Michel Leeb

Michel Édouard Nicolas Leeb is a French stand-up comedian, impressionist, actor and singer born on April 23, 1947 in Cologne, Germany, to a metallurgical engineer father of German origin and an Italian-born model and hostess. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne and teaching the subject for two years at Bourg-la-Reine, he gave up academia for the stage. A lifelong jazz enthusiast since his mother gave him a Ray Charles record at age ten, Leeb has built one of the longest comedy careers in French entertainment, mixing impressions, character comedy, music and song over more than four decades.

Michel Leeb rose to fame in the early 1980s with caricatures of typical characters and celebrities including Jean Gabin, Édouard Balladur and Julio Iglesias. In 1984 he made his first appearance at the Olympia in Paris with such success that he returned six months later for end-of-year shows, beginning a four-decade relationship with the venue. His popularity was confirmed in 1985 by his quarterly programme "Certain Leeb Show", which broke Saturday night audience records on Antenne 2. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he developed signature sketches such as "Cocottes minutes", "Le Chinois" and "L'Africain", and toured every major French theatre. To mark his 40-year career, in 2017 and 2018 he toured France with "Michel Leeb : 40 ans !", concluding at the Casino de Paris from December 14, 2017 to January 7, 2018. His "Africain" sketch and other accent-based routines, which made him a household name in the 1980s, have since been criticised by historians such as Yann Le Bihan, Yvan Gastaut and by Rama Yade in her book "Noirs de France" (2008) for trading on racial clichés; Leeb has continued to perform updated versions of his repertoire while the debate around it has become part of the public discussion of his work. He has also pursued a parallel career as a film actor, with credits documented on IMDb and AlloCiné spanning the late 1970s to the 2020s, and as a jazz singer recording his own albums. His son Tom Leeb is also a comedian and singer who represented France at Eurovision 2020.

Michel Leeb continues to tour France with updated stage shows, regularly returning to Paris venues including the Casino de Paris and the Olympia for milestone residencies. His Olympia DVDs, including the iconic "Michel Leeb à l'Olympia" with Alain Sachs, remain in circulation, and his sketches are widely available on YouTube and through French television archives. He also performs jazz concerts.