Leo Bassi: "It is easier to laugh at the Pope than at a multinational"

The comedian celebrates his 70th birthday with a new show at Sala Mirador.

Tired of the screens, he has built a cromlech in Fresnedillas de la Oliva to practice Neolithic rituals.

Against all odds, you have reached the age of 70. When I was 30 years old, I never thought I would exceed 60 because of my way of living and my concept of provoking.

I am 70 years old and I feel like a motherfucker.

And that's what I want to celebrate with my show.

Old age is a new spring. Having a 9-year-old will also help you stay young. Yes.

When my ex-wife started talking to me about having a child, I thought that being a father at 60 was perhaps not a good idea.

But she insisted and my surprise is that it hasn't been difficult, but rather that I don't get tired of it at all.

On the contrary, it is filling me with joy to be a father.

I am also a grandfather because I have two other 40-year-old children. You criticize that the meaning of the ritual of life has been lost. Yes.

I was born in a circus and my parents were jugglers and clowns, just like my grandparents and great-grandparents.

I grew up steeped in rituals.

Now it's all superficial and there is no respect for art. Do you still officiate your pathodic masses in Lavapiés? I've been with the Paticano for 10 years, my church of the ducks.

This started as a joke.

The audience that came was very appreciative.

He didn't just want to taunt but wanted a ritual officiated by a clown-priest.

I have married 200 couples of all kinds, even a girl with her dog or 17 people at the same time.

I don't get into who can get married or not.

If there is love, we accept everything. You also celebrate divorces. A 76-year-old woman wanted to celebrate her divorce with her husband, who had been mistreating her for 50 years.

In the end, she managed to get the strength out of her to tell him to go to hell.

We have also done four serious funerals with the person's ashes.

It was very hard because we all ended up crying, but trying to find jokes.

You are competing with the priests. Yes.

I have much more experience with the public than priests.

I was born in the United States, I have lived in Australia, I have lived with indigenous people and I have attended their ceremonies.

I started thinking about the Neolithic and visiting the places of dolmens and menhirs and the Celtic sanctuaries in Europe. That is why you want to create a ritual about the Neolithic in Fresnedillas de la Oliva. I needed more space and that is why I have looked for a plot in the countryside.

I have created a whole ritual with my circus experience. How did you do it? I have raised a circle of stones with the help of two archaeologists and an astronomer.

The rocks have astronomical alignments.

It is a fascinating place: the genesis of the idea of ​​entertainment.

It is a place of experimentation, not a business.

It is not to do mass shows,

but to experience and test human relationships. Do you consider yourself a shaman? Yes.

I say this without any shame.

In many places, clowns are considered shamans.

I was once in a ritual in the middle of the desert of New Mexico, I met a shaman who started doing silly things.

And I thought, "What a mistake! He's making a fool of himself."

When he finished, I approached him and asked him why he was doing it.

He replied: "To make you laugh."

And I told him: "But it was a moment where people wanted to be more serious."

And he replied: "Laughing is the most serious thing you can do."

If you sacralize laughter, you have no problem thinking that a clown is a shaman.

Your father, Leo Bassi, was a renowned juggler who worked in the United States with artists such as Groucho Marx.

What did he tell you about him? I have a great anecdote with him when he was 6 years old.

It was Christmas in Los Angeles and the Police were organizing a show and we had to share a dressing room with Groucho Marx.

My father told me: "Take a good look at him to remember what you have seen. He is a great clown."

I was used to seeing my father spend hours putting on makeup.

He only wore a cork stopper, which he burned and applied to his mustache and eyebrows.

And I thought: "What a clown shit!".

So I went up to him and asked, "Why do you get fake mustaches and not real ones?"

And Groucho answered me: "With fake mustaches it's easier to eat the soup". Good! I thought: "What a shit answer!".

My father and mother kept laughing and telling me that Groucho had made a joke for me,

but I was not impressed by this man at all. We haven't seen you on TV in a long time.

Do they have you banned? Television is a jungle and to work in it you have to hang out with the people you have to hang out with.

It's a fight and you have to be pushing.

In the last ten years, I have focused on rituals and I am not interested in studies at all.

Do you get bowling in the towns or do the town halls not hire you either? It's not the town halls, but the festivals.

And not only in Spain.

I work all over the world.

I was in Brazil in November and in 15 days, I'm going to Italy, Germany, Portugal and Cape Verde. You were complaining the other day that monologists have become boring. Totally.

And I know why.

There is a rhythm in the studies and a style of jokes.

There are fights with sponsoring brands over things you can't say or do.

You have to maintain the image of the brand.

