Comedian Akmal Saleh has shared an anecdote on a recent meeting with showbiz veteran Richard Wilkins.
The 60-year-old appeared on The Project on Monday when he explained how Wilkins mixed him up with Anh Do, who hosts ABC’s Anh’s Brush with Fame.
‘Recently I was on one of those morning shows, the Today show maybe,’ he began his story.
‘I think it was the Today show. But one of the regular guests, it could have been Richard Wilkins,’ he added to laughter.
‘The entertainment reporter. He comes up to me, “Mate, I am a huge fan of yours. I love that show you do on TV.” I said what show?
‘He said when you paint a celebrity. We’re not the same race. He might as well come up to me and said, “Are you Kitty Flanagan?” Yes, I’ve let myself go.’
Comedian Akmal Saleh (pictured) has shared an anecdote on a recent meeting with showbiz veteran Richard Wilkins
The 60-year-old appeared on The Project on Monday when he explained how Wilkins mixed him up with Anh Do, who hosts ABC’s Anh’s Brush with Fame. Richard is pictured
Akmal went on to mercilessly mock the television host.
‘I think plastic surgery is hurting his head! I didn’t want to disappoint him and said “No, it is good! I’ll have you on the show next,”‘ he said.
‘I made an appointment and he showed up and he got escorted out! I made that up!’ he concluded with a joke.
The funnyman is fearless when it comes to taking jabs and previously attacked cancel culture in Australia.
At the time, he compared the free speech enjoyed by local comics with that of performers in Egypt.
The well-known comedian, who moved to Australia from Egypt when was 11, said on SBS Insight’s ‘Bad Jokes’ episode that speech ‘is not free’ and comes at a cost.
Saleh said he grew up in a country where everything is restricted and warned that Australian’s don’t want to get to that point.
‘There are comedians today in Egypt languishing in prisons, enduring torture for a view they’ve had that is opposite to a government line’ Saleh said during the discussion.
Anh Do is pictured left alongside Akmal Saleh
The program set itself a mission of finding where the ‘line’ is when it comes to comedy and cancel culture.
The Egyptian Australian comedian has been performing comedy since the early 1990s.
He said when it comes to jokes that aren’t an audience’s ‘cup of tea’ the response should not be a social media pile-on.
‘People should just be offended and accept it’ he told the television show.
‘Accept being offended, don’t go see that comedian,’ he added/
‘Free speech is not free, it comes at a price – the price is that invariably someone is going to be offended at something and that’s okay, that’s allowed…
‘Go live in Cairo and have your opinions suppressed when the secret police come knocking at your door and then which one do you choose?’
Comedians Rudy-Lee Taurua, Lewis Spears and Alice Fraser were among those interviewed on the program.
The comedians debated the merit of line-crossing and sometimes offensive humour, also discussing when the art form becomes distasteful.
When asked if there was a line on what can be joked about, Saleh told presenter Kumi Taguchi the line was between the comedian and the audience.
When the audience ‘organically’ decides that a comic’s material is bad, Saleh said, that is a ‘democratic process’.
