Comedian Nazeem Hussain has a few problems with Australia ahead of Sydney Comedy Festival show

“I’M actually on your side Australia, I love you but I have a few problems with you,” says comedian Nazeem Hussain.

Comedian Nazeem Hussain is a reluctant spokesman for his faith and ancestry.

NAZEEM Hussain has a complicated relationship with Australia at large — it’s not quite love/hate, but it’s somewhere in that vicinity.

“I’m actually on your side Australia, I love you but I have a few problems with you,” he told Central Sydney this week.

Best known for his show Legally Brown and as one half of Fear of a Brown Planet, Hussain’s relationship with the nation has played out in his comedy — in part because, as he points out, “if you’re a non-white person and a Muslim, lots of funny things happen to you”.

Nazeem Hussain at the 2016 Melbourne Comedy Festival. Picture: Jim Lee

“You don’t set out to be political.”

Hussain has never shied away from talking about his faith and upbringing (Australian-born, Hussain’s parents immigrated from Sri Lanka) but constantly having to explain himself can be exhausting when he just wants to get to the punchline.

“You don’t set out to be political,” he says, “but because of the context of where you’re coming from and the perspective you’re speaking from, (what you say) naturally becomes political,” he said.

“If another comedian was to say the things I say, people would not even blink because it’s just a white dude talking.

Nazeem found fame with his program, Legally Brown.

“I don’t actually necessarily like having to assert myself, I find it tiring … but I’ve got family and friends around me who don’t have a platform and a microphone.”

When he can be “like Mary Poppins and say, my work here is done” will be when somebody just like him will be considered a “normal” Australian, Hussain said.

His comedy is not all about identity though — speaking ahead of his appearance at the Enmore Theatre with hit show Public Frenemy, Hussain said there would be plenty of bizarre stories from his life as a “full time troll”, as well as bizarre but true anecdotes from family life.

These includes tales from his time filming I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in South Africa, as well as a startling anecdote about when his dear mum discovered a dead body in a toilet block while holidaying in Tasmania.

Details: sydneycomedyfest.com.au