Anka Zink

Anka Zink is a cabaret artist and comedian from Bonn who reached the stage by way of academia. She studied sociology in Bielefeld under Niklas Luhmann and had begun a university career when an audition for improvisation shows drew her away in the early 1980s. She was a founding member of the Springmaus ensemble that Bill Mockridge started in Bonn, with Dirk Bach among her stage partners, and later hosted, performed and sat in the management of the Springmaus theatre.

In 1989 she joined the ensemble of the Kom(m)ödchen in Düsseldorf, where Lore Lorentz championed her and her partners included Harald Schmidt and, later, Volker Pispers. Since 1991 she has worked mainly as a solo performer in German, building a long run of cabaret programmes with titles such as Alle Männchen werden Prüder, Zink positiv, Wellness für alle, Sexy ist was anderes and Gerade nochmal gutgegangen.

Television has booked her as a guest on 7 Tage, 7 Köpfe on RTL, Genial daneben on Sat.1, Mitternachtsspitzen and Zimmer frei! on WDR, and Ottis Schlachthof on BR. Between 1999 and 2002 she taught at the Köln Comedy Schule. She also writes satire on the page, with columns for the Cologne paper Express and the satirical novel Mein langer feuchter Wellnessweg.