UK. Is that true?
Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no truth anymore. It's your truth. It's you don't have to go to medical school for six to eight years, whatever it is, and specialize in your specialist area to to learn your craft.
If you do a Google search, you can debunk those. The next episode of the commercial break starts now.
Oh yeah, cats and kittens, welcome back to the commercial break. I'm Brian Greene and I'm here by myself on a Thanksgiving week, but it's a TCB infomercial Tuesday and the trains keep running and they must run on time. So you're getting a fresh episode of TCB's infomercial with Paul Chowdhury. Paul Chowdhury is here, ladies and gents. And now Chrissy wasn't here when I recorded this episode.
If you remember a couple of weeks back, she took some time off. Then I fell ill. You know, it's just the round the clock nature of having 12 to 15 children. Someone is always experiencing some kind of sickness. And on this particular day, Chrissy had just come back from vacation, but I was not feeling well. I did not want to disappoint Paul and cancel last minute. So he and I did it together.
Me and quarantine him all across all the way across the pond because Paul is an international superstar comedian sensation from the UK. He has sold out small little tiny little venues like Wembley Arena. He has headlined all over the world. He's extraordinarily popular over in the UK. He's been touring the United States for a very long time.
And he's got a new tour that he'll be starting at the beginning of the year. Tickets are available. Paul Chowdhury dot com. I, of course, will do you a favor and put links in the show notes so as to make things easy for you. You can check out his specials on Amazon Prime. There's some stuff on Comedy Central.
You can find lots of content on YouTube, as most comedians have now, you know, disseminated a lot of their content. shit onto YouTube because guess what?
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Chapter 2: What was it like for Paul Chowdhry to sell out Wembley Arena?
It's 2025 and that is what you do. And speaking of YouTube, you can go and check this episode out. YouTube.com slash the commercial break. And if you want to catch us recording live streaming, then you can do that next week, Tuesday through Thursday, right around noon-ish. Follow us at the commercial break on Instagram and then you get notified when we decide to go live.
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Paul Chowdhury, again, very popular comic all throughout the world. And he's coming to the U.S. to do another stint, another round of shows. So if he comes anywhere close to you, and it looks like he might be... You, whoever's listening, it looks like he might be close to you. Go get tickets, paulchowdry.com. Links in the show notes. Let's do this. Let's take a short break.
And when we get back through the magic of telepodcasting, I will have Paul right here in studio with me. We'll be back.
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And Paul is here with me now. Paul, thank you very much. Grateful for your time today. I read in my show prep and getting ready for the show. Did you sell out Wembley or you played Wembley?
I sold out Wembley a couple of tours ago, actually.
Holy shit.
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Chapter 3: How does Paul Chowdhry adapt his comedy for different audiences?
That might be the Mount Everest of crowd work right there.
Well, in all fairness to Guns N' Roses, they played Wembley Stadium. which is 80,000. I played the arena. So there's two different, so the arena or the stadium. So I wish I could say I was a stadium comic, but more of an arena comic. And I don't know if comedy works to 80,000.
I don't know if it does either. That's a great question. So there's a comics here, Nate Bargatze and some other, you know, Tom Segura and others who go and they sell out. I'm in Atlanta. They'll go and sell out 27,000, 30,000 seat comics.
rooms and there's when i've talked to other comics they say who have played bigger places they say it's different it doesn't it doesn't work the same when you have you know 15 20 000 people in front of you than it does when you have 200 people in front of you and a couple of them have admitted i kind of like the room where there's 200 because i'm able to see i'm able to push the energy one way or the other with a motion or a look or a stare
Well, this tour, I did the O2 Arena, right? And a couple of months before that, Paul McCartney was doing a show. Unbelievable. So I was in the same room as McCartney, and then I did Birmingham Arena. So on this tour, I did some different arena dates to Wembley, just because I'd done Wembley, so I wanted to see if I could do the O2. So just for context, that's where Madonna...
did her shows recently and I saw Madonna there. And then I had to say the week I was doing it, it was, um, Usher was, was there. So we had the same dressing room. He wasn't there. He was there the night before and the night after me. So I, I shared, so actually Usher had to take down his set so I could do my show and then put his set back up. So he probably wasn't too happy with me.
I'm doing what? For who? But in the UK, you're huge. I mean, does it, but for you is which, which experience is better or is it just different? You just have to work the crowds differently.