You work on a TV show and if the sponsor is a beer, you have to do things that are in line with the brand.

when i was going to

or

, I spent my time arguing with the sponsors to be able to do certain things.

If you are in their hands, if you work at

, you enter a rhythm of decadent humor.

I have already known the decline of the circus. Why did the circus die? Out of boredom.

Instead of doing new things, always do what has worked before.

Stand-up comedians have to revolutionize the system.

If not, in ten years they will be even more boring. Are many comedians censoring themselves due to the politically correct dictatorship? Those who sell the products don't want you to offend this one or another.

If you do something that goes against the mark, the program is removed.

Can't be bothered.

It is said that in the West there is freedom of expression, but it is not true.

A clown friend pranked him on a show with a well-known brand of cereal and the firm took him to court for defamation.

A multinational has the best lawyers and they can screw you up a lot.

In no television program can you make a joke against a well-known brand.

A lawsuit can fall on you because you are denigrating the firm.

We live in a society dominated by brands.

It's easier to laugh at the Pope than at a multinational. Do you have more 'haters' than fans? Before, yes.

25 years ago, I didn't mind creating 'haters'.

Now I appear much less in the big media and I act for an audience that knows me.

Now I perform for my fans. Do you understand that your performances offend Catholics? Right now, no.

I've gotten over this.

The Church has lost the ritual. Podemos is in decline and Vox is on the rise.

To what do you attribute it? Vox is more instinctive for better or for worse.

The left is too rational and has lost the instinctive dimension.

He doesn't know how to get angry.

The revolutionary message of the left was instinctive and has disappeared.

What remains are the good intentions.

I know Vox very well because I come from the circus, which is a show that works with instincts.

I perfectly understand the Vox voter who has this need to confront and shout.

But you have to unite intelligence and instinct.

Very few intellectuals are instinctive, they are bourgeois.

Isn't appealing to instincts falling into populism? I love instinct.

I am instinctive.

That's why I'm provocative.

I am not intellectual.

I'm much more basic. Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, was funny.

Can you imagine yourself as a ruler? Not at all.

He would be a very bad president.

And about Zelensky, everything is very strange.

We are on the verge of World War III with a man who has been a comedian and who was elected president because he played a role as president in a television series.

I don't think we comedians are cut out to be politicians.

What do you think about the war in Ukraine? I see very superficial reflections from journalists and that is dangerous.

We are encouraging basic instincts in a world dominated by atomic bombs.

Why have they elected a comedian to be president in Ukraine?

Why did a clown get 70% of the votes?

Can someone explain it to me?

The only explanation is that there was a manipulation of the vote to make someone win.

Now Zelensky has said that finally Ukraine is not going to join NATO, why didn't he say it a month earlier if that was what the Russians had asked him for?

It seems that you blame Zelensky more than Putin for the war. No, but things are much more complicated than they tell us.

I see a lot of propaganda from Ukraine.

I have worked all over Russia.

There are 60 or 70% of the people who are in favor of Putin.

This crazy dictator is not true.

He represents a majority, although there are also people who hate him.

But there are many more people who think that he has saved Russia.

How did we get to this? No one here tells what happened on January 16 with the implementation of the language law in Ukraine.

They removed Russian as the official language and left only Ukrainian and English.

Can you imagine with 35% of the population that speaks Russian and feels Russian and that they cannot use their language in the Public Administration?

The Russians are violent people and very proud.

And now they are told that they cannot speak in their language and that they have to speak in English to carry out a procedure.

This is an insult and it's like fucking the Russians.

Nobody here talks about this.

It is what is called propaganda,

when there is only one part of the information, but not the other part. Are you justifying the invasion? No.

Putin represents the majority of the people.

It is the Russian Parliament that has asked Putin for the invasion.

Half of the population is in favor of the invasion because the Russians have something tribal, they are a tribe.

They are very violent.

A Russian told me that they were Vikings, but from land.

And their balls have been touched a lot.

Putin represents what people think on the street.

If Ukraine entered NATO they were going to put American military bases with atomic bombs.

But I also know the Ukrainian side.

The Russians have been terrible in the Ukraine.

Do we Spaniards welcome the Ukrainians with open arms and turn our backs on the Sub-Saharans? Some 400 people have died in small boats this month in Italy and I don't see much concern.

Nor do I see outrage with what is happening on the border of Melilla and Ceuta.

It is terrible what is happening in the Ukraine, but what has happened to the children of Syria?

There are first category and second category refugees.

Leo Bassi, in his circle of dolmens in Fresnedillas de la Oliva. ALBERTO DI LOLLI

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