Trevor Noah attends the South African Film and Television Awards (Safta) at the Pretoria State Theatre in Pretoria, South Africa on 7 February 2009. (Photo by Gallo Images/City Press/Muntu Vilakazi)
The comedian, who recently moved to New York, was telling Fallon about how it was difficult back in the apartheid days for black people to criticise the government, nor were they allowed to sit in groups because “they would get arrested”.
Noah said he did not plan to be a comedian, his cousin took him to a pub where there was a comedy show when his friends got drunk and started heckling the comedians who were doing their stand-up that night.
According to Noah, the host of the comedy show challenged the audience to go on stage and prove they could do better than the comedians.
“My cousin then said ‘I can’t go up but he (Noah) can,” Noah said.
“I was like me? oh I don’t even know why I got involved because I’m not drunk,” he said, adding that “drunk people throw you under the bus”.
He then went on stage and started talking, people laughed, “and then I carried on talking some more”.
“This is what I’ve been doing, I just talk and people laugh, I still don’t know what I’m doing,” the comedian said, and as usual, got people laughing.
Noah will be taking over from Jon Stewart as the host of the satirical news programme, The Daily Show.
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