Funky Mallam is one icon we see on our T.V set mostly on comedy sitcoms across the country, he’s among the talented young men who have made the comedy industry what it is today. To many, the comic act is still a married man but he has just opened up to us that his marriage is no more; though, he refused to go into details how and what led to the marriage break, however, he did agree that his marriage collapsed since last year and he has not even told a soul about it. In this exclusive interview with Nigeriafilms.com’s Joy Akosa, he spoke extensively about himself, career and other sundry issues. Excerpts…..
For those who are yet to meet you; who is Funky Mallam?
My name is Saheed Mohammed, well known as Funky Mallam, I’m from the North, or let me say my parents are from the North, I was born in Auchi, Edo State and had my primary school in Agbor, I finished in Umuhia, Abia state, before moving to Jos secondary school, then I came back to port Harcourt and worked for a while before heading to Kano to study Mass Communication at the Bayero University, Kano. I then came to Lagos to start comedy.
How has the industry being since then?
We came into the industry when it was picking up and thank God for those who burst their brain to give us that opportunity. In those days, they just work for the flair of the whole thing not because of money, but by the time we came into it, it was getting rosy, I could remember when we started with ‘Paradise Park’, me, Julius Agu and others, then I was being paid four thousand Naira per episode and then, for me, it was a jackpot and other programs were paying like one thousand five, and so on, and then the money was cool, that was in year 2000.
Somewhere along the line, you got married and nothing is heard any more about your marriage; what informs that?
I’m divorced, I don’t even know how that came from my mouth, I wasn’t supposed to say it, I’m used to private life, that’s why no one really knows about it, I got divorced last December, 2012.
How have you being handling your business and social life?
Social life, business, you don’t mix them together, the challenge here in Nigeria is actually up when it comes to work, unlike some other countries even south Africa here, if you have a very good job, it could pay for the whole year bills but here you have to go here and there to put all of them together, a lot of artistes are kind of breaching their contracts, because the money you pay me if I put them all together cannot even pay my house rent, I have to move here and there from work to another, I’m here shooting a movie or there shooting a series, and then I receive phone calls like ‘hey Funky, we want you to anchor an event in Abuja tomorrow’ so I will then excuse myself because that three hours money is your three years money, so I have to excuse myself and go.
Your job is sometimes herculean, how do you ease off stress?
Cooling off, when I get home, sometimes I put off my phone, then get some hours of sleep, someone like me, if I get too much sleep I fall sick, I will get an headache, I sleep enough and when I wake up I go for exercise immediately, otherwise without exercise, I will fall sleep, I put my phone on vibration at times and if I see some companies’ missed calls I will quickly call back because it’s all about the money. All my phones are internet enable so I keep myself busy most times, trying to create new jobs, and try to put one or two things together for my new talk show.
Talking about your talk show, can we have an insight into it?
It was a plan before but now it is becoming a reality because I have shot like ten episodes, I would have even shot more, but time has been the only stumbling blocks, because of the series I am doing, and after that there is another series called Number One’, and another one called ‘Ordinary Police Station’ which is a comedy sitcom, so all this time I have being so busy to continue with the shooting of the talk show, but right now we have shot 10 episodes and the subtitling is going on as we speak, I am looking forward going on air with it next January.
How have you been able to face the stiff competition in the industry; what are the challenges you’re faced with?
Whether you like it or not there is no job without challenges and where there are challenges, competition strives, sometimes you might think you are rocking your world while some persons will come from nowhere and you will start feeling the heat, sometimes you really will like to change from what actually makes you who you are, to show the world what you are that ‘hey you don’t have to sterotype me because I can do this better’, I think you can still groom other persons to do it better also, I want to diversify so that I would be known in many angles, that is why I was so glad when I was given the role of a detective and I am more of a Yankee guy in the role in the series ‘ Emerald’ it shocked a lot of people when they started watching the program, people were like ‘hey so you can play this part, what are you doing in comedy’ then I said you are crazy’ comedy pays the whole bills today, nobody even believe I even went to school, while I was doing face to face and paradise park, if you tell someone this guy is a graduate, the person might slap you, because when you put a believable character into something, people might think that’s how you are, except they see you one day as different person.
There are lot of competitions and challenges, a lot of people want to do what I am doing, I see fake mallams when acting Hausa man, where the squeeze their face and try to be funny, when you want to speak like a Calabar guy, Igbo guy why don’t you live with them and study them because those people are free when they talk, they don’t know they are talking like that, I don’t know how to do it perfectly well because I didn’t grow up in the north, it was when we started Paradise Park that I started going to all these Mallams that sell things around and that was how I started learning from them.
With the state of the economy do you think there is a place for upcoming comedians?
Yes, it is the economy meltdown that made people to divert, when banks slashed their salaries from hundred thousand naira to forty thousand, why won’t they divert, when I know if I go to comedy I can make minimum of hundred thousand in a month, so why am I being a banker for, I will remove my tie and start cracking jokes and make people laugh, but you find out that even those who are not comedians call themselves comedians, lots of people add me on social media and call themselves MC this and that, but give them event and you find out that they crack old jokes that they hear in Nite of a Thousand Laughs DVDs, sometimes you see some of them at event where you are too cracking your own jokes.
Is there any platform that trains wannabes comedians in the country?
Comedy is natural, you cannot be trained for it, if you are funny, you are funny, if you are not funny, you are not funny, because there is a joke I will crack and people will laugh and someone else will crack the same joke and people won’t laugh, so that’s just the thing, sometimes expression might be more funny than whatever I will say, I must see the joke very funny to me before I can use the material. And that’s it.
© 2013 Nigeriafilms.com
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