- We publish the ranking list of the higher educational institutions. A greater expert than you hardly exists: it took you ten years to finish the 5 year-training.

- It is true that I went to university for a long time, but I bypassed it even longer. Those students and teachers that helped me to finally get a degree made me swear that I would never claim to be an architect. Still, tonight in my dream I enrolled to another faculty at the technological university - but I attribute this nightmare to the medicine I am taking in order to quit smoking. The technological profession was indeed a mistake. What's more, it wasn't my mistake but my parents'.

- Were you such a good boy? Did you always follow your father's orders?

- Even my hairstyle is like this because the first time I went to a hairdresser my father parted my hair this way. I did not even attempt to change it since. Yes, I really was a good boy.

- We would think that a humorist was saucy and already the centre of attention in kindergarten...

- No, I wasn't and I'm not like that today either. I grew up in a stay-at-home family where they asked me where I was going even when I just went to the kitchen, therefore television was my only company for a long time. But from this point of view, Szentes was a real multicultural place; we not only had Hungarian television, but Romanian and Yugoslavian as well.

- You were soon given an illustration of the different versions of communism. At the housing estate of Szentes, did you feel that Hungary was the happiest barrack?

- On Mondays there was no broadcasting at Szentes, the maximum of multimedia possibilities was watching slide films. On the contrary, the Yugoslavian TV was broadcasting American cartoons, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, in unlimited amounts, each day of the week. The latter was shown on Hungarian television as well, but alternately with Bob and Bobek and Cirmi and Csurmi. This was a Romanian cartoon, but it was not shown on Romanian television because no cartoons were shown there. Romanian television was about Ceauşescu - and for Ceauşescu. The news started with 'Good evening Comrade Ceausescu, good evening viewers'. I observed these things but I am far from formulating an opinion about communism as such - on one hand I was in fifth grade during the regime change, on the other hand I don't discuss politics in public.

- Sándor Fábry, whose gag team you have been a member of since the very beginning, does talk politics. Is it a mistake?

- If it is funny, then it is not a mistake. During the eleven years since Showder started, a lot of things have changed. At the beginning he could not allow himself to say what he can today - it would not have suited him to talk about the prime minister. Today he is accepted this way, as an institution. I provide him with ideas and it is up to him to decide how to use these on stage - it is well-known that Fábry has a strong personality.

- And funny. Put your hand on your heart and tell us if you have ever laughed about the jokes of Tivadar Farkasházy, your other mentor who is also engaged in politics.

- He did not have to be funny since he was an editor, and in fact, he was a genius one. I brought him the scene to the Radio Cabaret, he read it through with a poker face and he could always tell in advance if it would work or not. I can thank him for many things. By the way, those two were on good terms way back in time, but since the elections of 2002 people became so crazy that Fábry and Farkasházy cannot be mentioned in the same sentence anymore.

- Still, it is strange to state that you are not involved in politics, as you design the front-page of HVG, the weekly economic and political magazine.

- I do not work for them because they vote for the left - occasionally big disputes take place there as well. I am an employee of the newspaper. I do my job well if the front page expresses the content of the article it is based on. I cannot indulge my demand for visual humour on stage, although I am firstly a caricaturist (I applied to learn to be an architect because of my drawing skills). Moreover, if I say that for the front page picture I need a shoe that is cut in half, they run to buy a shoe and cut it into two with a saw. If I need a cake or a grilled chicken, they will bring that as well. It is an excellent feeling. But somehow the latter ones never appear on the front page.

- Would you be willing to do anything as an "employee"?

- If I absolutely disagreed with something, obviously not.

- Is making the entire Orbán-cabinet appear as a mafia gang, for example, acceptable?

- Zoltán Horváth, who for thirty years was the leader of the team that designed the front page- and who chose me to be his successor - said on a number of occasions that on that particular front page he did not intend to depict gangsters. In any case, if I totally disagreed with something, I would not be able to create a joke about it.

- During your stage appearances you also start on your audience sometimes. "You don't have to vote on everything that you don't understand. This explains the country's situation."

- "This explains the country's situation" is a joke within a joke. It is a cliché that you can say to anyone, anytime, regarding anything. It is similar to the meteorological demagogy, such as "a while ago summer was summer, and winter was winter". Or "ages ago we swam into the middle of the Tisza and drank from the water". These discussions that do not lead anywhere are our mutual little experiences. Playing with these does not equal discussing politics. Not only is that not my job, but it is not paying either.

- Would you lose part of your audience?