Well, you know, with the arena comedy, you have screens. Yeah. So if you do talk to the front row, then you have a cameraman that pounds to them and the audience can see it and they erupt into laughter. But it's a different type of performance because you have to wait a couple of seconds for your voice to reach the back of the stadium. Yeah. Yeah. or the arena, so it takes a couple of seconds.
So the timing is slightly different as it would be so immediate with 200 people.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Paul face when performing in large venues?
So, so after the show, you have a team of people that would take down all the scaffolding and the stage. And so you start after the concert finishes at around 11 o'clock and you finish at about seven o'clock in the morning. And, uh, when I was about 20 or 21, I was working at Wembley taking down the stage for Mariah Carey.
Whoa.
And then I had to carry her bags to the car and I kind of said, just kind of glimpsed at Mallory Carey. She was like, who's this guy? He's de-rigging the stage. And I thought, one day... You know, I went from, I'll sell this room out. And then I went from de-rigging Mariah Carey's stage to then performing on the same stage as Mariah Carey.
That's insane. I have to imagine that for all the different reasons, when you're a kid, essentially, and you're de-rigging these... this might just be an indication of how old I am, are the guys who do the rigging and the de-rigging of these big stadiums, watching them as they shift around these huge stages and go up into the rafters.
And I've always been interested by that kind of backstage life. And it's dangerous, it's hard work, but it looks like, you know, a bit of fun too. But how... I mean... Do you still to this day, do you still get that feeling when you go into one of these rooms and you've sold it out? And just 20, 25 years ago, you were the person taking down this lighting or whatever it was. Do you still get that?
Holy shit, Paul, you did it.
Well, when you see the guys doing it, you realize the cost involved. So Arena Comedy has a high expense. So you could do like, say, a 2,000-seat venue in Apollo or something, for example, 3,000. You could do three nights there as opposed to doing one night at a stadium or an arena. But generally, comics do it as a statement. It's like an industry statement that you can do it.
So, but you pay for it. You know, you are paying for the privilege of playing. And it's not an easy gig. So with the first, at the O2, it was an arena. I did the second, I had some acts that go on in the first half and they warm up the crowd as comics do. But generally, when I do a tour show in the UK, I do the whole show. So I do around half an hour in the first section.
And then we have an intermission, which you don't generally have in America. And then in the second half, I do over an hour. But at the Birmingham Arena, I thought, can I do the whole show on my own to over 10,000 people? So I did the first section and the second section. And I couldn't really speak much the next day because the projection in an arena.
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Chapter 5: How has comedy evolved in the UK compared to the US?
That would be awesome. You know, I guess that's Beyonce kind of level. I think she charges a million dollars a corporate.
She charges a million dollars a corporate gig.
I think it's a million a corporate, if not more.
Do you do corporate gigs? Are you open to the idea?
I've done a lot. Yeah, I do. I do corporate shows. I do birthdays. I do anything. I'm available for wedding. I've done weddings. I've done bar mitzvahs. I almost got attacked a few of them. I remember I did one just after Will Smith died.
slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, and I did some routines in a wedding kind of function tent in somebody's house, and one of the guests almost attacked me just after. Yeah, so I've had these types of incidents. Corporate's quite dangerous shows to do.
You know, I understand it, though, because when someone's waggling a check in front of you and all you have to do is just go up there, knock out 30, 40 an hour, whatever you're contracted to do, and... You know, you're not taking, I mean, you would like to think you're not, it's not like you're doing something outside of the norm of what you would do.
You're just doing your act in front of a smaller crowd that's paid you to do it. It's almost in some sense, you know, that's, that's like just icing on the cake. You're walking, you're knocking it out. But why did you get attacked?
Well, I remember I did a show for a family and then I got flown out to Dubai and I did a wedding and it was only to these Muslim men on a rooftop in this multi-million pound property in the Beverly Hills part of Dubai. So I go out and I did the Dubai Opera House on my last tour, but I go out to these weird and wacky kind of like... you know, weddings or wherever.
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Chapter 6: What are the unique experiences of touring as a comedian?
And then he rushed the stage and grabs the mic off me and said, can you swear on this podcast?
Of course, yeah, go for it, yeah.
He used a few expletives at me and said, if you continue to say this, I'm going to punch you in the fucking head.
No.
And pushed the mic down. And at that point, he had to be kind of pulled off me. And then his dad got involved and said, you know, this isn't appropriate material for a family, Muslim family audience. So it goes completely, and I said, well, it was good enough for Wembley Arena. And he said, well, you've got to get yourself out of this position now and make them laugh again.
