‘Why are there so many… Songs about rainbows?’ Hans Liberg, the Dutch musician and self-professed ‘sit-down’ comedian, chirrups down the phone from Holland. It’s not intended as an impromptu serenade, although the rendition of Kermit the Frog’s famous banjo solo, I have to admit, is endearing. In fact, Liberg is demonstrating one of the moments in his life, when he discovered he was actually kinda funny, as well as a gifted musician.
‘It was during a children’s musical, and all these things went wrong!’ Liberg recalls. According to his wife and friends, the musician’s reactions to on-stage mishaps had audiences in stitches. In his mid-twenties at the time, Liberg decided he could use this subconscious knack of turning musical mistakes into improvised humour as the basis for a one-man comedy show.