Robert Spaapen grew up in Cambridge, England. At an early age he was impressed by leading English comedians like Rowan Atkinson en Stephen Fry, who, as students, were performing in small theatres.Spaapen studied in Leyden, The Netherlands, and formed the comedy duo Basterd with Onno Innemee. They ...
Robert Spaapen grew up in Cambridge, England. At an early age he was impressed by leading English comedians like Rowan Atkinson en Stephen Fry, who, as students, were performing in small theatres.
Spaapen studied in Leyden, The Netherlands, and formed the comedy duo Basterd with Onno Innemee. They won prizes at the Amsterdam Kleinkunstfestival 1991.
Robert worked as a comedian, director and scriptwriter for television shows, but couldn’t ignore his English roots. He decided to become a stand up comedian and joined the Dutch Comedytrain.
His alias dr. Howard Beckman was born when he was invited to perform at the annual meeting of KPN, a Dutch telecom company. With his tailored fake speeches he has fooled many international managers and politicians. English humour at its best!
“Chris is a very friendly, down to earth and engaging speaker whose story is hard to believe. He took the audience of ~160 through the story of that fateful night in a clear manner, using clips from the Netflix documentary to emphasise the story at certain points. Prior to the event, we had discussed with Chris the themes we wanted him to focus on in his talk and he was very accommodating with this request. We received great feedback from the audience who found the talk incredibly interesting - many went on to watch the Netflix documentary after.”
"Very many thanks for giving such an excellent and very funny speech at our Annual Diner on Friday.
You could tell from the audience reaction how much they enjoyed it and what a difference it made to the overall enjoyment of the ocassion."