India FM

Mumbai, Jan 7: The king of comedy, Johny Lever, made his small screen debut this week.

Starring in the TV show called Johny Ala Re, the actor has gone back to doing stand-up comedy, something which he excelled in before devoting himself to films completely. He was widely known for his live stage-shows in the 80's when he made the live audiences die of laughter with his performances.

This time though the show isn't live on stage but the audiences in front of him will be the studio crowd. Says Johny that he had been planning of doing television since past one and a half year. In fact, he also used to get offers from television channels. However, since he was so engrossed in films then, it didn't seem to be the right time as he didn't want to haste into this. Now, that Johny has drastically reduced the number of films he does, he has taken the next step and moved on to television.

The show Johny Ala Re is a tri-weekly which has gags, jokes and a 'Main bhi Johny' segment which gives opportunity to budding artistes to display their talent. It is now to be seen whether the man repeats his magic on the audiences through television.

Johny Ala Re is produced by Akashdeep, husband of small-time actress Sheeba, who also directed films like the Manoj Bajpai starrer Ghaath.

Incidentally, some years back, Akashdeep had planned a series of spoof films with Johny Lever like Thakaan (on Lagaan) and Bevdadas (on Devdas). However those films never hit the screens.