00:00:00.360As a teenager in Iran, I used to listen to the BBC and similar radio stations as the voice of the liberal West and as a beacon of democracy and hope and all that.
00:00:11.600And then once I got here, I thought that the BBC obviously had changed a lot. Everything is changing here, you know.
00:00:18.240I just found myself to be working for a mouthpiece of, you know, globalist agenda.
00:00:24.060When I started doing comedy, I did one of those Unleashed gigs and it went well.
00:00:31.340The spectator ran a feature and the article somehow made its way to my boss's desks and there my disciplinary troubles started.
00:00:40.200So you go on any famous BBC presenter's Twitter feed, most of them, the Gary Linekers, they get a free ride.
00:00:47.580Whereas in my case, they said, no, you can't, you can't do that.
00:00:50.720And ultimately, I was put on final written warning and I thought, OK, I need to, I need to change my job.
00:01:06.880Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.
00:01:11.920And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:01:16.580Our brilliant guest today is a somewhat controversial comedian and YouTuber who we know back from our comedy circuit days, Nicholas DeSanto.
00:01:25.760It's really good to have you. A lot of people have suggested when you just did the headliners on GB News, people were like, it's great to see Constantine on there.
00:01:34.300Yeah. But welcome to the show. Before we get into it, tell everybody who are you, how are you, where you are.
00:01:40.540What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?
00:01:43.780What a wonderful question. Thanks for having me.
00:01:47.420I was telling Francis the other day that I'll make history by being the least famous guest of Trigonometry ever by coming on the show.
00:01:54.720My name is Nicholas DeSanto. I'm a comic based in North London, Italian-Iranian, originally naturalized Brit.
00:02:01.620I started pursuing my comedy career, if you will, by doing a course taught by Francis Foster, actually.
00:02:10.920So he was my first comedy instructor sitting right next to you.
00:02:15.760Yeah. And then I started gigging on the comedy circuit, ups and downs, obviously, because my material is a bit or more than a bit right wing or conservative.
00:02:25.940Then COVID happened, a big blow to comedy circuit, regardless of your angles.
00:02:32.860And then I resumed after COVID, like all of us did. And here I am.
00:02:39.240Yeah. Well, you do a lot of stuff at Unleashed and your videos on the Comedy Unleashed channel have done very well.
00:02:45.180Your own YouTube channel has grown because of it.
00:02:47.100Of course, strong, independent women hate Donald Trump because his policies mean that they will ultimately have to pay for birth control.
00:02:55.460And if there's anything a strong, independent woman really hates, it's to pay for her own stuff.
00:03:07.020Speaking of strong women, Hillary Clinton is still promoting her latest book. It's called What Happened.
00:03:13.000In this book, described by New York Times as a feminist manifesto, Hillary explains that she lost to Trump because American white women could not resist persuasion from their male family members.
00:03:29.960Don't you just hate it when a feminist candidate cannot smash the glass ceiling because of all these millions of stupid, impressionable women standing in their arms?
00:03:43.000I'm glad you got that joke because that could go either way.
00:04:08.440It's great that Formula One did that because in this day and age, we can no longer allow the patriarchy to tell women what to do with their bodies.
00:04:27.400People ask me, what is the best thing about having been in solitary confinement in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
00:04:38.120You know, the silver lining and that stuff.
00:04:41.220You know, the great thing about having been interrogated by the notorious Iranian intelligence in a dark, cold, hostile room is that this thing is no longer the scariest experience of my life.
00:04:54.820You can bet the scariest room I ever experienced, it was in Camden.
00:05:03.200I did that Hillary joke and some white women didn't get me, so it got kind of nasty.
00:05:09.820Anyway, but if I've learned anything from comedy, the golden rule of comedy I'm going to share with you, never, ever blame the audience for a joke that doesn't work.
00:05:19.980Because a comedian blaming his audience for the joke that doesn't work is like a feminist presidential candidate blaming women for not winning the elections.
00:05:33.540I don't know if this is true or something you just talked about in your comedy, but you talked about like being detained in Iran or something like that.
