Malawian born stand up Daliso Chaponda has announced a UK tour with a brand new show entitled ‘Apocalypse Not Now’. The tour starts on 30th July at Leeds Wardrobe and culminates next May. Daliso has performed all over the world, including two previous UK tours and at the Edinburgh, Melbourne, Singapore and Cape Town comedy festivals.
“Can't wait to have an ACTUAL audience in front of me and make ACTUAL people laugh. I am overcapitalising because I've been entertaining people on a screen for a year. ACTUAL people. You'll cry with laughter; I'll cry with joy. It could get messy.” DALISO CHAPONDA JUNE 202
2020-21 has felt quite a lot like an apocalypse for Daliso, who by now should have done a full season at the Edinburgh Fringe, a national tour, and who knows how many more gigs! As one of the UK’s hardest working comedians he didn’t stop and during lock-down built a whole new following online with his daily crowd-sourced comedy shows (he completed 200!) – one of the success stories of the pandemic!
The last few months also inspired him to write ‘Apocalypse Not Now’ – a show about change not just in the world but in himself. He spent the first two lockdowns totally alone trying not to go crazy. He was Mr Independent and now, after his elongated period of solitude, he has changed his opinion on being alone, in fact he asked a friend (who was in an abusive relationship and has mental health issues) to move in with him. Finally he was forced to COMPROMISE and this made him realize that freedom isn’t everything!
In this show he also talks about his father, who was wrongly accused of a crime, for which he went to trial and was acquitted from. Over a three-year period, when Daliso was in Malawi, he went from golden boy to someone who the locals threw stones at…. He was condemned by proxy. During that time, he hired a spy, after his father’s office was set on fire, after he realized that his father’s house was bugged – talk about change!
Daliso shot to fame and captured the hearts of the nation on Britain’s Got Talent 2017 where he reached the final and was Amanda Holden’s Golden Buzzer act. He has gone on to amass an outstanding 300 million plus YouTube & Facebook views!
Last November he performed on The Royal Variety Performance (ITV1) with other notable TV appearances under his belt that include three appearances on QI (BBC2) and is a series regular on the Apprentice You're Fired (BBC2). He is also due to appear on this years Rhod Gilbert's Growning Pains for Comedy Central. His Radio 4 show ‘Citizen Of Nowhere’, which he wrote and stars in, is back for a third series this October.
His last stand-up show ‘Blah Blah Blacklist’ received critical acclaim from the Edinburgh Festival and his previous show ‘What The African Said’ sold out a 50 + date UK tour and also received much critical praise.
In addition to Stand up Comedy, Daliso is also a prolific fiction writer. He has published science fiction and was a finalist in the ‘Writers of The Future’ competition run by L. Ron Hubbard publishing based in the USA and he has had his murder mysteries and fantasy fiction in numerous magazines and anthologies. Over the past 6 months he has also written his first young adult novel ‘The Page Divers’ about a young Iranian girl who can physically pull objects out of books!
Click here for full Daliso Chaponda tour dates
