Why I’m Not in Talking Terms with Basket Mouth for 17 Years — AY Comedian
By Boniface Ihiasota, USA
AY Comedian has finally opened up about his feud with fellow comedian, Basket Mouth, in a recent interview with media personality, Chude Jideonwo.
According to AY, the root of their beef can be traced back to an incident that occurred in 2006.
During that time, Basket Mouth was a highly sought-after comedian, often getting booked for multiple events on the same day. He would attend one event, leave early, and then make it to the next event.
AY was one of the comedians Basket Mouth would call upon to stand in for him at these events.
One day, AY got the opportunity to perform at an event, thanks to Basket Mouth’s endorsement.
The gig paid N30,000, which was a significant amount of money for AY at the time. However, when it was time to get paid, Basket Mouth claimed that the event organizers hadn’t remitted the payment yet.
AY eventually found out that the payment had been made, and he was understandably upset.
According to AY, “In 2006, (Basketmouth) usually will get gigs like weddings – multiple gigs on a Saturday, maybe 2/3 weddings. So what he used to do at that point in time was to attend one, then at a point, leave the venue and catch up in the other venue and then you will need someone else to stand in for you. That was the opportunity I got from him of which I am very appreciative of till date.
“Now, something funny happened. One of the gigs per se, I got his endorsement to go stand in. Usually what we get at that time is N30,000 and 30,000 at that time was everything to me. 30,000 would buy me my pack of indomie, recharge cards, fuel for my ‘I better pass my neighbor’ generator and then the opportunity to pay just one or two people to join me to do one or two skits that I can just quickly put out.
“I got this job, and the people weren’t too happy to see me around the venue because they were expecting a Basketmouth to come. Long story short, the guy was later happy after the performance. There was an exchange of contacts. Then I left.
“Two weeks running, I haven’t seen 30k. Because I didn’t see the 30k, and I was starving in Iponri, I decided to ask for 30K and he said this person hasn’t remitted, this person hasn’t paid, you they’re not happy because of this and all of that.
“And then me I was like, ahahn… but this person na, shebi you tell me say you were impressed and happy? Give my oga hin money na, make my oga take settle me and all of that. Me, I don’t care if you give Basket 100k for the job but my 30k is my 30k.
“It was very funny to now hear from them, knowing that this full payment has been made long before the event.
“I said ‘O-kay, is that the situation?’. So I forwarded this one’s message to this one and vice versa. So they now started fighting each other and all of that.
“I didn’t do that because I wanted to get at Basketmouth per se. I did that because I was hungry, I was hustling and needed food on the table at the time.”
