Bert Gabriels

Bert Gabriels (born December 11, 1973) is a Belgian Standup-comedian with his own award-winning television show. Though he started his career with an atypical background, he studied Law and Philosophy at the university in Leuven. He quickly discovered his passion for the performing arts, and enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts of Maastricht, where he learned to be a director. He was co-founder of a theatre company (101punt) and wrote, played and directed prize-winning theatre shows (in the Netherlands and Belgium) and played parts in several short films.

He began comedy in February 2004 on a free podium in Amsterdam. Two months later, he won second place at the Amsterdam AKF Stand up competition. He won the 123comedy Award for starting talent in June 2004, he won the Radio2 humor price, and he made it to the finals of the Culture Comedy Award. In 2005 he was a finalist at the Deltion Cabaret festival, and in 2006 he won the Knock Out Comedy award in Amsterdam. After a successful first stand-up comedy show (Gestorven onzin, 2007-2008), he launched his second show (Pech, 2009).

His work did not go unnoticed and soon he was asked to participate in radio and television programmes as a comedian, including the radioshow MEMO and the TV programmes In de ban van Urbanus (2005), Comedy Casino (2006-2009), SPAM (2008) and TV talkshows (Villa Vanthilt, 2009). The next step was to create and host his own TV programme, together with Henk Rijckaert on Canvas, Zonde van de Zendtijd (2009, 2010), a satiric programme about all media in Belgium which was rewarded in 2010 with the Flemish TV-star Award (Flemish Emmies) for 'Best Humor and Comedy program'.