World comedy news

USA: A comic dropped from a Minnesota comedy club after joking about the killing of Renee Good in the state is demanding compensation.

Laugh Camp cancelled Ben Bankas’s three-night run over a video posted two days after ICE agents shot Ms Good dead. In it he repeatedly called the victim a ‘dumb, crazy retarded lesbian’. 

The club says the comic’s agents are demanding full compensation for the cancelled shows, but owner Bill Collins told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: ‘I don’t see any way we can safely present this show in the current climate’.  Bailey Murphy, who teaches improv classes at Laugh Camp, branded Bakas ‘a bully with a microphone’. 

Bankas called the ban ‘fucking pathetic’ before comparing the Laugh Camp to Auschwitz. 

RUSSIA: Kazakh comedian Nurlan Saburov has been barred from entering Russia for 50 years, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The ban was made 'in the interests of the country's national security' and 'the protection of traditional spiritual and moral values', a source said

State news service Tass reported that Saburov was banned for criticising Russia's invasion of  Ukraine, as well as violating immigration and tax laws. He made headlines in 2022 for joking about Russians who had moved to Kazakhstan to avoid conscription. 

Saburov, 32 moved to Russia in 2014, but was last year reportedly ordered to leave the country over immigration irregularities.  

INDONESIA: The first Indonesian comedian to have a Netflix special has been questioned by police following complaints that some material in the show was insulting and blasphemous. 

Pandji Pragiwaksono was quizzed at Jakarta’s police headquarters for seven hours. ‘I tried to answer the police’s questions as best as I could and I don’t think I had committed religious blasphemy,’ he told reporters.  

Police said he had been summoned but did not name him as a suspect in any offence, or mention any charges, local press reported.  His nearly two-and-a-half-hour long showMens Rea dropped on Netflix on December 27 and included satirical comments on Indonesian politics.

Published: 8 Feb 2026