Comedian, writer & Filmmaker

Emothchong Article in Rip It Up

Rip It Up Magazine

February 08

“So yeah, I did that a hundred times and then started to collate the results, so it’s a bit like ‘Family Feud’ where I now count down the top answers,” local comedian and sometimes Nova radio personality Jason Chong explains of the survey process he took in putting together his latest show, ‘Emotichong’.

“It’s amazing, when you speak to a hundred people you find out things that near everyone thinks. Like, people who don’t give blood will usually write down why because I think that they actually feel guilty,” he supposes. “It’s kind of interesting, and I don’t want to give too much away, but with every emotion that people gave me I kind of rated it on a scale from one to ten, positive to negative, and the average score was like 5.2.

“I think people were fairly honest with me, so with those facts things turned out about fifty-fifty. But do you know what? The people that I don’t know generally seem to be happier than those I do, so I’m starting to think that I’m responsible for that,” he laughs.

“And I was actually scared for a while because there looked like there was going to be a lot of positive emotions put down, and positives aren’t really all that funny.” It’s a bit like happy songs; who actually really relates to, say, Frente’s Absolutely Kelly Street?

“Funny thing, I was actually dancing to that a couple of days ago,” Chong confesses to the haphazard instance, “and it wasn’t even on the radio. I was just singing it to myself.” Hmmm, what are the chances of that song coming up twice in the same week? “Not very good since the early ‘nineties, I would’ve thought,” he immediately calculates. “But that’s a perfect example of something that was positive, but is now a negative and that’s why it’s funny. Nobody laughs when someone wins the lottery, but if they lose the ticket then that’s hilarious,” he concludes.

“It’s been six years now,” Chong says of his time in comedy. “Which kind of crept up on me because for the first couple of years I was still new, and then when you get to three and four you’ve got the newer guys coming through and then suddenly you realise that you have been doing for quite a while. So I guess if I was going to quit, I would’ve quit by now,” he offers.

“Do you mean have I ever had a colonic irrigation?” he replies when asked if he ever Youtube’s himself. “I think that’s when you Pootube yourself,” he ponders. “I remember when Google first came out and that was the big thing to do, but I think Youtube is a lot more interesting now because the top result for Jason Chong is a guy from America who’s a dancer who danced at the Miss Universe contest. But Jason Chong is like the John Smith [or Steve Jones, maybe?] of Asia, and it turns out there’s another one in Adelaide. But the difference between a smartarse and a comedian,” he informs me, “is a comedian knows when to shut up.”

Steve Jones

Jason Chong performs ‘Emotichong’ at the Electric Light Hotel from Fri 22 Feb


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