Fear of a Brown Planet in Fear of a Brown Planet Returns

First published on 9 Mar 2010. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

Aamer Rahman explains why racism and comedy make the perfect match.

What's the new show about? Our shows are always about similar things, immigration, racism and the War on Terror, but it is brand new material. It's been two years since our last show, we did our first show in 2008 and then we took a break so it's really awesome to be back on stage.

What did you do on your break? We did some writing for TV and other projects but ultimately we decided that we just enjoy stand up way more, so we've just come back to that.

Do you consider yourself more a social commentator or a comedian? I don't think it's one or the other, I think they go hand in hand. The comedians we grew up listening to like Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks and Dave Chappelle are inherently both. You can't really separate the politics from the comedy; it's just that style. We absolutely love comedy and that's just the kind of comedy that we make.

Ever feel limited by your focus on racism? No, because there's so much that needs to be said about racism and politics and its what we enjoy talking about the most. It's not restrictive, it helps us stay focussed and the desire to talk about those things never changes.

Ever realised you'd gone too far? I've done a joke and realised that I've offended someone but I didn't feel that it was because I crossed the line but that they just got offended. We never write a joke thinking this is really going to offend someone, the joke is always written to make people laugh and the majority of people do laugh. This is exactly the kind of comedy we grew up listening to and that was always seen as funny, never as very offensive or pushing boundaries of any kind. It just feels kind of normal to us.

Do you ever worry about alienating your moderate support base? In Australia people aren't used to jokes about white people, if we did this in the UK or US no one would blink. We wouldn't really compromise or change our jokes just because some people are going to get offended. There is a review which said these guys don't make enough fun of themselves but I just don't buy that, the idea that if you are ethnic or not white the only way you can do comedy is to continually make self deprecating jokes.

What does your mother think of your career choice? She definitely doesn't approve. I think she'd rather I went and practiced law. I actually have a law degree but I had a glimpse of what misery could truly be like and ran away from it.

Any final words on the show? Yeah: it's funny. Often in interviews people are like "oh its so serious, racism and violence and all that sort of stuff" but the bottom line is it's funny, it's a show designed to make people have a good time and leave with a smile on their face. Emily Lloyd-Tait