Andrew Newman, who worked with Baron Cohen producing the first series of Da Ali G Show, explains: “There's something for everyone, from kids on the street to the Queen Mum. In fact, she was a fan who apparently did a good impression. There's clever satire, it's visually funny and there are knob gags all the way through, too.”
From this formula swelled a tidal wave of Ali G success.
By 2000, Baron Cohen was famous in the world far beyond late-night comedy aficionados. His television shows gave him the space to develop other characters: Bruno, the gay Austrian fashion junkie, and Borat, whom he had played in an earlier incarnation on the Paramount Channel on cable television before Ali G.
When out of character, Baron Cohen works hard to keep his private life under wraps. He is in a long-term relationship with actress Isla Fisher and they are engaged to be married.
His performance in Talladega Nights, as a camp, Camus-reading, macchiato-sipping, French Formula One driver trying to make it in NASCAR has gone down well in America.
With roles in three further comedy feature films lined up for the next two years, Baron Cohen looks set to be one of the few stars able comfortably to bridge not just the Atlantic, but the gap between television humor and acting on the big screen. It remains to be seen whether this capacity extends beyond comedy.
Baron Cohen's career as a comedian began with the rejection of a sketch show (involving stripping Hasidic Jews) by broadcasters for being “too offensive” and saw him earning a crust as a male model and cable channel phone-in host, before he got his break on Paramount. Despite that early, unseen sketch and Borat's more outrageous statements, the one thing it would be difficult to accuse Baron Cohen of is anti-semitism, not merely because he is Jewish, but because, having been raised by Orthodox parents, he still practices his religion.
He was born in 1971, the second of three sons, to Gerald and Daniella. His father, who is Welsh, runs a successful clothing shop in Piccadilly, London, while his mother is Israeli. He attended Christ's College, Cambridge, to read history.
In his third year at Cambridge, Baron Cohen wrote a thesis about the role of Jews in the American civil rights movement. “He took it very seriously,” remembers a contemporary.
The existence of this thesis suggests that Baron Cohen has more than a passing interest both in Borat's specific American targets and in the wider challenges of social integration and bigotry with which his comedy deals.
But beyond the silly costumes and thick accents, beyond the bawdy humor, could the comedian see himself as more than an entertainer? It is not the Kazakhstani government which has anything to fear from his forthcoming Borat film: the country was chosen for its obscurity, not as a target for satire. It is the rest of us who ought to wonder why we laugh and what laughing at Baron Cohen's comedy says about us.
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