True Lies

Taking a break from his super successful comedy partnership with Nazeem Hussain under the moniker, Fear Of A Brown Planet, Rahman is pulling out his debut solo show The Truth Hurts for the Melbourne Comedy Festival. 

He's enjoyed big success over the last few years. He was a grand-finalist in the 2007 triple j Raw Comedy competition and since then, with Hussain, has taken out the MICF Best Newcomer Award and performed sold-out shows in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011. 

“We've always enjoyed Melbourne Comedy Festival stuff,” Rahman says, “but the Edinburgh Fringe was a highlight, especially seeing that the Fear Of A Brown Planet stuff was relatable. It's crazy. Melbourne has the comfort of being our home city, but Edinburgh's just completely taken over. It's another universe.”

It was something of an ignominious beginning on the world stage for the intelligent and driven law graduate. “You have to start absolutely from scratch. When you turn up to Edinburgh, no one knows who you are. It's literally a lot of flyers, everywhere. Everyone is, like, drowned in flyers. You just have to keep talking to people. But the best thing you can do is do a good show.”

Since then, the pair have had their own episode of Australian Story, written for TV, and toured the UK again. Rahman has appeared on the Oxfam Comedy Gala, You Have Been Watching and Tractor Monkeys. But with The Truth Hurts, Rahman gets the opportunity to spread out a little. “It's not that different to what Fear Of A Brown Planet's about – racism, asylum seekers, the war of terror, all that kind of stuff,” Rahman says. “But it's a chance to flex my material and do more stuff that I wouldn't normally get to do. I get to tell more stories; more personal stuff.”

“I guess the thing that you learn as a political comic is that you're unlikely to have massive mainstream success. People's appetite for political stuff is not massive because most people's idea of entertainment is to escape the kind of stuff you see on the news, whereas my show is more of the stuff you see on the news. But I think as politics gets more boring, people get more interested in entertainers that are willing to say that stuff.” 

Rahman's style is direct. He has a quick wit and interrogative flair. He doesn't waste words, and he certainly takes current affairs seriously. “It's kind of like a circular thing. I think I've been like that from day one, so after a while people become familiar with what you do and come to watch you do that.”

With the very recent hijinks in federal parliament, and a massive election around the corner, we should perhaps be watching commentators like Rahman with an especially keen eye. “There's always been this kind of comedy, but now I feel that people are just switching off completely,” he says. “I was just reading recently, the main source of news for many people in the US is actually the satire shows like Colbert or The Daily Show. They're not going there for comedy; they're going there for news because the regular news is just so pointless.”

If you thought that what you saw on the news recently was a joke, Rahman certainly agrees.

WHAT: Aamer Rahman: The Truth Hurts

WHEN & WHERE: to Sunday 21 April, MICF, Town Hall: Cloak Room