Munya Chawawa is the latest guest on hit podcast Great Company with Jamie Laing, which is out now.

In a wideranging interview topics include stranded on a desert island plans, growing up in Zimbabwe, leaving Zimbabwe, feeling the tension as a kid in Zimbabwe, looking after his family, giving credit to his Grandad, role models, receiving reviews, why he likes doing documentaries, the American election, moving to the UK and culture shock, being head boy twice, race, what makes him cry, agents and gaining followers, writing and creating videos, using humour and satire to land a message, what saying or phrase always makes him smile, best compliment received, what scares him most about himself, last time he cried, what he can’t let go of, what he would be embarrassed for people to know he liked or wanted, what turns him off, what turns him on, what he likes most about himself and his favourite swear word.

Here is a taste of their chat below in which Chawawa discusses growing up in Zimbabwe and his family:

Munya on Growing Up in Zimbabwe

“I mean, growing up in Zimbabwe was just the greatest thing ever, you know, because what was so, uh, fantastic about Zimbabwe was, was the total embodiment of what being a child should be, right? When you're a kid, you're adventurous. You know, kids do weird stuff. They're always falling and climbing and jumping. In England, it's hard to do that because school finishes it's dark. You have to go home, and you have to sit on an iPad. In Zimbabwe, you can do whatever you want, climb trees, go on Mad adventures. You know, I've done it all. I remember the example I always tell people as a sort of indication of if you had a thought you could do.

The thought was, I remember I saw bungee jumping on TV once, and I said to my sister, let's try bungee jumping. So, I climbed in a tree with a rope, just a normal rope, tied it around my waist, tied some around the tree, and then just jumped out the tree. Now, obviously when I fell now, it just cracked. My ribs were just hanging on this rope, and my sister has to lift me whilst we quickly asked my dad to come and tie the rope. If I wanted to do it, I could do it right as a kid.”

“Kids back then had adventures as well. But yeah, think about the terrain as well. Think about the weather. You know, if it's always sunny, you're always outside. There is not really any winter and, you know, you're able to climb trees and you're able to okay, so gardens, for example, is a good example. In in England, a garden is quite the luxury, I'd say, for many people, right? Yeah, but in Zimbabwe, because there's so much land, it's almost like everyone has a garden. And you know, our garden, for example, we didn't have a wall at the end of it, meaning it just sort of spilled out into this vast terrain. So, we could basically decide where to build the wall, right? So, when I remember when we first moved to the house, the house that we thought we were going to live in forever, right? So, the garden is so vastly overgrown, anyone can hide in it, right? So, my dad said we need to do a controlled fire.

Now, of course, none of us knew how to do a controlled fire, so my dad and his two brothers were there, and we just set fire to the garden. So, it's gone up in flames. This grass is burning like mad, to the point where at the end, all of the ground was black. And sure enough, we found little nests where people had, there was no people in the grass at that time, but where people previously had just camped out. Because there was no one living at the house before. And then obviously, you know, you build your dura wall, and then that becomes your, your land.”

Munya on Leaving Zimbabwe 

“Oh yeah, we, you know, I didn't have any concept of the future in the sense of, I thought, look, we're probably going, we'll probably come back. As it transpires in, you know, the first of the documentaries which I made, which was about Robert Mugabe, really the reason we had to leave, because of the political and economic upheaval he caused when we left, it was pretty much permanent.”

Munya on Feeling the Tension as a Kid in Zimbabwe

"As a young kid in Zimbabwe, my parents did a good job of not necessarily showcasing it to me. I mean, I'd hear stories of violence and stuff. But put it this way, I had a big ice cream tub full of pocket money, right? Which I'd collect. Let's say I had about $400 which is nothing in Zimbabwe. I remember my mum come into my room, and I just put, like, another bit of money. Then she went, it's totally pointless what you're doing, because tomorrow be worth nothing.

