Like Prince, Madonna and Beyonce, "Oliver" needs only a first name as his calling card. For the past 30 years, the Jamaican comedian "Oliver" has kept fans around the world laughing with his uncanny timing and dead on humor.
Now, this weekend the Caribbean's own King of Comedy and friends will do the same for an audience at the City Center when he presents "Christopher Cum Buck Us" sponsored by the Rotary Club of Belize in furtherance of that group's charity work for children.
The king landed arrived today and from his suite at the Princess told us what we can expect Saturday night and also why laughter is still the best medicine.
Oliver Samuels, Comedian
"You can take the "Cum Buck Us" from the title because what we are saying is that Christopher Columbus did not discover the West Indies or anywhere else for that matter because he went there and he saw people. Therefore that is how the name came about, he did not come and discover us. He came and 'cum buck up' on some people on the islands."
Q: Is this geopolitical satire?
Oliver Samuels, Comedian
"I would say it is straight comedy; a historical comedy with a little contemporary twist to it in the sense that we look at the world as it is today and we make commentary on the situation in Iraq, touched on Mr. Bush, and that kind of stuff. And we laugh on some of our situations going down in Jamaica."
Q: Why should people come out and laugh this weekend when again it is so easy to cry?
Oliver Samuels, Comedian
"Who wants to cry? Cry is such a painful emotional thing and they say laugh is the best medicine."
"Another thing too you know we laugh about is that even our very own politicians take us for idiots. They do all these crazy things to us and in their representation of us abroad and in the international forum. They must think we don't have any sense. So we use that; we use all of that and we laugh at them, we laugh with them, and we laugh at the world for thinking the Caribbean people are so stupid. And also the great thing though is that we can laugh at ourselves and it is a marvelous thing. And if we as Caribbean people couldn't laugh out ourselves we would go under. We would need to go see psychiatrist every day of our lives."
Oliver will perform along with the famed Glen Campbell. Tickets for Saturday's show are $60 dollars for premium seating, $30 for reserved seating and $15 for general. All proceeds will go to the Rotary's Gift of Life Program for children.