By AMANDA SOO
alltherage@thestar.com.my

IT must be tough being doctor/comedian Jason Leong. Let’s say you’re in the emergency room of a hospital, and your life is hanging in the balance. The last thing you’d want is to have some joker treating you, right?

But then again, laughter is the best medicine, and Leong sure knows how to tickle people’s funny bones. We bet he has a really large humerus too.

Now that we’ve exhausted all the lame jokes the R.AGE team came up with when we first heard about Leong, we can start telling his story for real.

Leong is a medical doctor at the emergency department of Hospital Selayang; and for the last two years, he has also been a stand-up comedian, doing shows locally as well as in Singapore and Hong Kong.

He performed his first stand-up routine in June 2010, at an open mic event.

He was working in Penang at the time, so he took two days off and drove four hours to Kuala Lumpur to do his spot – which was only five minutes long.

But the audience must have really loved him, because he ended up getting away with nine minutes on stage (though it is possible they were booing the whole time. Leong wouldn’t say…).

Two months later, he got his big break. He had 20 minutes this time, as an opening act for celebrity comedian Douglas Lim. Again, he must have been really good, because he was asked to join the Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians (MACC) not long after that.

Leong’s next show will be on MACC’s Bromance of The Four Kingdoms, alongside Lim, Phoon Chi Ho and Kuah Jenhan, MACC’s resident (non-doctor) jokers.

“I’m very grateful that the three of them brought me into their team,” said Leong. “They were already selling out shows before I joined them, so they didn’t have to. Why would they want to risk ruining their show?”

Humour has always been a part of Leong. “In school, I made a lot of noise; I talked a lot, made fun of people. People do say I’m naturally funny, but it takes a lot online casino of guts to take that onstage,

“It’s very easy to be funny when you’re with friends, but having strangers come and pay money to listen to you – that’s a whole different ball game.”

According to Leong, the comedy scene in Malaysia is booming. “I think there have been about 15 shows in KL so far this year. Same time last year, there were only, what, three?”

Leong said being a doctor was something he wanted to do. You won’t get any sob stories about how his parents forced him into it. Still, once he discovered stand-up comedy, it kind of just took over.

“Comedy offers instant gratification. You tell a joke and boom, the appreciation is right there,” he said. “Medicine, yes, it’s a very noble profession, but it gets quite tiring. I feel that a bad show is still better than a good day at the hospital.”

Watch comedian Jason Leong (@TheJasonLSK) perform on Bromance of The Four Kingdoms, which will be running from Feb 26 to March 2 at PJ Live Arts, Jaya One, Selangor. You can get tickets at www.pjla.com.my.