Timothy Nyanzi has one of the sharpest comedy minds in Uganda

Nyanzi is not your ordinary Ugandan standup comedian. His wit is razor sharp, cutting to the core of every subject he discusses.

Allied to that, he gets along swimmingly with the audience as his positive energy is unleashed at full tide.

Nyzani hits the stage with his satchel Pulse

Nyanzi not only mines the depths of funny, but colonises them too.

Marrying a deadpan delivery with an intellectual daring, Nyanzi’s carefully structured gags scrutinise bits of his own life as he contemplates the homophonic link between SPAM and sperm.

While we agree with him that a man having 30 million sperms would be better off if his “soldiers” fired up his bank account with 30 million in cash instead, it’s Nyanzi ability to effortlessly waltz in and out of strange tangents which sharpens his act.

“Mulago has Wi-Fi,” he says.

He then feigns surprise at this fun fact because “If Mulago was an operating system, it would be Windows 99.”

His excellent command of language (and nerdy appearance) gives punsters and diction-junkies a champion in the world of Ugandan standup comedy.

Nyazni’s comedic gift is down to how he elevates semantics to an art form.

After relating how he went to school with a local tycoon’s son, whose father made a fortune in road construction, Nyanzi cracks: “All those graders and he couldn’t even get a first grade”.

Nyanzi in his element Pulse

Throughout his special, Nyanzi sticks to the tried-and-true setup/punchline flow that many American comedians favor.

His timing and pacing is excellent, even though his comedy is not about dazzling the masses.

To underline this fact, his special is staged in a cozy auditorium with an audience more interested in polite applause than throwing its panties onto the stage.

Throughout the special, Nyanzi engages this audience as though he’s having a conversation with friends.

There’s quiet rancor, shared by comic and audience alike, to accompany lines like “I was going to offer medicine at the university, but my mum always told me not to do drugs”.

Then the house is brought down when Nyanzi imagines how it would be if a pistol-wielding thug held-up a pharmacy and told his captives to comply and not “give me any Hedex.”

Nyanzi’s intellectual chops and sense of the absurd are peerless, especially on a Ugandan comedy scene which leans heavily on profanity and off-color humor.