Here’s Patrick Maliha’s claim to fame: He’s the World Record Holder for the most impressions performed in one minute.
The Vancouver comedian beat out Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey for the record in 2009. Carvey had done 18 impressions on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Maliha beat it with 27 impressions, which were video recorded on a Tuesday night at Darby’s Pub in Vancouver and mailed in to Universal Record Database (the moment also made its way onto YouTube).
“It was a ton of fun,” Maliha recalls, explaining the evening was a fundraiser for a friend and the stunt was great for ticket sales.
His record was featured in the RecordSetter Book of World Records and that’s when the challengers started coming out of the woodwork.
“After people started finding out about the record, everyone wanted to beat it,” he says. “I think somebody did 28 or 29 and that was the end of my record.”
That is, until last year when CBC’s Laugh Out Loud asked him to re-claim the record at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival gala.
Attempting to squeeze a few more impressions into a minute, Maliha says, was distinctly less fun and a lot more work than his earlier exploit.
“It was unbelievably hard. I’m not gonna lie,” he says.
But he pulled it off. He did 31 impressions in one minute, a record that’s approaching the realm of being unbeatable — it would be tough to talk fast enough to do anymore.
He’s considered trying to get to 33 or 34, just to make sure nobody will ever take the record away from him.
“I like being able to say I hold a world record. It looks good on the posters,” he says.
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Patrick Maliha is headlining an evening of stand-up comedy at the Nelson Capitol Theatre on Saturday. He’ll be doing about an hour set, and says there will be lots of impressions scattered throughout the show, including an end bit where he takes impression requests from the audience.
“It’s probably the greatest show people will ever see in their lives — if they’ve never seen another show ever before,” he says of his act. “If they’ve seen other shows, it might be the second best, or maybe the third or the 42nd.”
Opening the evening will be Nelson’s 2013 Cultural Ambassador, Lucas Myers, who will appear as his altar egos, like Steven the Art Star and Randy From Creston.
Then Vancouver’s Ben McGinnis will take the stage. Armed with a caustic wit, McGinnis has been making furtive eye contact with audiences across North America since 2007.
This presentation is part of the Capitol Season. The show goes Saturday, March 9 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 or $20 for students and series pass holders.