- You know, so we're watching the story
about the Toy Hall of Fame, which is in Rochester.
And we're seeing all the toys that are being inducted
and so everyone in the office starts talking
about their favorite toys growing up, right?
So some people are like "Oh yeah, no
for me it was Shoots and Ladders,
and for me it was the sled,
and for me it was this, it was that."
And then, the people were like,
"What was your favorite, favorite toy growing up?"
And I was like, "Genuinely,
my favorite toy growing up was a brick."
(audience laughs)
All right, which sounds crazy
but, Spinny why do you walk away like I'm a crazy?
(audience laughs)
like you literally walk away
like I'm saying the wildest thing.
No cause we, so what happened was no,
we had, when we were growing up I'd live
at my Gran's house in Soweto,
and then what would happen is,
a lot of kids didn't have toys,
but it wasn't like a sad thing
like "Oh, I don't have toys."
It was like we'd play with whatever we find.
And so the most popular thing little boys would play
with was bricks, and your brick was,
you'd play with it like a toy car.
So you'd walk around the neighborhood searching
for the best brick, all right?
'Cause the game you would play,
we didn't put wheels on it or anything,
like someone asked in the office,
they're like, "Did you put wheels on?"
No, there's no wheels, where were we gonna find wheels?
If we have wheels, we wouldn't have these problems.
(audience laughs) So we just took bricks,
so you would find bricks,
and then the game you'd play is you'd drive around
in the dirt with your brick car,
and then you would smash into the other boys' bricks,
and then if your brick was the last brick standing,
you won the game.
So, like all of us, it was like a mission.
You're like, "Man, I gotta find bricks, I gotta."
You just walk around the whole day, just searching
for bricks, and there's this one brick
that we had called a face brick, all right?
Which is basically like a really beautiful brick
that you can, you know bricks that you don't plaster over?
'Cause you have that as the face of your house,
that's why you would call it the face brick, right?
And so, that was like the dream brick.
It was the most expensive brick, though.
You couldn't, you'd find everyone
with gray bricks and the dark black bricks
and all those, but those bricks break.
You come with a face brick, everyone would see you,
you'd pitch up, you'd be like a pimp rolling up
in a Rolls-Royce Phantom, like genuinely.
I remember one day I found the face brick,
and you know I got the, all the kids were like (car noises).
And I've got the little swag, and they're like,
"Oh Trevor, are you playing, are you playing?"
And then I was like, "Yeah."
and I pulled my brick out from behind my back.
And they're like (gasps) "Face brick, face brick."
And it's like, "Now he has a face brick, face brick."
And it's like, "Let's go."
And then you drive, and then everyone rams in,
and I'll be like, "You guys ram me first, I'll just chill."
And everyone tries to ram your brick,
and because it's a face brick,
it's compact, it doesn't crack,
and everyone's brick crack in half,
people are devastated.
You see kids smash their brick,
and the brick cracks dead in the middle,
and they're like (cries dramatically)
(cries out in foreign language)
It's like a big thing.
And then you'd play, and you'd take the brick,
and it was such a popular thing
that you had to be careful if you lived in the townships
because kids would steal bricks from outside your house
if you were doing renovations,
so if you weren't careful,
you would have all your bricks outside,
'cause you're like, "Oh I'm gonna build a wall."
And then the next day you would come there,
and you'd be like, "Where the fuck are my bricks?"
(audience laughs)
And all the bricks are gone,
and there's just kids driving around, like (car noises).
It's like, "Are those my bricks?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, man.
This is my favorite toy."
It just makes you realize, you can just have fun
with anything, man, it was, that was genuinely my favorite.
Even now when I see bricks, I get happy.
Like I said to friends,
that's the one thing I don't like about living
in New York, you don't see bricks often,
just loose bricks hanging around.
You take that for granted, I walk around, I'm like,
"Man, no bricks, no bricks, no bricks, no bricks."
And if I see a brick, there's a thing in me still
to this day that wants to take the brick,
and I have to stop myself and be like,
"You're the host of 'The Daily Show'.
You can buy all the bricks you want."
And it's like, "Yeah, but take that brick Trevor,
come on, you know you want to."
And I was thinking, imagine if TMZ caught me on camera,
and it's like, "Trevor Noah spotted stealing a brick."
And then I'd be trying to explain it,
"No, it's a car, no it's not a" (laughs)
"Is Trevor Noah oh drugs?"
"No wait, it's so strong."
"What were you doing Trevor?"
"I was gonna build my own wall."
(audience laughs)
That's what South Africa, you guys,
you should let Donald Trump build the wall,
and then just bring all the South African kids overnight.
(audience claps and laughs)
And they'll just like take the.
So in my grandmother's house,
we didn't have a tap in the house.
