Danielle El Chemaly is tickled and charmed by the cheeky antics of young joke-cracker Elie Rahi.

I left the office to have a coffee with Elie Rahi, a talented young guy with a brilliant future ahead of him. Before I got there I received a message – ‘Sorry, but we’ll have to postpone our interview because something came up’. ‘He could’ve told me this 30 minutes ago when I was still at the office’, I thought. 30 seconds later I received another message – ‘Just kidding, I’m waiting for you.’ Before I even met him, his spontaneity and sense of humour took over.

For those who don’t know who Elie Rahi is, he’s a comedian who won third place in Studio el Fan in 2001, who has acted on LBC, NBN and OTV, and who is currently on MTV in ‘Ktir Salbe’. So far he has performed 47 personalities on TV, including Michel Aoun, Samir Geagea, Gebran Bassil and Michel El Murr. Hyperbolically, however, he told me he’d acted over 1000 characters. I asked him how he could remember the exact number; Elie simply took out a small piece of paper from his wallet, where he had listed every single one – the last on the list was Bachir Gemayel. He admits his fame stems from his presence on OTV in ‘3achra Ba3ed el Nachra’ – ‘imagine, people were seeing me for ten minutes, every day, over a year before the news’. Nabil Assaf and Jiscar Lahoud wrote his script, but very much based around Elie’s ideas and thoughts.

Comedy is not his job, but it is in his blood. He studied electronics, and has a snack bar in Halat called ‘Snack Rahi’, which is worth a visit for the pizza alone. Oddly for a guy with such a sense of humour, action movies are his preferred movie choice. He prefers salty things, quietness (he hates traffics and enjoys the mountains), dark colours and beer. You can add him on Facebook, but don’t expect to chat to him on MSN since he is always ‘appear offline’. The interview was an hour of pure laughter – when it was over, he tried to leave me with a serious final impression, but failed. Elie Rahi – remember this name, as he’s a future Jim Carrey.