Afande on Duty; Good for the artiste, bad for comedy

Daring a one man show is somewhat a benchmark of a bold comedian, thus, when George Mulindwa, aptly known as Afande Kelekele announced he would hold one, the news was greeted with a leap of faith.
There were doubts whether he could manage to attract the numbers but above all, there were fears that he didn’t have enough content to run for two hours.
For a show that started at 7:30pm to 11:30pm, he indeed held it, but being a show worth cracking ribs, having people role in laughter, Kelekele is indeed an outstanding comedian, but all this depends on the angle you're looking at this from.
Dubbed Mirinda Comedy: Kelekele, Afande on Duty, it was one of those minimalistic yet most organized show at Theater Labonita. The lighting, which has most of the times eluded the venue was on point, then the sound, backdrop graphics were amazing too.
Afande Kelekele is indeed a charming person, he knows how to engage the crowd and he successfully has the ability of picking on incidents that go on during the show to turn them into jokes; for instance when a baby tipped him with a shs5000 note, he cautioned her to ask her parents to upgrade the note to at least a purple one – before the crowd could settle, he had already built almost a five minute joke around that.
He was that creative, yet, for a show where he was the center of attraction, Kelekele didn’t offer anything new – his delivery was the usual one, most of the jokes had weak punchlines, explicit and was either ill prepared or didn’t even research at all.
He instead chose an easier route of tiring the house with such tribal jokes of the Baganda do this! Or this and that happens when you’re in the loos, he even took off time to try to explain the contents in human waste! yes, he stooped that low, at one point it became hard telling whether this was a comedy show or some biology audio.

But this wasn’t Kelekele’s problem though, it’s a disease that has affected comedy as an art for the past few years – each day that passes by, performers confuse disgust for humor and it came out to play during the Friday show.
There was a time the swearing and the unimaginable words became too big that a parent that had booked the front seats with his two sons ended up walking out almost an hour before it ended, others were seen nodding in disbelief as the comedian went on with his graphic exploits.
At the end of it all, we shall judge Kelekele as humorous person, he indeed has what it takes to get people laughing if he researches but for the Friday show – it may have been good for him as an artist, he proved something to his millennials, he took a bold step and in one way breathed some bits of life to a suffering entertainment genre, but to comedy as an art, the show was such a cruel indictment.