Long John The Comedian
Learnmore Jonasi, formerly known as Long John the Comedian and nicknamed "The Village Boy", is a Zimbabwean stand-up comedian, actor and MC who went from being booed at his first open mic in Harare to the final of America's Got Talent. He was born Learnmore Mwanyenyeka on 22 August 1993 at Dangamvura Hospital in Mutare. He never met his father; his mother is a kindergarten teacher in South Africa, and he was raised by his grandparents in Chimanimani and later Mutare, finishing his O levels at Chimanimani High School in 2010. He went to Harare to start in comedy with no relatives to stay with, looked for a comedy club in Bulawayo in 2011 and found none, and finally performed for the first time on 9 October 2012 at the Simuka Comedy Night at the Book Café in Harare, where he was booed. For almost two years he could not make audiences laugh, but he kept returning every Monday and played bars, open mics and community gatherings, often for free. In 2014 he returned to Bulawayo, where Ntando Van Moyo, founder of the new Umahlekisa comedy club, gave him stage time, and his village jokes earned him the name "The Village Boy from Chimanimani". In October 2014 he made his first international tour, to South Africa. His one-man shows The Longest Yard (2015) and The Village Boy (2016) followed, and in 2016 he opened for Barry Hilton and performed at the African Comedy Festival in London. He went on to festivals in Eswatini, Botswana, Uganda, Rwanda and Namibia. In 2019 he won Outstanding Comedian at the National Arts Merit Awards, Pan African Comic of the Year at South Africa's Savanna Comics' Choice Awards, which he dedicated to the victims of Cyclone Idai, and the people's choice award in Steve Harvey's Stand Up Spotlight. In 2020 he won a second NAMA, best stand-up at the All The Laughs Comedy Awards in Atlanta and Male Personality of the Year at the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards South Africa. After appearing on Comedy Central's Savanna Virtual Comedy Bar in 2021, he moved to Pittsburgh for a residency with Steve Hofstetter's Steel City Arts Foundation. He placed second at the World Series of Comedy in Atlanta in 2022, won the Boston Comedy Festival and the audience award at the Jersey City Comedy Festival in 2023, and in 2024 received Terry Crews's Golden Buzzer on America's Got Talent for an audition drawing on Zimbabwean culture and life in America, finishing in the top five of the season 19 final on 25 September 2024.
