Ditch your television set this time and get rolling with some live comedy with the Higher Iyer show Tomorrow night

Ditch your television set this time and get rolling with some live comedy with the Higher Iyer show Tomorrow night

If you can't get enough of stand up comedians on the telly, here's one going live in town to tickle your funny bone this festive season. He performed last year around the same time for the same festival and this time Karthik Iyer brings to town a funnier and improvised take on his clan.

Iyer, a city-based entrepreneur and comedian set his feet into the business of laughter five years ago and is all set to bring down the house with Higher Iyer, his sixth show in Bangalore, 14th otherwise. "My format for a comedy show is usually fixed. I perform as myself and from the perspective of being a person born in the Tamil Brahmin community," says Iyer.

The journey began in his hometown Chennai, where he went to college and was exposed to theatre. Having worked with many Chennai-based theatre companies including the well-known Madras Players, he realised theatre perhaps wasn't his cup of tea. "I took stand up comedy because I could not do theatre, I could not make it to rehearsals," he says. "Though theatre is what taught me everything about life and everything I ever needed to know," he adds.

Talking about the beginning and what goes into the preparation of a solo laugh riot, Kartik admits his ways are rather strange. "I'm a little strange. I don't have a script, only parts of it. My presentation can vary from show to show. I try and memorise bullet points but memorising jokes takes away the spontaneity from them.

Improvisation is my strength and I take off from something the audience has said," says Iyer. Five years ago at the same time, Carlton Braganza of Opus urged Iyer to get on stage with his "post alcohol Tam Brahm rants" and said that he was quite a show by himself. "Those were the times when I was blown away by the likes of Russell Peters. I never thought I would do it, but what I do is my brand of comedy. All the material is really personal," Iyer confesses.

The turning point occurred when he decided to go home with his show. In 2009, Higher Iyer produced his own show that lasted a good two hours in Chennai. The audience was in splits and he in his element, complete with dialect and Tamil slangs.

Iyer produced other shows across the country then and has not seen too much change in himself. " I do a couple of outstation shows a year. I don't juggle my time and that's why I am not always doing shows," he says. "I like to perform though there are times when I am not feeling quite funny. Not much has changed except some of the material and my love for it," he adds.