Klemen Slakonja

Klemen Slakonja (born 3 June 1985) is a Slovenian actor, singer, comedian, television host, and musician. He was employed at the Ljubljana Slovene National Theatre Drama between 2010 and 2018, and studied at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. He is known in Slovenia for his comedy sketches, often made in the form of music videos, and has made numerous impersonations of Slovenian musicians, Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel and others.

Born in the Slovenian border town Brežice, he started his career at local Radio Energy near his home in the town of Krško. On 5 October 2007, Sašo Hribar invited Slakonja to make his first public performance on the national level on the satirical radio show Radio Ga Ga, where he imitated Slovenian ballad singer Rok Kosmač, which marked a breakthrough in his career. On 17 February 2008, he became a national television host taking over the popular Sunday afternoon family show NLP on RTV Slovenia. On 27 February 2011, he hosted the EMA music festival competition for the first time, and went on to host it again in 2012, 2016 and 2020.

He performed "Putin, Putout" at EMA in 2016. His comedy sketch "Putin, Putout" gained international popularity as the first video he shot as part of his TheMockingbirdMan project, parodying Russian president Vladimir Putin. He followed it with "Golden Dump (The Trump Hump)" impersonating Donald Trump, premiered on 17 July 2016, and "Ruf mich Angela" (“Call Me Angela”) imitating Angela Merkel. In 2025, he represented Slovenia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 with the song "How Much Time Do We Have Left" in Basel, Switzerland; performing during the first semi-final on 13 May 2025, he failed to qualify to the grand final, finishing 13th in a field of 15 countries.