We had one tap shared amongst four houses,
and that seemed cool compared to my cousins
because in the villages, they had one tap,
which was like a mile away.
So I'd go to my cousins to visit them
for the holidays, and then I would,
my cousin would wake me up at like 5 a.m.,
I'd be like, "Dude, what are you doing?"
He's like, "We gotta go get water."
And I'm like, "What?"
And then you get the wheelbarrow,
and then you go, and it's fun when you're on the way there
'cause you're like, "This is fun."
You've got your wheelbarrow, you're rolling.
And then you fill up, you forget that you have
to fill them up with water.
So these giant, giant, giant drums of water,
and then you bring them back,
and your like, "Fuck."
The whole time, you're just like,
"I don't need water, I don't need water."
And then one day I took,
'cause my cousin was shredded just because of that.
Every single day was just him lifting a barrel.
It was like 400 pounds on a wheelbarrow,
just pushing that every single day.
And then one day I remember, I was like, "I can do this."
And I took it, and I was like, "Oh, oh, oh oh"
And then all the water gone.
(audience gasps) Just like all of it.
And then I was like, "Well, well,
you shouldn't have let me take the wheelbarrow."
I just pulled a Ben Carson,
I was like, "That was your bad."
Did I know my life would turn out like this
since I was a kid?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember when I was like four years old,
and there was like this little kid who pushed me
to the ground, and then I was like,
"Ha, one day I'm gonna be the host of 'The Daily Show'."
No, I get what you're saying,
and I'm joking obviously, I'm being facetious.
No, I had no clue.
Nor did I wish for that, I'll be honest with you.
I was, I still joke with my mom about that 'til this day.
I go, "I did not know where life would take me,
or how life would end up.
All I knew is that I wanted to be able to afford
to buy as much food as I wanted to buy.
Like at any time."
That was the big time in my life.
'Cause when you don't have money in a family,
the food decision is the biggest decision you can make.
So let me put it this way.
We would go out for take-out maybe once a month
if we're lucky,
and I remember the pressure that I was under
'cause you'd get the menu,
and then they'd be like, "Do you want a burger
or do you want pizza or,"
and I was just like (groans) "Don't mess this up,
don't mess this up."
It was such a big decision.
And I remember one day, I said to my mom, I was like,
"One day I'm gonna be rich enough to buy two."
(audience coos)
And then my mom could have been like, "Shut up kid."
But she was like, "Yeah, you will be rich enough, yeah."
And I was like, "And I'll buy dessert."
She's like, "You go buy all the dessert.
All of the dessert."
And so then now, my mom was like,
"Did you buy the dessert, did you buy the dessert?"
And then she point at my tummy,
and she's like, "Look like you bought the dessert."
In Africa, like so my mom,
she would let me watch a sex scene in a movie,
she would be like, "I don't care about that."
But if kids were playing with food,
she'd make me turn the movie off.
So whenever, so whenever there's like,
I used to watch those high school movies,
those American movies, and then you know,
there'd always be a food fight in the cafeteria.
Then my mom would be like, "Turn it off, turn it off."
And then I'd be like, "What you mean?"
She's like, "Why they wasting food?"
Then I was like, "It's a movie."
She's like, "But it's real food, it's real food.
It's real food, how can you waste food like that?"
And then I was, it's like my mom was going,
you know parents will go, "There's children starving."
My mom as like, "We are starving in Africa.
We are starving, why are they wasting food?"
The first time I remember hearing a joke
as a child was actually, I was with my grandfather,
and we were at a protest in the streets in South Africa.
And I don't know what the protest was for,
I'm assuming it was anti-apartheid or whatever.
But I was very young, and I was with my grandfather,
and we're walking, marching through the streets,
and a policeman came by on a horse.
And policemen on horses is like, yo you,
like no one is comfortable, do you know what I mean?
Just generally, as black people, we're never like, "Yay,
yay, he's gonna do the thing."
No, you were terrified of a policeman on a horse.
And this guy was trying to move the crowd along, move,
and he's like, "Move, move, bloody hell, move, move."
And he got to my grandfather,
and then my grandfather turned to him,
and the guy looked at him, and he was like,
"Hey, why aren't you moving."
And my grandfather turned to him, and he said, he said,
"Master, master, can I ask you a question?"
And this guy was like, "What, what, what did you say?"
He said, "Can I ask you a question, master?"
And it was like, and then he asked him a question,
and to give you the context,
that weekend, the previous weekend,
there was our version of the Kentucky Derby took place,
and then the winning horse was celebrated,
and the president went and gave a kiss
to the horse that won, and liked kissed him,
and was on the front page of the newspaper,
the president kissing the horse.
And so then, so that's the context.
So my grandfather turns to the cop, and he's like,
"Can I ask you a question?"
and the cop is like, "What, what do you want?"
