Bassem Youssef, the heart surgeon turned satirist who hosted Al Bernameg in Egypt, played his new show The Belly of the Beast at the Royal Albert Hall.
Bassem Youssef, the surgeon turned satirist behind Egypt’s Al Bernameg, played The Belly of the Beast at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington on Sunday 14 June 2026.
Youssef was born in Cairo in 1974 and qualified in medicine at Cairo University. He worked as a cardiothoracic surgeon in Egypt for 13 years before he turned to comedy.
After the 2011 revolution he began a five-minute satirical show on YouTube. It moved to television as Al Bernameg and drew 30 million viewers a week across the Arab world.
Political pressure led him to leave Egypt in 2014 for the United States. There he hosted the International Emmy Awards in 2015 and published a memoir, Revolution for Dummies.
In 2024 his previous show, The Middle Beast, sold more than 100,000 tickets in theatres and arenas. The Kensington evening was a single date, and the stand-ups Mohamed Ali Momas and Omar Badaby opened before the interval.