A FUNNY STORY

I GET A BUZZ WHEN I SEE A MALTESE SURNAME APPEAR IN CREDITS AND WANT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT THE PERSON AND HOW THEY GOT TO HAVE THEIR NAME IN LIGHTS.

A couple of years ago I saw ‘Steve Bu ġ eja’ and did what any inquisitive person would do and stalked him on social media; in my job this is called research. Fast forward to a second season of a sitcom he co-writes and appears in and many stand-up gigs later, and I finally get to hear his story.

Steve li ves in the UK but is well travelled with his job, taking his stand-up shows to all corners of the globe. Just back from Copenhagen and about to head off the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with his latest show, ‘Self Doubt (I think)’, his journey into the field actually started as a young man workin g at a Summer camp in the USA. He won a staff talent contest and entered the world of stand-up, doing gigs around Manchester, where he went to university.

Working on materials for stand-up is a long process and his advice to budding comedians is to go and do it! “There’s no better buzz than peeking out from backstage and seeing people packing a theatre that have come to see you,” he says.

Steve has an impressive CV already with Buffering – a millennial comedy show centred on people who are too young to settle down and get married and too poor to have a mortgage – having its second series on ITV2. He hosted the BBC Radio4 series ‘Economics With Subtitles’, he has scripted and appeared on Russell Howard’s and Zoe Ball’s shows, and has also scripted materials for ‘Mock the Week’, ‘8 out of 10 Cats’ and Iain Stirling’s ‘CelebAbility’.

Having always written sketches and sitcom scripts with numerous workshops and courses to hone his craft, he says his nanna is seriously funny and believes that that’s where he gets his talent from. His grandparents left Malta after WWII and moved to the UK but he still has many relatives in Malta. Let's lobby to get him to come and perform on Maltese soil, after his UK wide tour that runs throughout 2024!

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WORDS TIMMY GAMBIN