Sacha Baron Cohen's comic creations are hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but how much do we know about the man behind Ali G and Borat, asks Brian Boyd
Last month, the government of the central Eurasian country of Kazakhstan took out a four-page advertisement in the New York Times. Readers were told how the country's "growing economy is attracting international hotel groups" and how ties with the United States have never been stronger. Buried at the end of the four pages was a curious story about the country's "religious tolerance", noting how this was "one of the hallmarks of the nation and that Kazakhstan is home to over 40 religions".
The country's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is quoted in the article as saying "in the last 15 years, there has not been a single case of a newspaper or television station harassing the followers of any particular faith . . . There is an overall tolerance and understanding of all faiths in our society". The article went on to mention how the government was funding an epic €42 million movie about the history of the country.
Readers of the New York Times might have been wondering "Kazakwhere?". Officially, the reason for the supplement on the country was that it coincided with a meeting in the White House between President Nazarbayev and President Bush. But the inclusion of the story on "religious tolerance" and the announcement about the plans for an official film about the country strongly hinted at something else.
The film Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, more simply known as Borat: The Movie goes on release in the US and Europe next week. Billed as a "mockumentary", it features an eccentric Kazakh (Borat) arriving in the US to record a documentary funded, he says, by his country's Ministry of Information. As Borat travels across the US, playing the innocent tourist abroad, he regales people with tales of his homeland. "The chain of importance in Kazakhstan is God, man, horse, dog, woman, then rat," he says. He talks about how good the prostitutes are in his country and how he much he dislikes Jews and Gypsies. In one scene he goes into a gun shop and asks the man behind the counter: "Which gun would be best to shoot the Jews?"
Borat isn't from Kazakhstan; in fact he's never even been in the country. He is the comedy character creation of the middle-class, English, Jewish performer known as Sacha Baron Cohen, previously best known for his portrayal of the hip-hop character, Ali G.
But Borat's vicious anti-Semitism and misogyny (among a panoply of other prejudices), and his portrayal of Kazakhstan as a bigoted backwater, have prompted the Kazakh foreign ministry to roundly criticise Cohen's creation "as a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with the ethics and civilized behaviour of Kazakhstan's people . . . We reserve the right to any legal action".
On his official website, Borat responded by saying "I'd like to state that I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my Government's decision to sue this Jew.
"Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world. Women can now travel on the inside of the bus, homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats, and the age of consent has been raised to eight years old. Please, captains of industry, I invite you to come to Kazakhstan, where we have incredible natural resources, hard-working labour, and some of the cleanest prostitutes in whole of central Asia!"
Baron Cohen began working on the character of Borat 10 years ago. When he first appeared on television screens, Borat was originally a Moldovan, and then he was briefly called Kristo and was from Albania. He is based on a real person Baron Cohen met in southern Russia during the 1990s. "I can't remember the person's name. He was a doctor. The moment I met him, I was totally crying - he was hysterically funny, albeit unintentionally," Baron Cohen has said.
Borat works on the principle that the public is not familiar with him or anything relating to Kazakhstan. He has simply arrived in the West unaware that his hostile prejudices are regarded as offensive and unacceptable. However, Baron Cohen would have it that he is exposing prejudice by inviting unwitting interviewees to agree with Borat's racist views.
Why Kazakhstan though? One of Baron Cohen's producers, Andrew Newman, has said that it was chosen at random - "it was somewhere that sounded far away and we thought it would not be that easy to check up about".
Born in north London in 1971, Cohen went to the same school as comedians David Baddiel and Little Britain star Matt Lucas. He went on to study history at Cambridge University and someone who knew him then remembers him as "a very quiet and scholarly person.
"He wasn't part of the Cambridge Footlights drama group and didn't appear to be starry or theatrical in any way. I remember being seated beside him and the historian Simon Schama at a birthday party. The two of them were having a very engaged conversation about Jewish history. He always had a real intellectual engagement with history and ideas. It's strange to see him as a Hollywood superstar now."
Baron Cohen's thesis at Cambridge was on the role of Jews in the US civil rights movement.
His first television break came on Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show (also the starting place for Ricky Gervais). Although he had the character of Borat fully formed, it was his other creation, Ali G, who took the plaudits. It was only when Da Ali G Show transferred to US television that Borat began to take precedence.
In one episode, Borat was shown performing a country and western song to an audience in Tucson, Arizona. The lyrics to the song were: "Throw the Jew down the well/ So my country can be free/ You must grab him by his horns/ Then we have a big party".
US Jewish anti-racism group, the Anti-Defamation League registered a complaint with the broadcaster, HBO. This action undoubtedly perplexed Cohen, a practising Jew, who has patiently explained in the past that his character's racist nature "is a dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity as much as rabid bigotry".
BUT WHERE DO the grotesquely parodied Kazakhs fit into this argument? The Kazakh authorities moved to shut down Borat's website, www.borat.kz, but now they appear to be slowly softening to him. Even though the country's largest chain of cinemas said it will not be showing Borat: The Movie - a spokesperson said "we consider the movie offensive, a complete lie and nonsense" - the country's ambassador to Britain, Erlan Idrissov, has recently said: "We know that Borat's Kazakhstan has nothing to do with the real Kazakhstan. People in Kazakhstan laugh at the same things as people laugh at everywhere in the world . . . I believe that all publicity is good for business, so indirectly people are encouraged to explore the country for themselves."
BARON COHEN HAS been compared with Peter Sellers in the manner in which he can inhabit his characters and wring every last ounce of humour out of any given situation. By considerably upping the satire ante and using inflammatory language, however, he is always bound to court controversy.
Not one for celebrity magazines or red carpet premieres, he now lives in Los Angeles with his actor girlfriend Isla Fisher (formerly of Australian soap Home and Away) and people who meet him are always struck by how quiet and studious he is when not inhabiting one of his characters.
The huge success of Ali G and Borat have come at a price, however. The more the characters are known, the less opportunity there is to dupe the public.
Nevertheless, Baron Cohen has other weapons in his armoury. He has just won rave reviews for his role as a Nascar driver in the Will Ferrell comedy, Talladega Nights, and Hollywood can't get enough of him. Meanwhile, he has yet to reply to the official invitation he received last week from the Kazakh foreign ministry to "come and discover the real Kazakhstan".Name: Sacha Baron Cohen/Ali G/Borat Sagdiyev
Distinguishing characteristic: An uncanny ability to dupe the great and good into hilarious interviews by pretending to be someone else. Victims include Donald Trump, Mohamed al-Fayed, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and David Beckham.
Outstanding contribution to geographical awareness: He has single-handedly put the hitherto relatively unknown country of Kazakhstan into the limelight.
Little known fact: He is an outstanding ga-ga player (a form of dodgeball that originated in Israel) and has won the UK ga-ga championship on multiple occasions.
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