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'Fun-tastic' event to feature comedian Klassen

Rising Canadian comic Leland Klassen continues to draw on his daily life experiences to maintain a level of funny that keeps him hard at work.
Comedian Leland Klassen highlights the Boys and Girls Club of Cochrane and Area’s fourth annual Cochrane Comedy Classic.
Comedian Leland Klassen highlights the Boys and Girls Club of Cochrane and Area’s fourth annual Cochrane Comedy Classic.

Rising Canadian comic Leland Klassen continues to draw on his daily life experiences to maintain a level of funny that keeps him hard at work.

Klassen is the highlight of the Boys and Girls Club of Cochrane and Area’s fourth annual Cochrane Comedy Classic this Nov. 16.

The event is one of two major annual fundraisers for the community child and youth club (Race for Kids being the other). Last year over $25,000 was raised.

“We’re raising the bar this year with (a goal of) $30,000,” said Jenny Strickland, manager of administration and operations for the local non-profit, adding that the evening includes some “funny and fantastic” live and silent auction items, including a bid to go cruising in a 1969 Dodge Charger, complete with a Dukes of Hazzard paint job, hockey gear and horse riding lessons.

“All of the money raised goes directly into our many child and youth programs,” she said, listing everything from leadership to skills to educational and healthy relationship programs offered through the club and in area schools.

Aside from snacks and refreshments, music and dancing, the evening is set to be ‘fun-tastic’ with funny man, Klassen.

A farm kid who went against his parents’ dreams of a professional career, Klassen has long evolved beyond making fun of his humble Mennonite beginnings and on to more current forms of self-deprecation - including parenting teenage boys or getting thrown into handcuffs at the border.

“Oh, I’ve got a few border stories,” laughed Klassen, who regularly heads south of the border to perform, reflecting on one case of a serious computer malfunction. “I knew it had to be a mistake of some kind and I remember thinking ‘man, this is gonna be great material’…”

A ‘clean’ comic, who doesn’t feel the need to resort to vulgarity or sexual perversion to be funny, Klassen said all he has to do is make jokes about his own life to get the response form audiences he’s looking for.

“There are some mean comics out there. My style is very much self-deprecating. Comedians are these really insecure people, yet we can have these massive, narcissistic egos…just getting on stage is therapy for some comedians.”

Klassen is looking forward to sharing his brand of comedy with the Cochrane crowd Nov. 16 at the Cochrane RancheHouse, beginning at 7 p.m.

“Making people laugh is a great feeling, but if you can tie it in with a worthwhile cause, that’s the best,” said Klassen, whose resume includes being the host of Popcorn TV, three appearances at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, Que. and appearances on CBC, YTV, StarTV, Global and Discovery Kids.

Learn more at lelandklassen.com.

Tickets to the event are $55 and are available at bgccochrane.ca or by going to the front desk at the club.

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