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Many might know him as one of the guys driving around the countryside in the famous "Chilli Pepper" in SABC3's Going Nowhere Slowly. But there is much more to local comedian Stuart Taylor than meets the eye.

Stand up comic, magician, MC, husband... all of these elements that make up Stuart Taylor are explored in his brand new show, Techni-Coloured, currently on at the Artscape Arena Theatre.

People's Post sat down with Stuart to find out more. Born in Grassy Park, Stuart was a shy kid whose interest in magic would see him joining the College of Magic, and eventually help him to become the confident, funny man we all see him as today.

After leaving school Stuart attended Stellenbosch University while doing magic at children's parties to earn some extra cash. In his second year of 'varsity, close friend and fellow comedian Riaad Moosa approached him about a gig at a local pub in Rondebosch.

"They were willing to pay us R50 each and all the Redds we could drink just for doing a three minute comedy set every Thursday night," says Stuart.

"All the Redds I could drink?" he laughs. "Bring it on!"

After a while Riaad and Stuart realised that the shows were becoming quite a hit.

"We started to think, you know, what if we could do five minutes instead of three and four nights a week instead of one, and what if, instead of Redds, we got paid actual money?" he says.

And so Stuart's stand-up career began.

Regarding his work in Going Nowhere Slowly, Stuart says it was sheer luck.

"Myself and Kurt Schoonraad were a couple of struggling comics, doing gigs were we could," he explains.

Kurt had met the show's creator David Moore and worked together on a pilot for the SABC, who had in turn shelved it along with hundreds of other pilot shows.'

"When Idols aired on MNet, the SABC figured they needed something low budget because chances were that no-one was going to watch as long as Idols was on.

"That's when they decided to take Going Nowhere Slowly off the shelf. It was low budget and it was local content so it filled two requirements," he says.

"Dave was literally on the brink of bankruptcy by then. He and his sister had decided to use their last R30 and enter the UK lotto. As they logged on an e-mail popped up from SABC3 to say the pilot would be aired."

Of course little did the SABC know that the show would become an almost overnight hit, gaining a huge fan base amongst South African audiences.

"Before the show was picked up, we used to go over to Dave's house in Obs on Friday where he would always be cooking soup," says Stuart. "It became a Friday ritual, a couple of unemployed comedians sitting around eating Dave's soup and chatting about life."

Because this was a lot of what the show itself was about, Dave and Kurt already knew that Stuart would be great for the show and tried to convince him to audition.

He agreed on the condition that there would be no skydiving or jumping off bridges involved.

A request that, Going Nowhere Slowly fans will know, failed miserably. Stuart landed the part and would embark on many adventures across Africa, including a failed attempt by his fellow cast and crew to get him to bungee jump off Bloukrans bridge.

"The show was not always as much fun as it looked," says Stuart. "A group of people stuck with each other for weeks at a time, there were bound to be tense moments. But the experience really gave me a new appreciation and different understanding of Africa."

Stuart's new show explores these moments as well as the ups and downs of marriage, his own personal identity crisis and all the other elements that have brought him to this point in his life.

He and director Heinrich Reisenhofer took the script that Stuart had originally written and together reworked it.

"It was an organic process," says Stuart. "We looked at what worked and what could be improved and made sure that, because it is about my real life experiences, it was completely honest."

Stuart's life has been, in his own words, "a weird rollercoaster of events" and while giving his audience a sneak peak into the inner workings of that rollercoaster, he has found the winning recipe for an entertaining, hilarious and completely unique ride.

Techni-Coloured is on at the Artscape Arena Theatre until 29 April. Tickets cost R45 per person and can be booked via Computicket on 083 915 8000 or visit: www.computicket.com.

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