Ali Hassan Hopes Fans Eat Up "Does This Taste Funny?"

While some people finally found their post-pandemic footing in terms of their workplace, comedian Ali Hassan hit the ground running the last few months of 2022.

Besides hosting CBC Radio's Laugh Out Loud and the annual Canada Reads program, Hassan regularly hosts podcasts, appears in CBC's Run The Burbs and CBC/HBO Max's Sort Of and just wrote a memoir entitled Is There Bacon In Heaven? Oh, he also did an Investors Group comedy tour and taught a course in Kingston, Ontario.

"The last few months from September until the end of November were quite busy, busy to the point of almost discomfort," Hassan says. "I come from a comedian's work ethic mentality, which is you work one hour a day. I was working about 12 to 15 hours a day. It was just nonstop."

Hassan, on the cusp of mounting a Canadian stand-up tour dubbed Does This Taste Funny? (launching January 17, 2023 in St. Catharines) says he wasn't burnt out but wasn't far off from sensing it was near.

"I was close enough I could see what burnout could look like," he says. "I was like, 'A couple more weeks of this and I can see how somebody would get burned out and completely shutdown.'"

The upcoming tour, which Hassan says is a "comedic exploration of my life in food," touches on a variety of topics from weight issues to how criticizing his mother's sandwich-making abilities backfired, leading him to become a "proficient sandwich maker" which opened up a new world.

He also recalls how pursuing his own Food Network cooking program wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

"It was called something like Biggest & Baddest," he says. "They said, 'Well you're going to go to some county fair where they make the world's biggest hamburger. Or you're going to go to the home of the six-foot schnitzel.' Dude, I can't tell you how unexcited I am about that. Forty-five chickens have to die so I can take a bit out of something? I'm six-foot! Why do I need a six-foot schnitzel?"

The idea behind this trek dates back to 2016 when Hassan -- who previously worked as a cooking instructor, chef and caterer -- thought food could be comedic material.

"Food has been a massive part of my life and my livelihood," he says. "I'm not just a guy who enjoys a steak. I devoted my life to food. I knew at some point I had to talk about food."

Ali Hassan, Chris Locke, and Jonathan Langdon on Run The Burbs (Courtesy of CBC)

That love of cuisine was highlighted in his 2022 memoir Is There Bacon In Heaven? which used previous stand-up show Muslim, Interrupted as the foundation. But there was much more to it than submitting the 90-minute stand-up script.

"I said, 'Here you go, here's the book! Do we have a book on our hands?'" he recalls. "The editor said, 'Ah, we're shy about 50,000 words.' I was like oh my god! It gave me an indication immediately as to how much work goes into writing. The real challenge for me was that in stand-up comedy you can start a sentence with, 'So I saw this guy the other day...' and that's it, you're into the story. You don't need anything more, you don't need any context. When you're writing a book that has an overall theme and structure, this is where the real work comes."

While both disciplines seemingly don't have much in common, Hassan says cooking and comedy have some similarities. Although a great meal or great joke creates instant gratification for everyone involved, there's a flip side.

"One is rejection in the sense you will put out food you are very proud of," he says. "You will serve people and find a plate comes back that's picked at. At first it bothers you deeply because you know this was good food. But you have to focus on the 25 people who did eat it and not the two people who didn't. Comedy is a lot like that. Sometimes you can do a show where there's 100 people and you're saying, 'That table of six is not laughing and it's driving me insane!' But at some point I have to focus on the 94 who are laughing."

Although Hassan has established himself as one of Canada's top comedians, he's also had to deal with hecklers. While he never experienced an incident like American comedian Ariel Elias suffered when she had a can of beer thrown at her, he always worried racism would rear its ugly head during a set.

"My greatest fear is somebody would shout out something racist to me on stage like, 'Go home darkie!'" he says. "What I found is that one: it never happened. and two: if it ever happened the majority of that audience would turn on that person, like 'Shut the hell up! Get out of here!'

"I've seen similar things happen not to me and not as bad, even in the small towns somebody might say something and everybody is like, 'Shut up Gary!' It's a small town so everyone knows each other. Or somebody might say something and their wife or husband will say stop it."

That inclusion is also quite noticeable in CBC's Run The Burbs and CBC/HBO Max's Sort Of. With both in their second season, Hassan says seeing different ethnicities in leading roles has been impactful.

"The diversity, when white people watch the show, they're having a laugh and enjoying it," he says. "(Actor/co-creator) Andrew Phung got an email from a Vietnamese husband and a Pakistani wife. They said, 'This is insane! We never thought in our lifetime we would see a leading Asian and brown couple on a show in prime time.' So while you're entertaining everyone you're also fulfilling this void in people's souls and hearts they didn't know they had.

"It's the same thing with Sort Of. The LGBTQ+ community is saying this is wild, a Pakistani trans character a lead on television and the show is being celebrated. It's good, it's exciting, it's different and it's the type of different we needed."

"Does This Taste Funny?" Tour Dates:

01/17 St. Catharines, ON - Partridge Concert Hall
01/18 North Bay, ON - Capitol Centre
01/20 Milton, ON - FirstOntario Arts Centre
01/21 Brampton, ON - Rose Theatre
01/22 Guelph, ON - River Run Centre
01/25 Mississauga, ON - Hammerson Hall (Living Arts Centre)
01/26 Oakville, ON - Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts
01/27 Markham, ON - Flato Markham Theatre
01/28 Windsor, ON - Chrysler Theatre
03/14 Regina, SK - Artesian on 13th
03/15 Winnipeg, MB - West End Cultural Centre
03/16 Medicine Hat, AB - Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre
03/19 Airdrie, AB - Bert Church Theatre
03/20 Sherwood Park, AB - Festival Place
03/21 Saskatoon, SK - Broadway Theatre
04/16 Lake Country, BC - Creekside Theatre
04/18 Oliver, BC - Frank Venables Theatre
04/19 New Westminster, BC - Anvil Theatre
04/21 Campbell River, BC - The Tidemark Theatre

For ticket info visit www.standupali.com.