Bermudian comic basks in the laughter after four just For Laughs appearancesBy Jessie MonizBermudian comedian Jonathan Young can probably be considered a Just for Laughs Bermuda veteran after appearing in the comedy show for the fourth year in a row this month, but he said it doesn’t get any less challenging.In 2008, Mr Young was selected to perform with Just for Laughs after he won the Fresh Faces of Comedy competition.He has performed with the annual Just for Laughs show in Bermuda, ever since. Before winning the competition, he worked as a professional comic in London for over a year.“This was my fourth appearance with Just for Laughs,” he said. “It is not necessarily getting easier, if anything it gets harder.“In London, I was doing standup comedy for a different audience every single night. You could refine those jokes down to their perfect essence and then do them for three years.“That is what all these international comedians are doing when they come here. They are doing a set they have oiled over years.“I am doing all new material every time. It is hard breaking in new material, especially in a large public venue.“You don’t get a chance to hone it, and the pool of available material gets a little smaller from the local perspective. So I think it is a little harder each time, but I really enjoy the challenge.”When he worked in London he was working three gigs a week.These days he gets the chance to do about seven performances a year in Bermuda.He has also done some work with Envy Productions.“I didn’t think when I came back to Bermuda that I would have the opportunity to play on an international stage again where an international standard applied,” he said.“I thought it would be all open mic nights squeezed between someone’s poetry and folk songs, so it is nice to have a couple of venues where you can actually do real gigs.“A lot of the comedians in Just for Laughs are my friends from my days in London.”He works full-time for a small reinsurer and previously worked as a professor at the Bermuda College teaching politics, e-commerce and economics.Mr Young said he particularly enjoys doing jokes about politics, but finds half of his set has disappeared now that former Premier Ewart Brown has left the scene.“Doing politics depends on the composition of the audience,” said Mr Young. “Just for Laughs draws a fair number of expats, but there is a core Bermudian contingent who will get a very local joke.“I do a joke about how when I was coming up there were three races, ‘black, white and Hollis’. The Bermudians all laugh at that but the expats will have no idea what is going on there.“The fact that that got a laugh told me there were a fair number of Bermudians in the audience.”Mr Young said he enjoyed teaching at the college, but switching over to the business world allowed him to become a student again.He is now studying for his level three chartered financial accountant (CFA) exam.“It was hard becoming a student again,” he said. “I hadn’t done math in 15 years and this is very math heavy, but it was lovely being a student again.“It felt very indulgent, but it felt good to accomplish something very hard again, which I hadn’t done in a while.“I have written some jokes that only a person from the insurance industry would get.”