THE LONG (EXPLETIVE DELETED) FAREWELL

Na Nake, the bearded emcee with colourful spiky hair and a penchant for fashionable sunglasses and biting sarcasm, performed his “final stand-up comedy” show over the weekend.
He had earlier announced that “The Naked Show 5: Elegant” would be his last show for an indefinite period and that he intended taking a long break from showbiz to move on to “new things in life”.
So it was not surprising that many members of the audience came to his show with high expectations, hoping he would crack his best gags and outdo himself in the sarcasm as he bid farewell to his talk-show career. Most went away disappointed.
“The Naked Show 5” played out in five rounds between Friday and Monday at the Centerpoint Playhouse at CentralWorld, with an audience of about 500 in each round.
Na Nake, whose real name is Ketsepsawat Palakawong Na Ayudhya, spent the first hour of his three-hour show speaking about his five past talk shows. After his three shows between 2004 and 2006, he took a break for four years before returning to the stage with “Naked Show 4” in 2010.
The 43-year-old comedian also put on a charity show last year to raise funds for victims of the Japanese double disaster. “The Naked Show 4.5 Richter: Show Your Heart for Japan” was held not long after Japan’s northeast coast was hit by a strong earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, when Na Nake happened to be in Tokyo. He told the audience that he was so moved by the tragedy that he felt he had to do something for the Japanese.
Na Nake reserved the number five for this year. During Saturday night’s show – the date appears as 5/5/55 on the Buddhist Era calendar – Na Nake sent his 5,555th tweet from his iPad. He said it was to be his last tweet before he stopped tweeting. That was to prove that he was quitting his old routine prepare for new things in life.
A later check on his Twitter account (@na_nake) revealed that the comedian had made exactly 5,555 tweets. Interestingly, he has 451,409 followers but is following only one person – A Day magazine founder Wongthanong Chainarongsingha.
He appeared to be trying something new in this show: singing in blues and “rap style” a few songs telling the audience about his life since birth – how his grandfather nicknamed him Nake because he looked like a snake in an incubator after being born prematurely, and his decision to quit show business. He was backed up by a seven-piece band and a team of three women chorus singers.
Na Nake showed he was still good at poking fun at nearly everything – Thai television programmes, show-biz celebrities, audience members, his colleagues in show business and in his own company, and his show’s sponsors’ products. replacing their slogans with his own, which used several swear words, and commenting that his phrasing should “make more impact”.
In addition to resorting to stereotyping, a technique popular among stand-up comedians, he freely used swear words despite the presence of many children among the audience. He managed to draw much laughter from the audience doing jokes about Japanese adult videos and people’s private parts, with both words and actions.
Some adults who brought children to the show might feel that they made a big mistake exposing their young charges to foul language and sexual content but to be fair, they should have been prepared.