Comedian Russell Peters returns to Hong Kong
Hard-working comedian Russell Peters is on a roll and now he has Hollywood in his sights, writes Charley Lanyon
Russell Peters is a big deal, a stand-up comedian more accustomed to filling arenas than comedy clubs.
People, it seems, can't get enough of him and Peters is happy to give them what they want. His tour schedule is relentless and he performs at a pace that would leave The Rolling Stones gasping for air. His current Notorious World Tour has broken attendance records in New York, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, South Africa, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Canada, but the boxing enthusiast and proud father of a two-year-old daughter shows no signs of slowing down. As he says: "As long as they're paying money to see it, I'll keep doing it."
The tour kicked off in March last year and won't stop until autumn this year. When it was announced the show would be coming to Hong Kong's AsiaWorld-Expo on Friday, tickets sold out so quickly a second concert was added for the following day.
Peters was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1970. The ethnic Indian faced bullying in school because of his race. Instead of making him angry, Peters says the experience made him stronger. "I always took any negative energy thrown at me and flipped it to make me more powerful … It never made me bitter though and that's a good thing."
The bullying led to his passions for boxing and comedy.
Peters' success didn't come easy. He worked, for the most part, in obscurity until an unauthorised clip of his act went viral on YouTube. The clip showed Peters doing what he does best, what he learned as a bullied child, and what he does on stage to this day: imitating, joking about and making fun of every ethnic group he can think of.