Bernhard Ludwig [German] is an Austrian stand up comedian/psychologist. What he does is take scientific facts and he talks about them to an audience and makes them laugh with it. We saw a Best of his three programmes – about dieting, about the heart (diseases) and about sex, though the programme definitely focusses on the sex part. [In fact, there was very little on the heart, actually.]

I’ve seen him live about eight years ago or so (man, I’m getting old), with his sex programme, so I knew a lot of the stuff in the Best of programme already. Which doesn’t make it any less funny.

Though I don’t agree with everything he says (for example, he lost a lot of weight with a method he calls 10 in 2. With this method, one day you eat and do what you want and the second day, you don’t eat at all but do sports. And I don’t doubt that it’s an effective method but I just can’t believe that it would be a healthy way to lose weight – especially since you have to basically keep doing it until you die to avoid the yoyo-effect), there’s also a lot of truth in what he says.

Here’s a little part of his programme, with English subtitles:

What is special about his shows is that he asks the audience questions, which they have to answer by humming and in the second half of the show he divides the audience, on one side the women and on the other the men (and preferably you shouldn’t be sitting next to anyone you know) and then you have to answer the really embarrassing questions. It’s fun, not only the answers but also to see how people react to that.

The only thing that botheres me a little bit is that he has a pretty big merchandising collection and he mercilessly plugs it during the show, which I found a little unnecessary.*

So, for the price of one ticket to his show, you get a little education, a lot of social commentary and you’re gonna laugh a helluva lot. Totally worth it.

*But for the English-speaking among you: part of this merchandise is in English, if you’re interested.