Often dubbed ‘the Seinfeld of Saudi Arabia’, comedian Fahad
Albutairi was one of the first stand-up comics to appear on stage
professionally in the kingdom. He worked for some time at Saudi Aramco, but is
now a full-time writer and comedian, having honed his craft as a student at the
University of Texas, US, where he studied geophysics. He made his stand-up
debut in Manama in 2008 but has since become a pioneer of Saudi’s ‘new media’
movement — using YouTube as his main distribution platform.
Together with a team of fellow stand-up comedians including
Ibraheem Alkhairallah, Albutairi has launched several YouTube shows, including
‘La Yekthar’, which loosely translates as ‘Zip it’. What started as ad-libbed
monologues soon developed into scripted episodes that have garnered 40 million
hits. The group also started shows such as ‘Khambalah’ and ‘Temsa7LY’, and also
launched Telfaz11, a channel for distributing online entertainment content.
In 2013, his YouTube video ‘No Woman, No Drive’ went viral
with 12 million hits. It shows Albutairi and fellow comedians Hisham Fageeh and
Alaa Wardi singing a parody of Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ that satirises
Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving. Albutairi’s wife, Loujain Al Hathloul, got
into trouble with the authorities in 2014 for taking part in a demonstration
against the ban.
Albutairi recently branched out into acting, playing a lead
role in the 2015 Arab road movie ‘From A to B’, directed by Emirati Ali
Mostafa. He has more than 1.7 million Twitter followers.
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