00:05:41.340Yeah, yeah, well, you know, they say talk about what you know or what has happened to you.
00:05:48.280And of course, it was only two weeks or something.
00:05:51.260So by Iranian standards, it's nothing.
00:05:52.140Two weeks more than most people, to be fair.
00:05:54.440Enough to give me, you know, some legitimate reason to joke about it or to build material on that.
00:05:59.780But obviously, anybody coming from that country or having lived in that country has either gone through something similar or knows people who have gone through.
00:06:07.580My own uncle was a political prisoner for four or five years over there.
00:06:14.500So, yeah, it's something to talk about.
00:06:27.000But because my father used to work for the government at that time, you know, they give you a hefty bail or something or your father's job is basically the bail.
00:06:35.760So he gets out and then you try to convince them that you were there, you know, just by accident.
00:06:46.160So what's, I mean, I never thought I'd ask this question, but what's an Iranian jail like, Nicholas?
00:06:52.120You know, often you hear about solitary confinement.
00:06:54.340I wish I had solitary confinement because when you're crammed, you know, in a big cell, a big number of people.
00:07:00.300And the worst thing is that you don't know when you're going to get out.
00:07:02.740And, of course, you meet people who are there for much longer.
00:07:07.320You meet people who are potentially, can be executed, potential spies, and also all sorts of, you know, terrifying stories.
00:07:17.500So it's not nice and it's something to give you some food for thought.
00:07:21.960But when you, you know, like Konstantin, come from a totally different dictatorial reality to the West and you compare and contrast the two realities of people's fears, first world problems, as opposed to, you know, third world problems and gives you some perspective.
00:09:12.820But anyway, I think a lot of us, especially coming from the Islamic Republic, are shocked to see how Islam or Islamic views are given free reign.
00:09:32.540Yeah, obviously it's a joke, but the idea behind it is that all these, you know, attitudes towards diversity at any cost and all cultures being equally valuable and all world rules.
00:09:47.460And of course, we are seeing the results in France.
00:09:50.240So I think at the end of the day, the West needs to take a stance and say, look, this is the way we are and this is the reference culture or the prominent or the predominant culture.
00:10:03.100Whatever comes in has to be in line with it or compatible with it or respectful of it.
00:10:10.360But dismantling the West just to be, you know, complacent towards the newcomers leads to catastrophic results, as we are seeing, not just in every Western European country, but more pronounced, the situation right now in France.
00:10:28.400And these are the views that have made you so popular in the British Republic.
00:10:49.280You know, because I came to London to work as a journalist for BBC Persian, which is a Persian TV channel, which is part of the BBC World Service, which broadcasts in more than 30 languages.
00:11:06.420And as a teenager in Iran, I used to listen to the BBC and similar radio stations as the voice of the, you know, liberal West and as a beacon of democracy and hope and all that.
00:11:19.440And then once I got here, I thought that the BBC obviously had changed a lot.
00:13:21.100And what was it about the nature of the material?
00:13:23.360Was it the topics you were talking about?
00:13:25.080Was it the approach that you were talking about?
00:13:27.140Was it certain jokes that they found too hot to handle, shall we say?
00:13:32.160Well, there was more than one disciplinary procedures.
00:13:38.180And of course, they put the files or the complaints in front of you and say, OK, what's going on here?
00:13:45.360And these are some of the areas or some of the jokes.
00:13:48.100So obviously, the fact that they were right-wing jokes, it didn't help.
00:13:52.380But the bottom line, if they wanted to apply the letter of the law or the letter of their terms and conditions, and that's what they wanted to do to me, was that anytime you want to go do any performance anywhere, you should come and run the text.
00:14:11.260First, you need to get permission to be in that event, even if you are just a panelist, even if it's not comedy.
00:14:17.020And secondly, you need to run your speech or your comedy routine by the bosses who need prior approval.
00:14:26.040So it's just imagine you are being heckled by somebody and you want to have an answer to somebody or you want to react to the rumor or something.