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I never wanted to do comedy on Television. Ever. Absolutely abhored the idea. The main reason was the lack of quality control in Pakistani teevee (yes I spell it that way on purpose!). Every show had poor production value and the comedy was always pandering.

Then I decided to stop being an elitist dick.

A few months back I started performing comedy in Second Life, and each weekly show would feature a segment called NEWS WEAK, wherein I would do some current affairs stuff. Basic picking on the headlines things. It was good writing practice and I enjoyed making disposable comedy like that. It is redundant after a week and that is a challenge. I did that for several weeks before deciding to try it as a special stand-up show in Real Life.

So a couple of months back I did that. One-off comedy performance that was focused on major news stories.

And the idea didn’t go away. The biggest challenge was making sure it wasn’t compared to THE DAILY SHOW and COLBERT REPORT. That had me paralyzed for the longest time. Then my wife pointed out that any News Comedy show will always be compared to those two. But if the jokes are good, then people will start to respect it as its own thing. So no pressure.

I cast around for a team to work with and found no one available or capable. The end result then is a product of my OCD control-freak behavior.

NEWS WEAKLY debuts tonight on Dawn News.

Written, Produced, Directed, Hosted & Edited by me. I had input on the writing end from two wonderful writers, Umbereen Baig Mirza and Rafay Alam. But other than that, I make the visuals, I edit the reports, I write the final script. I did everything damn thing on this show. So if it doesn’t work I am to blame. But it is the first thing I have ever done on teevee that I am proud of. And that makes it worth it to me.

NEWS WEAKLY

Monday, 3rd November.

23:05 pm.

Headlines with Punchlines.