E-Paper
Arj Barker: 6 things to know about Indian-origin comedian slammed for asking woman with baby to leave show
Arj Barker, an Indian-origin comedian, said he first made a few jokes about the baby making noise and that the crowd took the jokes in the right spirit.
An Indian-origin comedian is being slammed online after he asked a woman who was accompanied by her baby to leave his show in Melbourne, Australia last week. There are allegations that the woman was asked to leave as she was breast-feeding while being seated in the audience. Arjan Barker, who identifies himself as Arj Barker, set the record straight saying that he did not ask her to leave because she was breast-feeding, but only because of "audio disruption" of his show.
"For the record, I support public breast-feeding, as it's perfectly natural," the 49-year-old said in a statement which he shared on Instagram on Monday.
Barker said that the theatre should have conveyed to the woman beforehand that the show was people above 15 years only.
"The theatre should have flagged this before seating her but for some reason they did not," he said.
The show took place at Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne last Saturday, with an audience strength of nearly 700 people.
"This was a to do with audio disruption of my show, nothing more. For the record, I support public breastfeeding, as it's perfectly natural," he said.
"I've nothing against babies, in fact I was one once, for almost two years."
Here are 6 things to know about Arj Barker:
- Arj Barker was born as Arjan Singh Aulakh in San Francisco in 1974. He is now based in Melbourne.
- He started doing stand-up comedy gigs right after high school in the United States.
- He is known for his acting role in HBO sitcom “Flight of the Conchords”.
- Barker has performed on talk shows such as “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Show with David Letterman” and “Late Night with Conan O'Brien” in the early 1990s.
- Barker performed in “The Marijuana-Logues”, an Off-Broadway production in New York City.
- He won an award for comedy at the ARIA Music Awards in 2019.
