WATCH | Meet Tyson Ngubeni: the funnyman behind Bob O’Connor

Bob O’Connor, the country’s most famous American news correspondent, turns 48 tomorrow.

He was raised in Madison, Wisconsin; he went to the prom with Paula Jenkins in 1990 and worked undercover for the CIA for 16 years … as a barista.

But his greatest achievement came in April, during level 5 of lockdown, when he introduced his creator, Tyson Ngubeni, to a wider audience than the comedian had enjoyed in his pre-pandemic career.

While Ngubeni had been working as a voice actor (Takalani Sesame), stand-up comedian (you can watch him on Showmax’s Funny People Africa) and MC before we were all confined to our homes, it was his “stop nonsense” skit released at the end of April — after his church asked him to make videos to cheer up young members — that turned him into a household name.

Bob O’Connor is another step on a long march to success for Ngubeni, who has also made a living pretending to be Dutch — no lies. In his skit we were introduced to the fictional US news correspondent as he attempts to explain the meaning behind the wall many black South Africans call a “stop nonsense”.

It was 38 seconds of comedic perfection. Following its release, Ngubeni’s lockdown became busier than it was for most of us. O’Connor starred in many more videos “investigating” the meaning of South Africanisms, from room dividers (“although you’ll struggle to find one actually dividing a room”) to amagwinya (vetkoek).

Countless interviews and a starring role in a Chicken Licken advert soon followed. We’ve also since met other Ngubeni characters such as Sheryl from Randburg (someone you don’t want to have a parking- lot altercation with because she will probably out-scream you) and Bra Thoks (someone you don’t want to have any type of altercation with, full stop).

The ease with which Ngubeni seems to slip into these characters we all might know in our real lives is, yes, because he’s wildly talented, but it’s also because he has spent a long time constructing them. As he says, “I’m not just putting on a voice”.

About Bob, specifically, Ngubeni points out: “He is not just a funny, quirky voice. He’s a person.” He then shares Bob’s bio, including the fact that September 14 is the day he turns 48.

So how did these characters come about? As the “quietest” of four children, Ngubeni admits to spending a lot of time alone and talking to himself, both as a child and as an adult.

He describes himself as “an introvert at heart” and says: “Silence is where the magic happens.”

It’s in those moments of solitude, when he was “soaking up everything and just watching people”, that Ngubeni found his calling.

“All the people-watching and the trying to understand what people are thinking and feeling from moment to moment has a major influence in the way that I perform. In those moments of being quiet and watching there’s an attempt to try and empathise with people, to try and understand: ‘Who are you? What are you thinking? What are you going through? What are you feeling?” he says.

“When I was a child I didn’t do that much talking but I was watching and trying to feel people or to understand what they were feeling.”

His “obsession with voices” and deep need to understand others led him to study at Rhodes University, from where he has two degrees: a Bachelor of Arts Honours with distinction in drama and a Bachelor of Journalism.

It was while he was obtaining the journalism degree that Ngubeni ended up in the Times newsroom, the now-defunct daily paper some of whose editors staff the newsroom of the paper you’re reading.

But my attempts to get him to spill juicy newsroom horror stories result in nothing but praise and admiration for the journalists and editors he encountered.

Why journalism? “Because I love knowing things. I love information. Ngithanda i’indaba [I am nosy],” he laughs.

“I love trying to understand the world around me, how it works and how things work.”

He made the decision to leave Joburg for the Eastern Cape to study because journalism seemed like the obvious place for him to feed his naturally curious nature.

After Rhodes he worked as a full-time journalist before working as a subeditor at a research firm, moving into copywriting for a PR firm and eventually, full-time, into comedy, performance and voice work. He still loves journalism and would like to get into sports broadcasting on the radio.

“Radio is so beautiful. I don’t know if they still call it” — and he temporarily breaks into an old-timey, black broadcaster voice to say “the theatre of the mind” — “but radio dramas are incredible because all you get is the voice and the sound effects and you fill out the rest of the world. So you see the space that they’re in. It’s so beautiful.”

His love of radio isn’t new: it was while he was studying at Rhodes that Ngubeni started making proper skits.

“I made audio skits for the breakfast show and they were centred around the student experience and it was so fun — just playing around with the voice and also with music to create the kind of feeling that I hoped would create worlds inside people’s minds.”

Interviewing people who make others laugh for a living is quite an experience.

The expectation — not just from journalists but from everyone — is that you will spend that time wiping away tears of laughter because your interviewee won’t stop cracking jokes.

But often you find that comedians tend to be far more reserved and introverted when they aren’t on stage. As talkative and accommodating as Ngubeni is, he is definitely shy and he asks me almost as many questions as I ask him.

As a former journalist, he describes the experience of going from interviewer to interviewee as “surreal but fun”.

His first time playing on a stage was as part of a marching band in high school in Springs, east Gauteng, and his first time doing stand-up was at the Cool Runnings club in Melville.

Many a comedian has a “first time on stage” horror story that will curl your toes, but Ngubeni’s first time went swimmingly.

He recalls: “Loyiso Gola was headlining and John Vlismas was hosting. It went really, really well — the jokes landed, thankfully, and then I was just hooked. I was like, ‘I just have to try this again’.

