"I'm just going back to my old roots to make you laugh," says Russell Peters. Courtesy photo

Popular comedian Russell Peters was interviewed for The Maui News before the Hawaii section of “Relax World Tour 2025” was canceled. He was supposed to play the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Feb. 27.

In the interview he talked about how he loves riffing with his audience, how he keeps relevant, and being bullied as a kid born to Anglo-Indian parents, using humor as ammunition.

Peters filmed his latest hilarious comedy special “Act your Age Live in Abu Dhabi,” in November 2024. Filled with brilliant sharp observations on race, ageing, cancel culture, and various topical subjects, the show was the last stop of the Emmy-winning comic’s world tour which spanned 23 countries and 375 shows.

With the crowd roaring, he immediately launched into riffing with his audience. “Give it up for that guy for never giving up a buffet,” he joked looking at a rather rotund gentleman in the front row. On to another target: “Where are you from?” “Russia.” “That’s fine, I’m not Ukrainian,” he responded, adding, “What made you invade? I mean come here?” And so it rolled with laugh after laugh.

“I like playing with the audience,” said Peters. “I love it.”

One wonders maybe front row seats should come with a warning. “People now buy tickets to get spoken to,” he said. “They’re like ‘I bought those tickets, and you didn’t talk to me.’ I’m like you looked too eager, probably. You can’t look eager when I talk to you. I’ve got to catch you off guard.”

So does anyone ever get upset? “No, I mean, sometimes they’ll get upset about something you said, not even to them, just, ‘I didn’t like that.’ Well, grow up, child. The world isn’t for you. It’s for everybody.”

Named by Rolling Stone as one of the Best Comics of All Time, and listed in Forbes magazine as one of the most financially successful stand-ups in the world, the interview had begun with Peters jokingly telling this writer, “you have the worst Hawaiian accent I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Picking up on this writer’s obvious British accent from then, the conversation often veered into British anecdotes. Born to Anglo-Indian parents, he mentions famous Anglo-Indian entertainers like Cliff Richard and Engelbert Humperdinck, who he just had dinner with, and even a Robert Plant connection. “The mother of his children was a woman named Maureen Wilson, who was an Anglo-Indian from Calcutta,” he explains, “and my mom is an Anglo-Indian from Calcutta, whose name is also Maureen.”

And the downside of his ethnicity – “I remember doing a gig in ’97 in Romford (East of London), and I got called a bacon sarnie. ‘I’m not here to listen to a f***ing bacon sarnie,'” someone shouted out, using a racist reference to a bacon sandwich. “Back in the ’90s when I was in England, ITV wanted to do a documentary series following me around on tour with (British comedian) Bernard Manning. They wanted to document it and I’d be doing working men’s clubs. I’d go, why would I walk into that? Hey, you want to film me getting murdered?”

Peters was subject to racism from his early days growing up in Canada. Bullied in school and targeted with racial slurs such as “Paki,” he wrote in his autobiography “Call Me Russell,” he grew up with an acute awareness of race and culture.

“I dealt with it all the time,” he recalled. “I used humor to deflect, but sometimes it wouldn’t work. Then I started boxing when I was 15, and then it never happened again. I realized once I started learning how to fight, bullies don’t know how to fight.”

During the “Act your Age” special, he recalled how his Indian dad would assure him that the British are not racist, which is hilarious because during this writer’s time teacher training in the early 1970s in London, he had the misfortune of being assigned a technical college class of skinheads who delighted in describing their weekly Paki bashing exploits.

“My dad was born in 1925, so he was there (in India) when the British were still there,” he noted. Thus, Peters grew up hearing British slang. “Every time I’d be getting in trouble, he’d be like, ‘you bloody idiot.’ Or if something like the gas price would be high, ‘look at these bloody rogues.’ I would get all the old school slangs. I just miss using all these terms. Finally, somebody I can use them with (meaning this writer). The Americans don’t get it.”

Asked when he first realized he could make people laugh, he responded: “I think it’s just something in you. There’s no moment. It’s kind of you either have that or you do not have that. My son is five and a half and he has it. He loves making people laugh. I watch him. He’s just like me. He’ll do things, then he’ll look at you and go, ‘did I make you laugh?’ And I go, yes, you did, baby. You did make me laugh because he just says outrageous things, and I’m like, where does he get it? I don’t teach him these things.”

Peters said he is always looking for humorous situations to use in his act. “Last night I was with my daughter and I saw a sign that said, thank you firefighters. Some kids had painted it. It was a sign they’d made, and they had thank you written in rainbow. And I was like, wow, the gay community is so powerful that when we wrote thank you with all the colors, we did it so it would stand out. Now it just looks like, thank you gay firefighters.”

Relishing the opportunity to get on stage, he’s keenly aware that “you can always have a bad night. You’re never above a bombing. It doesn’t matter who you are or how good you are or how experienced you are. There’s literally no rules to it. I’ve been doing it for 36 years. It’s not something I can just close my eyes and do. Yes, can I do it very easily? Yes. But do I still have to care? One hundred and fifty percent I do.”