Zakir Khan (Comedian)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Zakir Khan

• Zakir Khan was born into a family with a musical background in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

  

• He is the grandson of the veteran musician, Ustad Moinuddin Khan.

  

• Zakir is a college dropout. On being asked that why he took such decision, Zakir said,
  

  Yaar, college mein rehne ka koi matlab nahi tha. Classes hum attend karte nahi the, aur degree se jyada apni khwahisho se pyaar tha.”

• Zakir started learning music at a young age from his father and grandfather.

• After dropping out of college, Zakir did a diploma in Sitar.

• Thereafter, he moved to Delhi to become a radio producer.

• In Delhi, he did radio programming at ARSL for a year and then, shifted to Jaipur in 2009 for an internship.

• While in Jaipur, Khan did a number of odd jobs to meet his day to day expenses.

• After the completion of his internship when Zakir decided to move back to Delhi, he didn’t have sufficient money to pay the rent of his room. At that time, his landlord helped him by forgiving his rent and even giving him money to travel back to Delhi.

• While in Delhi, Zakir tried his hands in different fields, ranging from theatre to radio.

• He started his career as a copywriter and main researcher at HT Media Ltd. He worked there for about 4 years.

• Later, Zakir’s roommate, Vishwas, encouraged him to do open mics.

• Subsequently, he started performing in the cafes and people started liking his jokes. He even started receiving standing ovations.

• After a while, Zakir was called to Mumbai to write content for the news comedy show “On Air With AIB.”

• In 2012, he won Comedy Central’s ‘India’s Best Stand Up Comedian’ and rose to fame.

• He was applauded for his comedy style in NDTV Prime’s ‘The Rising Stars of Comedy.’

• He is well known for his punchline “Sakht Launda,” which means a guy with immense self-control.

• In 2015, he wrote and co-hosted ‘On Air with AIB,’ a news comedy show. The show was telecasted on Star World, India.

• Some of his popular comedy shows include “Trading Station” (2014), “A Promising Game” (2017), “Haq Se Single” (2017) and “Chacha Vidhayak Hain Hamare” (2018).

• In September 2017, Zakir featured as a mentor in the fifth season of “The Great Indian Laughter Challenge,” which was judged by Akshay Kumar.

• He has also appeared as one of the judges in Amazon Prime’s “Comicstaan Season 2.”

• He has even co-hosted the 5th Annual Golden Kela Awards along with other famous comedians like Vir Das and Papa CJ.

• Zakir did his first comedy show with the popular comedian “Neeti Palta.”

  

• He is an ardent animal lover and owns a pet dog, Champ.

  

• During an interview, Zakir revealed that his family was connected with music for more than 300 years. He said,
  

  I come from a family that has a 300-year-long relationship with music. For my parents, even getting a 9-5 job was an unorthodox thing to do.”

• Zakir credits his father for his success.

• Surprisingly, at one point in time, Zakir and another AIB comedian, Abish Mathew were Radio Jockeys on different radio stations.

• Reportedly, his family was not happy with his decision of quitting his studies and pursuing a career in Radio. So, in order to cope up with the tension, Zakir stopped taking money from his family and lied about having a job.

• Zakir revealed in an interview that he was bullied as a child. His classmates made fun of his complexion and appearance and such incidents made him bold and helped him make humour his shield.

• According to Zakir, he was a very lazy person.

• During an event in Delhi, when asked to comment on Gutthi’s (female lead character played by the comedian, Sunil Grover in Comedy Nights with Kapil) exit from the television show “Comedy Nights with Kapil,” Zakir said,
  

  What Gutthi does is not comedy. Especially in Delhi, comedy has grown to become mature and versatile. Gutthi is not versatile.”

  He further added,

  Live comedy is very different from what you see on TV. Live shows are like telling a joke to your friend, but on TV, the jokes have to go through a lot of censorship…but Gutthi is still better than others. Kapil Sharma’s kind of comedy is based on insulting people. It’s very Punjabi. Tu mota hai, tu kaala hai, tere daant kharab hain – that’s what their jokes are about, and I don’t find it funny.” [2]

• According to Zakir, if not a comedian, he would have been a music teacher.

• He shared in an interview that his dream project was to design a farming course for teenagers where he intended to groom their personalities.