By AARON McGILLIVRAY
ISMO will challenge your perception of words – and the world they describe. His analytical eye finds things previously overlooked and makes them totally obvious. Neither words nor the world will remain the same.
This isn’t because he’s some academic, expert linguist, but simply because he’s from Finland and now lives in the English-speaking world.
Like any stranger in a strange land he finds his surroundings beautiful, yet baffling, exciting yet excruciating, and the English language – whether it’s in the UK, America or wherever it’s the native tongue – is an endless source of bemusement to him.
Words Apart is a fond look at the peculiarities of the English tongue from an outsider’s point of view, and brings to the fore many of the weird things we say that are so entrenched in our vocabulary that we don’t notice, and never have, that they are weird.
For example, if something is bad, it’s ‘SH**’, but if something is really good, it’s ‘THE SH**’. Make sense? Probably not, but it’s funny.
In 2002, Ismo began his comedy career in his native Finland. He has since moved to America, toured around the world – and yes – switched to speaking English.
He recently made his American late-night television debut on the Conan show on US network TBS. His performance became a viral hit, with over 62 million views to-date.