So then I had to then dig my way back out of that hole. Wow. Wow. So, yeah. So you think Chris Rock had a hard time?
Yeah. Listen, I saw Chris a couple weeks, a month, whatever. It was his first gig after he went, after the big slap. And, you know, he was obviously shaken by the whole thing. That was a very, very public thing.
disturbance in the force let's put it that way i still don't know what that shit was about but it feels like to me that in comedy small stages big stages all around the world and any live performance it is getting more dangerous in a sense i think people have they're quicker to snap they're quicker to get aggressive they don't respect the boundaries they don't understand you know comedy
is not every you can't please everybody all the time and every line isn't going to hit with everybody the same way but it feels to me and i just think this is anecdotal but probably is true people are quick To get crazy. They're quick to snap. And, you know, we've seen it. People bum rust the stage. They throw shit at musicians. They attack comics on stage.
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Chapter 7: What does Paul Chowdhry think about the current state of comedy?
But when I'm saying on a comedy stage, a show that's been billed as a comedy show and you're buying tickets for a comedy show, they should be taken as a joke, no matter what the subject. But we don't live in that time anymore.
No, people are so entrenched in their own divisive thought. And I can't exclude myself sometimes from that, too. I don't think I would bum rush a stage, but it's like everything is so damn personal, you know, and it's it's really not. I always thought of comedy is a little bit of a noble profession in the sense that it allows people to open up. Right.
When you're laughing, you're opening up even to ideas that otherwise you wouldn't, you know, if you're talking to your friend or watching a news story, whatever you wouldn't think. And then it's like a Trojan horse. It allows for additional perspectives to come in your brain or for you to laugh at something that otherwise you don't find funny on a normal day.
And then you go, yeah, maybe that's not so serious. Or maybe I could think about things this different way. But not everybody is there. You know, there's people out there that are not well. They're just not well. And they, you know, they...
I think the internet has created this kind of discourse where people take you very seriously. Like when I put a clip, I'm very careful now as to what clips to upload on the internet because people are scrolling and as soon as they see something that they... People are only offended by material when it affects them. So I could do 10 jokes about something which is so offensive, but I do one joke...
about, say, a sweatshirt that you're wearing with letters on it, for example, and that could affect you, or you wear glasses, and I do a joke about glasses, you're offended by that because you wear glasses. People are only affected by jokes when it's about them, really, or it affects them in some way. But I think as long as it's funny... I don't have to like the subject matter.
You know, I worked with Patrice O'Neill when he was around in America and the UK. Now, I don't agree with him on his viewpoints. Was it funny? That's the point. Was it funny?
Yeah. And it was. Exactly. You've been doing this for a long time, right? You said you were around with Patrice and Bill Burr. Have you worked with Bill also?
Bill Burr first came to the UK around 2007. He did the Leicester Square Theatre in London. which I performed at way back then. And a lot of Americans, Leslie Jones was just there a few months ago from Saturday Night Live, or I saw this. So Bill wanted a... I used to do a golf club in Ryslip.
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Chapter 8: When and where can audiences catch Paul Chowdhry's next shows?
Bill Bird came to London and opened for me at this golf club. That's crazy. And then I met him and his wife and he invited me to the show the next day at the Leicester Square Theatre, which he did two nights and there was only half full on each night. And Bill wasn't really... And then he went on to do Breaking Bad and the likes of that and his specials. And this was...
Pre-Netflix, of course, right? And then Bill went on to be, you know, I'm not sure what he went on to become, but I haven't heard of him since.
Yeah, he's a very famous podcaster and political commentary.
If you're listening, Bill, you know, I gave you your first break in the UK, it would help.
Yeah, what's up? Can you come and open for Paul when he's in America in the next couple of weeks? He would appreciate it.
He won't even open the door for me.
Yeah, well, you know, Bill seems like one of those accessible guys, but, you know, you never know someone until you meet. Actually, I had a chance to interview Bill Burr. One of our first interviews was on this thing called Clubhouse. Did you do Clubhouse during the pandemic? Like the audio app where people would go in and start rooms?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard about this. Everybody, all the comics were on that.
Yeah, Twitter spaces. So when this podcast was early, we had a friend who the two of us interviewed Bill Burr. Could not have been nicer, spent an hour and a half with us. And so I don't have anything but nice things to say about Bill because all I know about him is being nice.
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