Bassem Youssef: Egypt’s first satirical TV host

Every Friday, millions of Arabic speakers glue themselves to the TV screen to watch Bassem Youssef’s satirical parody of the popular American show “The Daily Show.” The show, which has bulldozed powerful political individuals in the Egyptian arena, has attracted huge audiences across the region.
The Egyptian cardiac surgeon and comedian was inspired by the Egyptian revolution when he created his first satirical show entitled “The B+ Show” on YouTube in March 2011. His show was a major success, where he mainly concentrated on comedic political content and landed more than 15 million views over almost 108 episodes.
Subsequent to the huge success of his You Tube channel, Youssef is now the TV host of “El-Bernameg,” Arabic for “The Program,” which began airing in late 2011. His TV show is also showing on YouTube for people who missed seeing it on TV.
El-Bernameg is broadcast in front of a live studio audience, where Youssef targets current political events through satire and criticism. Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show, invited Youssef to his show for a chat and just last month. Youssef also invited Stewart on his show when the latter paid a visit to Cairo.
Youssef has 1.7 million followers on Twitter and his YouTube channel, also entitled “El Bernameg,” has more than 1,470,624 subscriptions and more than 110,714,379 views and counting.