Comedy sideline adds up for Dubai accountant

While accountants are often considered boring, Ali Sufian is trying to change that. The Dubai resident works in accounts payable during the week and creates comedy videos at the weekend.

Ali Sufian, aka Lame Brown Dude, shoots a scene with his mother Farida, who almost always feature in his videos. Anna Nielsen for The National

Accountants get a bad rap as boring, conservative bean counters, so the stereotype goes. But one UAE-based millennial is looking to change that, one laugh at a time.

Ali Sufian, 28, works in accounts payable for a large retail group in Dubai through the week – then creates comedy videos for his 200,000 Facebook fans as Lame Brown Dude at the weekend.

And he insists accountants are much funnier than they are given credit for. “People in finance are not dry, they are intelligent and fast,” he says. “People who play around with numbers are more creative because their mind is working faster, always dealing with numbers and reports. We can be as creative as anyone.”

His videos are recorded in Urdu; this, he says, keeps Lame Brown Dude “neutral” and ensures the widest South Asian “desi” viewership.

Mr Sufian was born in Pakistan, spent some of his childhood in Bahrain and has lived in the UAE for the past seven years after studying for his commerce degree in Pakistan.

His videos tend to focus on socio-political issues the demographic will relate to, from forced marriages to the demands relatives can make on Asian expats in the Middle East.

The first one poked fun at Asian parents who want a doctor for a daughter-in-law, but then expect her to stop working after she is married. “It went viral,” says Mr Sufian. “Now, within a day I get more than 100,000 views.

“If you post something serious people won’t bother watching or sharing. If it’s funny you can plug your message about the kind of change we should bring in our lives. A lot of stuff is happening back in our country and we have the voice to make them listen.”

Mr Sufian started out writing scripts for two friends who were artists for comics on social media. But his stories became too long for a single cartoon, his ideas not “easily translated into pictures”, so he decided to turn to video and go it alone.

He taught himself about video production and chose his equipment using YouTube for tutorials. Mr Sufian now does all his own filming and editing and even produces his own music, having been in a couple of bands in his college days.

He spends one day of each weekend working on a video, shooting in the morning and editing in the evening.

Many star his widowed mother, Farida, who lives with him in Ajman, and who has, in her sixties, become a bit of a star in her own right, thanks to her role. ”She doesn’t understand much about gadgets and technology but she likes to help me and to be in front of a camera,” he says.

“Whenever I ask her, she never knows what the story is about – I just give her some lines then show her the final product.”

As an only child, Mr Sufian brought his mother to the UAE when his father died four years ago. “This keeps her occupied and she loves the kind of attention she gets,” he says.

“Whenever we go out, families like to meet her and discuss. She is enjoying this limelight. At times, she is more famous than me.”

Although he also has a YouTube channel, most of his traffic comes from Facebook. YouTube was banned in Pakistan for several years and was unblocked only last year

This has left his YouTube following under 10,000 fans and, to date, Mr Sufian says he has only made around US$100 from his videos. They cannot be commercialised on Facebook the same way as on YouTube yet, unusually, Mr Sufian has chosen to post directly to Facebook rather than embed videos from YouTube.

As he says, making money was “never the intention”, insisting accountancy, not comedy, remains his career of choice.

“I am interested in how I can share something that impacts someone’s life or changes someone’s mindset,” Mr Sufian adds. “It doesn’t have to generate money. It was not for me to gain attention.”

So what about his regular career? Will he give it all up to turn to comedy full time?

“I am more than happy with my professional side,” he says. “I’m comfortable right now but more than happy to jump on senior positions in the future – a senior accountant or finance manager.”

But he insists, the day job will never affect his hobby.

Lame Brown Dude is in fine company – American comic actor Bob Newhart originally trained as an accountant, while British stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard might have been lost to the realms of double entry bookkeeping if he hadn’t failed all of his exams.