I really don’t think this pandemic signals the death of live theatre and live comedy because you can never replace that feeling, connection and magic between a live performer and their audience

“I did … and I bombed in the next show. I bombed so terribly,” he chuckles. He then went off to Rhodes, and his second year is when he started taking stand-up more seriously. So, how does he feel before he goes on stage? Is he like Eminem in the movie 8 Mile, throwing up from the anxiety of having to entertain? He laughs.

“It depends on how far down the line of development the set and the jokes are. If it’s a new set and new jokes then, woo, I’m terrible. I’m just like super, super nervous. But before going on stage I don’t like to be social, I like to watch the room and feel the room. I tend to take a moment to focus, to be internal.”

The impact that the pandemic and lockdown has had on the performing arts is devastating but Ngubeni doesn’t believe the future is all doom and gloom.

“I really don’t think this pandemic signals the death of live theatre and live comedy because you can never replace that feeling, connection and magic between a live performer and their audience.”

Does his creative process differ according to the medium through which he’s communicating? Without showing us the science behind the magic trick, how does he put together a Bob O’Connor skit versus preparing for a stand-up show?

“In theatre there’s definitely a heightened energy in terms of your performance because you’re actually performing to the whole room. But when you bring it to a screen, and even more so to a phone, I can’t rely on the same kind of energy exchange. So it asks different questions of you creatively, like how do you create that same sense of connection and write something that [the viewer] can immediately dive into?”

While putting together his videos Ngubeni also asks himself: “How do I get to the point as quickly as possible? How do I pack as much meaning and context into something short that people hopefully can relate to and connect with?”

He is such a natural in front of the camera that it seems like he puts in no effort at all — those who are the best at what they do make it look easy. It seems, I say to him, as though you just step in front of the camera and do a single, perfect take — that’s how good you are.

He laughs sheepishly at the idea and points out that the videos wouldn’t even happen without his nephews, Sithembiso, 14, and Olwami, 9, who record and art direct them.

“But going back even further, it’s the watching people, it’s the theatre school. And before that, my first job was in a call centre, but we had to learn Dutch because we were working with Dutch clients. But even back then the game was trying to sound as Dutch as possible. I want you to have no idea that you are speaking with a South African person. So we’re gonna have this interaction, I’m going to try and solve your computer problem and you are going to have no idea [who you’re actually talking to],” he laughs.

While most of us don’t have a crystal ball, what does his post-pandemic life (if there is such a thing) look like? For one, he would like to broaden his acting CV.

“As an actor, I’m excited to hopefully get opportunities to do great work in dramatic roles because the training is there and the drive is there. I love nothing more than just learning and getting better from day to day.”

Comedians tend to make incredible dramatic actors, I say, pointing to Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler as prominent examples. After all, isn’t comedy the most difficult skill to master?

“It’s definitely difficult in terms of the rhythm of comedy and understanding what it is that makes people laugh. That is definitely something that I think is hard to teach; there’s something innate about understanding what it takes to make people laugh.”

One of the most common beliefs about comedians is that they suffer from — or at least understand — depressive states of being.

While we don’t address this directly in our chat, Ngubeni says: “I agree that in many cases people who understand comedy also understand a lot of like …” he breaks off, and then starts again: “I feel like, to shine the light, sometimes they understand the darkness within. I mean, melancholy is probably one of the most common emotional states for me. I am able to empathise with emotional states that are far removed from just being goofy and silly.”

But Ngubeni says he is generally a positive person and he tries to be kind to himself.

“Whatever it is I’m going through, I ask myself: ‘What am I learning from this?’ There’s a saying — and I don’t know where I came across it — but it says: ‘The process is the product’. So everything that you’re doing now is contributing to who you are going to be. You don’t necessarily understand what that is in the grand scheme of things, where you’re going to end up, but it’s all contributing [to that], even in those moments of frustration, moments of feeling like I’m not where I want to be — and I can tell you stories for days about that.”

So, while for many it seems the 32-year-old came out of nowhere and into the brightest of spotlights, this has been anything but overnight.

“If you ain’t got no money, take your broke a** home,” During our hour-long Saturday afternoon chat (via Zoom), he talks about the disappointment of not being able to go to film school and drives the point home by quoting the Fergie and Ludacris pop hit, Glamorous: “If you ain’t got no money, take your broke a** home,” he sings, and then laughs: “That’s what the film school said to me. That’s what it felt like.”

We laugh uncomfortably.He continues: “All of my many failures and frustrations add a sense of perspective, and you understand that where you are now isn’t the end, it’s not the be-all and end-all. Things change in ways that you can never expect.”

Of course, this is something he would know: he is the quiet child who grew up to pretend to be Dutch as a call centre agent before going to theatre school, becoming a journalist and then becoming a stand-up comedian.

And then one day his church group asked him to make a video to entertain youth members during a crippling pandemic. That video blew up on social media and changed Tyson Ngubeni’s life. What a journey. And it’s still only just beginning.

“I’m determined to just do a good job. That’s really the most important thing to me. Like, did I do a good job today and did I bring my absolute best to the table in whatever it is that I’m doing?”