That was the extent of inflation to the point where inflation, I mean, I forget the stat, it's in the dock, but it was at one point you could go into say your Sainsbury’s equivalent, buy a loaf of bread for two pounds. And by the time you walk over to the till, it's 10 pounds…The only reason that they had to change currency to the US dollar is because they ran out of space on calculators to calculate the figures of things. That's how much inflation was. It was within the billion percent.”

“So naturally, so my, my parents, you can imagine if your money is literally devaluing by the day, by the second, even, they spent everything they had on the tickets to come to England. And so when we arrived in England, we will stay with my Grandma, and then my dad would hitchhike around different parts of England to see where it would be safe for us to grow up. You know, my dad, he had this, you know, he would, he would do what he needed to, you know, he would like work all of these jobs in order to try and hitchhike. And then when he would go to the place, he would, he would look around and be like trying to speak to landlords. Obviously, you need to show proof of earnings. He was so terrified that I would fall into like a gang or whatever. So, he was like, I just need to get my son in a good place. I remember going with my dad to these schools, and he said to me, Look, we're going to put you in really smart clothes to go and meet this deputy head teacher. So we went to the school. I was dressed to the nine to walking around this school, Everyone's looking at me like a madman.

And I've sat down with this teacher. I've, like, memorized all my long words proper. Being like, you know, be such a pleasure to come to this school Mrs. Hammersley, it'd be the greatest honour of my life, you know, really trying to, you know, blag it. And sure enough, you know, we got into the school, and then we had to rebuild from there. Because, literally, if you imagine moving to a place, i.e., Zimbabwe and being like, this is our home now. This is our life. This is where we're gonna live forever. We're gonna build our dreams and our family here. Then next thing you know, you're moving with nothing. For my parents, it would have been really tough. For me personally, I don't you know I was just enjoying life. You know, as long as I was with my sisters having fun, it was cool. I think it was difficult for them.”

Munya on Looking After His Family

“What's interesting is that oftentimes, African fathers sacrifice so much in order to you know, for the self-preservation of their kids and for their kids to do well, they tap out of everything out. So, like, my dad doesn't even know who Beyonce is. Do you know how crazy that is? If you said to my dad, you know who Beyonce is? He’d be like, nope. He just has no reference of popular culture. So, it's a weird one, because I can't talk to him about anything other than stuff that's really deep. I went to take him to Avatar, which because I thought, you know, it's three hours long, you have to understand part of it by the time we get to the end and in Avatar, they constantly mention this place, Pandora. You remember, to the point where people got Pandora blues because they fell so much in love with this place. And we got to the end of the film, and I thought, you've got to take something from this. And I said to him, Dad, what did you think of Pandora? And he went, who is she again? I thought that's a lost cause.”

Munya on Giving Credit to His Grandad

“Well, Mike, so specifically my granddad. I mean, academically, yes, my dad, but my granddad was the funny one. My granddad was a cool dude. And like, his all of him and his brothers, they were like the guys. So, like, when I used to go the walk, when I used to go on a walk with my granddad through the village, all the old ladies were like, hi, Brian. and I was like, yo, I want to be like that guy. You know, then my then my uncle, my uncle Doug, who, again, is a legend. You know, he used to be, apparently amazing at every sport. And I remember my grandma would tell this story one time, like they came out the cinema or whatever.

There was this huge circle, yeah, and these guys were beating up, this one guy with knuckle dusters. Imagine that. And my uncle Doug stepped in there, finished them both off, bang, bang, bang, dumb. And I was like, Doug, Doug, Doug. And then people say that my granny used to tell this story about how the swimming gala that was like a race of my uncle, Doug, they blew the whistle or whatever, and then the race started, and my uncle disappeared under the water. And everyone's like, where's Doug? Man, where's Doug? I hope he's okay, and he just appears at the finish line. I’m like yo, I need to be like, Doug. He did his whole length underwater…Yeah, so I wanted to be like, you know, as a kid, I'm like, you know, they were my male role models.”

Picture: Jampot Productions