Fahad AlButairi is a Saudi comedian who works as a Geophysicist with Saudi Aramco.  He started performing from an early age and now, at the age 25, he is already established as a well-known name with a YouTube program.
AlButairi started his comedy career back when he was in middle school in Saudi Arabia. “I started performing in theater plays and also preformed in summer camps and centers — that’s when I started comedy in the right sense of it. Then, when I went to the US, I was a regular kind of student. However, in 2006, a couple of guys I knew told me to try out a local comedy club since they closely follow up with comedy programs. I decided to listen to my friends and went to a local comedy club in Austin (where I was living at the time), attended the show, asked about their open-mike nights and signed up for it,” said AlButairi.
He later preformed in a student organization open-mike night but thought he didn’t do well. “I think my problem was that I thought about the jokes too much and they were too rehearsed and too scripted and didn’t represent me. In the written form, they sounded hilarious, but when they were preformed, they were bad. Standup comedy was not what I thought it was; it is between acting out and performing on stage. After a while, I decided to do it in a professional atmosphere in a local comedy club while being myself more instead of acting out and writing a script of jokes,” he added.
Basing his jokes on his personal experience was the way to go since he was a Saudi student living in the US and that, in itself, is a rich subject. “I went and signed up for a three-minute slot in an open-mike night and I did very well. I remember the first joke went like: ‘I’m Fahad and I’m from Saudi Arabia.’ I said that while looking at them; as soon as I did that, the audience cracked up laughing because with this opening I just broke down the tension and started using brief jokes using the same method. That was the best to go for me and it happened that people liked it,” explained AlButairi.
AlButairi started becoming a regular at the comedy club and performing every now and then, but after graduating, he had to come back to his home country thinking that it was a joyful experience that will not happen again.
“I got a job and I was busy working all the time until I heard about a comedy event happening in Bahrain. So, I got in contact with the organizers asking about auditions and opening acts. I met with them along with five other men auditioning for the comedy show. They picked me out of five opening acts and I was the only Saudi there. It was a new experience for me because instead of performing in front of 30 people for two nights, I had to perform in front of 2,000 people. It was a big jump for me, but I managed to do it and it went well as they liked my jokes,” he added.
One of the audiences was another Saudi comedian (Khalid Khalifa) who later approached AlButairi informing him that a standup comedy show will be held soon in Riyadh. “I didn’t believe him at first, but I did when I saw an event happen in late 2008. Then, in early 2009, they contacted me and invited me to perform and give me an open spot. I accepted their offer and was surprised with the energy in the crowd. It was then that I realized the hunger for entertainment in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
AlButairi usually uses English in his jokes and everyone in his crowd has to be a speaker of English and Arabic. “I strictly used English at the beginning, but in 2010, I started slipping a little bit of Arabic in my jokes depending on the audience. I have also preformed full Arabic shows in Riyadh and it was the first full Arabic event for me. Most people who have a background in standup comedy or know what standup comedy is know that it’s based in English. I believe that standup comedy is a very new comedy that hasn’t picked up in Arabic crowds yet, so Arabic performers and comedians who perform in Arabic usually get mixed reactions of people who might fall in love with it or people who think it’s weird while others might not show any interest at all so it’s still not clear yet,” he explained.
“The majority of people who loved it were young, as they see it represents a style of their generation and they see it as a new thing that they can call their own because all the standup comedy done in the Kingdom is by people under the age of 30. Those comedy shows are held, produced, preformed and attended by youth,” added AlButairi.
Material and content is the biggest challenge that AlButairi faces when preparing for a comedy event. “It’s a bit hard to prepare for a comedy show because it has to be studied according to the audience and the place we are performing in. Sometimes, when the filter is external, it puts a lot of pressure on us comedians,” he said.
It seems that what AlButairi wore to a TV interview triggered some authorities to issue a new regulation, which now asks Saudis to rethink their fashion wardrobe when they appear on TV.
“I was being interviewed live on TV wearing Mustard jeans and a shirt. I was told to wear casual clothes and I just love wearing bright pants,” explained AlButairi. “After the interview, I heard that the show has received a new guideline stating that Saudi men are only allowed to wear formal Thobes and I think it’s because of what I was wearing in the program.” 
AlButairi, along with a group of his friends, developed a YouTube comedy channel called “La Ykthar,” which is Arabic for “Shut up and don’t overdo it.”
“The program is a team effort of young people and combines between two ideas of a puppet show and a comedy show using an alligator as the puppet. The alligator is like a nickname for Saudi men who link themselves to it because it has tough skin and sharp teeth. The alligator is everything that I’m not, I’m trying to be this geeky, smart comedian and he is the playboy funny creature,” he said.
“The show went on for five episodes and people really liked it and they started subscribing to it. We have received really good feedback, which proved to us that whatever we’re doing is working, as people are accepting our humor,” added AlButairi.
In fact, his You Tube channel has landed first place in having the most subscribers in the Kingdom. “We have more than 15,000 subscribers to the “La Ykthar” channel, over 300,000 views and over 15,000 fans on his fan page. This is a very good number for someone who started posting on October 2010. We usually post a five-minute show for each episode and we talk about so many things in those few minutes. We like to use the short format because it doesn’t bore people and you can watch it anywhere,” he added. 
“La Ykthar” releases an episode every two to three months. “For every episode I have to fly to Riyadh and meet with the team and start shooting on the spot,” said AlButairi.
AlButairi was offered to host a TV program on various channels in the region and he is looking into it at the moment. “I still did not reply back to those offers and I’m currently studying them, I’m just worried that they might limit our creative room and it might also limit the viewership of the show. You Tube videos are usually easier for people to watch whenever and wherever,” he added.