- For sure, but this is not what I meant. Rather, that while a child will be a child, and the neighbour will be a neighbour, even twenty-five years from now - and therefore the stories being written today will work then as well -, the actual political gags fade away in seconds. They are not worth the effort. Once I had a joke in which the figure of Péter Medgyessy appeared. Today I would not be able to tell it with Ferenc Gyurcsány because people do not remember him.

- I would be surprised if people did not remember Gyurcsány.

- It is possible that one year from now nobody will remember him. It is not the politicians who determine the people's life. Neither the news, nor the television. It is rather the child and the neighbour.

- It is thanks to the television that you became well-known - moreover, thanks to a commercial channel. Are you not part of the sensationalism?

- No, I am not and I make an effort to be an anti-celebrity. I am not wearing the sponsored sneakers and windcheater in the studio - where the wind is not blowing anyway. Fekete Pákó (a singer from Nigeria, currently living in Hungary) is not being mounted into one's mouth. The point I want to make is that it is possible to say no.

- Your colleagues from Dumaszínház appear in a bank commercial recently. You, as the winner of the Karinthy-Ring this year, would surely have received good money. Did you refuse it as well?

- Some people say that this is good money for a little work. I think this is the wrong approach. They do not pay for that half an hour, but for your credit. Everything you have built up until now. After such an appearance I would become a tiny little part of the bank, but I prefer to be a humorist. Just to be stylish: "This explains the country's situation", because everybody is doing something else than what he is good at. Actors travel to Africa, work as presenters in morning TV shows and taste dinner on TV in the evenings. Who is interested in it?

- A lot of people.

- Not at all. If a standing horse would be shown on every channel, people would watch that as well. Even the genre of television criticism would not disappear: the shades of the horses would be analyzed in the papers the following day. It would not be less uninteresting than the celebrities having dinner.

- Would you feel more comfortable on the screen of public television? Do you consider what you do to be a public service?

- I do not want to say that with my work I serve the interest of the public, the interest of humankind. Let the humankind say it so I can say while blushing red: "Oh, not at all!"

- Anyway, if you refuse small jobs that would earn you good money, obviously things go well for humorists even during the crisis.

- Of course. We humorists are beneficiaries of the crisis. Bread and circus - we are able to provide at least one of them. And I am proud that this circus is not being financed by the state. And it is stable on its own. Such a thing as humour supported by the state does not exist.

- Of course it exists. József Sas...

- This is exactly why I am saying that it does not exist. There are of course cultural values that are worth protection and support from the state. Humour is not like this. "Here is this excellent humorist, for forty years now and he has a paper to prove it, we support him and you should laugh." It does not work this way. It is an extremely democratic genre: everything depends on the audience. Either they laugh or they do not.

- Are there no other aspects? Is it all the same how you make people laugh?

- Not at all. I am interested in making people laugh the same way Sherlock Holmes is interested in the crime. He does not care either if the killer will be caught. He is interested in the method of perpetration. It is much easier to make people laugh than to say something witty. You walk up to the person, you tickle him and you're done. Maybe you go on stage and start saying gaudy obscenities. People always laugh on that, because the big artist dares to speak on the stage the way they do at home. It happens that some colleagues use this opportunity in order to create a certain atmosphere. But nowadays everybody is obscene no matter were they are, so it has a sport value only among 8-year-olds. If something does not stand on its own without obscenities than it is not a real pinch-line. And if something stands on it own, why add obscenity to it? It is a mistake to believe that certain figures, situations can be authentic only if they are spiced with obscene words. Then you have to work two more weeks on it and the f-word can be omitted without spoiling the joke.

- How can this value-based humorist existence and the materialistic belief be compatible? You are believed to be materialistic.

- Why would it not be compatible?

- For example: why do people laugh when you are joking? Hopefully you are not giving them some kind of substance...

- People laugh because of all kinds of compounds and molecules that, luckily, we do not know about. I by all means find it difficult to imagine the non-materialistic solution, although I do not intend to present an atheist proclamation. My wife for example is a believer and she goes to church, but we never had any problems in relation to it. Everyone can believe in whatever he wants to, just let's admit that we cannot prove the existence of a creature that has endless energy, who is the creator and who keeps an eye on us even now. Or at least we cannot prove it to be better than it is all because of the ants and the only meaning of human life is to make rolls so ants can climb on it. So I cannot think about the source of life in a religious way, but I radically believe in its value. Therefore I can identify myself with the basic values of Christianity - but not because these are included in the Bible.