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Comedian Ismo Leikola's
timing and sharp punchlines won him the title of"The Funniest Person in the World" in 2014. Since then he has relocated to Los Angeles and now
regularly at various LA comedy clubs across the US.
"Finnish comedian Ismo
absurdity of American life, in language"
Ismo went to Los Angeles in 2015 after a successful career in his homeland. He decided it was time to swim in a bigger pond, comedy-wise.
"It seemed impossible to just go to America. Then suddenly the opportunity opened when I did the competition in L.A.: I had contacts here and then it was a possibility. Then it was a no-brainer: If I don't see how it goes, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life. I didn't even think of it as a choice. It was obvious. It was like destiny."
But it also meant that he had to completely
his act. In Finland, he was an observational comedian who
politics and talked about everyday life.
In America, much of his act revolves around fish-out-of-water cultural
In particular, Ismo likes
about English words.
In 2018, he spent all of his allotted time on Conan talking about his confusion over the
seemingly conflicting complexities of the word 'ass' (Dumb-ass is bad, but bad-ass is good … etc.)
It established Ismo as an observational comedian able to
absurdities in North American culture and language from an outsider's perspective. It has served him well, but also required a bit of a reinvention.
"I write a lot anyway and now when I'm here I write mostly in English and stuff about America and being here. Definitely, so many jokes don't work in both languages: at least half doesn't translate at all because it is so language-based."
His
of America is fitting. Ismo's introduction to stand-up actually came from the U.S., not his home country.
"YouTube didn't exist when I was a kid and the Internet was just starting," he says. "So my first introduction to stand-up was watching Seinfeld. The last 30 seconds of the episode."
As he got older, he watched VHS tapes of Eddie Murphy. Later, he did start going to live stand-up in Finland. But he
his love of comedy back even further."When I did presentations in school, I was always trying to make them funny and I really loved performing and really loved funny things and jokes and misunderstanding songs."
Now that he is going into his fifth year in the U.S., Ismo says his relationship with the country is changing. He still avoids political humour, but his observations have started to
the more
idiosyncrasies of America, such as email and phone etiquette and the American love of polite but
small talk.
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