about us

Whacked, owned by South Africa’s favourite underground comic, John Vlismas, is now one of South Africa's leading entertainment agencies.

As an industry leader in the supply of tailored stand-up comedy to corporate South Africa, we are perfectly placed to offer progressive, clean and socially analytical humour to the audience - or knock their socks off with weapons-grade barroom banter. Our package is world-class and distinctly South African.

With the recent addition of Taffia Keight as the managing partner, a new level of corporate organization has made the business more able to handle diversified talent on a national level.

Our menu of entertainment represents the broad spectrum of cultures found locally, while our network into the comedy world extends through several countries.

The company was founded in 1998 to manage John Vlismas. In 14 years the company has grown from a one-room domestic situation into a corporate agency that bills in excess of R5m annually, representing roughly 10% - 12% of the corporate market, and providing work for over 40 artists at around 450 performances a year.

Whacked is now expanding into the booking of musicians and business speakers to satisfy what it perceives as a need for smooth and efficient service at reasonable rates.

John Vlismas owns Whacked and continues to work as one of South Africa's most successful comedians both locally and abroad.

Taffia Keight migrated from a management position at MTN to become the managing partner at Whacked in 2008. While her previous experience in logistics and team leadership may seem vastly removed from babysitting artists, she is confident in her vision, and has already done an extensive clean up on the operations of Whacked since she joined.

André Gilbertson is a very well-known member of the SA PR community and has decades of experience in how to position an artist correctly. André is a recent addition to the team, but has already added huge value to our offering.

Keiron Whitemore is the newest member of our permanent team. Keiron joined Whacked as a general assistant, but quickly showed such initiative and an innate ability to understand the needs of both comics and clients that we moved him into booking acts, where he is showing great promise.

We feel confident that Keiron will ultimately head up Whacked's agency business, freeing up Taffia to focus on the longer timelines of production and management, as well as the overall operations of the Whacked group.

Whacked is one of very few artist-owned agencies, and is synonymous with talent development.

We will always remain committed to the development of comedy in the South African market place and the representation of this market in the international arena.

Whacked has run the now legendary Comedy Underground at Cool Runnings in Melville for 10 years. The venue has played host to several international artists including Chris Rock (USA), Pauly Shore (USA), Mark Curry (USA), Neil Delamere (Ireland), Ron Vaudry (Canada), Greer Barnes (USA), Zooman (USA), Marshall Chiles (USA), Chris Lynam (UK) to name but a few.

Through local stand up comedy competitions, Whacked has been instrumental in the development of young comedians. Whacked produced each year of the Freshest Five Comedy Competition in Melville and Newtown, and ran the preliminary heats for Laugh Out Loud’s Survival of the Funniest, screened on M-net in 2005. Past winners of the Freshest Five include David Kau.

We were also the Comedy management team behind three years of  Arts Alive comedy evening, which saw  exponential growth from year to year under our watch.

Corporate social responsibility is a priority, and Whacked has a legacy of donating time and talent to many worthy causes such as the Reach for a Dream Foundation, Cotlands, Women & Men Against Child Abuse, Girls and Boystown, and The Star Snowball Run. We also produced Have A Heart (HAH) for the Child Welfare Society in 2006. 2008 saw us assist to raise over R200k for widows and orphans of policemen killed in the line of duty and contribute to Just Because a show created to raise funds for children in need.

In recent years, we have continued this trend, assisting: The Key School - a world leader in research into Autism, The Topsy Foundation, Breadline Africa and Gift Of The Givers joining our list in 2011.

We realize that it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in need. We do try to focus on child-centric causes wherever possible, and also causes where the work done is toward a sustainable goal. With that said, natural disasters do present the need for immediate relief where we try to assist if possible.