And he says, "Master, why is it
that your president can kiss a horse,
but he won't kiss my sister?"
(audience laughs)
And like, you could see the cop was just like,
he's like, "What?"
And he's like, "What, I don't know."
And I was like, and then my grandfather turned to me,
and he's like, "Because you haven't seen my sister."
(audience laughs and claps)
And I'll never forget the policeman's face,
he burst into tears laughing,
'cause he was like, "What?"
And then he just started laughing,
and my grandfather was laughing,
and I'd never seen, two things I had never seen,
like a policeman laughing with black people ever before,
that was my first time seeing that.
And it was just my first time seeing
how a joke could diffuse tension, you know what I mean?
And then I just remember growing up,
I was like, "Oh I want to do that thing, I wanna.
Yeah, I wanna do that thing more."
Diapers, I hate changing diapers.
I don't have kids, but I just hate changing diapers.
I have two younger brothers,
so I changed their diapers when I was growing up.
And then at some point with my youngest brother,
who's 20 years younger than me,
I was just like, "You're just, you're gonna keep shitting,
so just don't wear pants."
and I was like, "It's easier to pooper scoop this person
than it is."
So then my little brother would just come,
I'd teach him, the thing was,
he'd just come running up to me,
and then he'd be like, "Trevor, poo poo."
And then I'd be like, "Aight."
And then we'd just run outside,
and then I'd make him shit in the garden,
like I would, I would fold him,
I'd hold his legs and his body,
and then I'd hold him like this,
and then he'd be like a little turtle in my hands,
and then I would hold him, and then he would shit,
and then he'd be like, "Doo doos, doo doos."
And then I'd be like, "Finished?"
And he's like, "Doo doos."
Then I'm like, "All right cool."
And then I shake him a little bit,
and then I'd take him, yeah, and then I'd take him,
and he'd stand, and then I'd spray him down
with a hose pipe, so take him,
and he loved it, he was like
this is the greatest experience ever.
And then I'd be like,
"Just don't tell mom what we're doing."
And then he'd always tell mom.
He'd always be like, "Mommy, Trevor sprayed me
with the hose pipe."
Then I'm like, "Jesus, kid, you're killing me here."
He would love it.
It was just like a fun, and then I remember,
one of the funniest things was like a year
or something later.
We're sitting together watching TV,
and we're watching footage of police spraying people
with, like, protesters with the water hoses.
And then he looks at me,
he's like, "Trevor, did they doo doos?"
Then I'm like (laughs) I'm like, "No." (laughs)
So in my family, my two younger brothers are,
so from my mother's second marriage,
and so I'm still the only person
in my family that looks like this.
So my mom is an African woman, black Xhosa woman,
my father's Swiss from Switzerland,
so he's a white man, and so I look like this.
And then my mom remarried a black man,
and so my brothers don't look like me either.
And I remember what was really beautiful was,
my brother's, we always spoke about this stuff.
My parents, they were like, "Yeah, different dads,
we get how this works."
So my brother one day,
I pick him up from school.
He's really young at the time,
he was what, maybe like, trying think,
he was 9, maybe 10 years old,
and he gets in the car and he just deflates.
And he gets in the passenger seat,
and he fastens his seatbelt, and I'm like,
"What's going on Isaac?"
And he's like, "Trevor."
He's like, "Oh, kids, man, I can't do this, kids."
So I go, "Kids, tell me more."
And then he's like, "I just, I just don't know
what to do with kids, Trevor, you know?
Like today, one of my friends said,
'Oh, are we walking home?'
Then I said, 'No, my brother's picking me up.'
Then he said, 'Ah, who's your brother.'
And I sad, 'Trevor.'
Then now when we're walking, he sees you in the car,
then he says, 'Who's that?'
Then I say, 'It's my brother.'
Then he says, 'Ah, but how can your brother,
how can your brother be white?'
Then I said, 'He's not white, he's not white, he's mixed.'
Then he said, 'But you not mixed, you don't look the same.
How can your brother not look the same?'"
So now I'm like, "Oh, man,
I'm gonna have to go through this."
So then I'm like, "So what did you say to him."
And he's like, "Ah Trevor, I'd have
to explain it the way kids understand."
He said, "I just said to him, I said,
'Zweli, you've gotta understand,
people are like chocolates, okay?
Like you can have a white chocolate,
and you can have a dark chocolate,
and you can have a milk chocolate.
But it's all Nestle, okay?'"
(audience laughs)
Any questions?
(audience murmurs)
No, you good, okay.
(audience laughs)
Yeah. - [Audience Woman] How's Fufi?
- How's, oh how's Fufi?
- Yeah. - Wow, that's a deep cut.
(audience laughs)
You guys just asked me that like just random,
you gotta be like, "Hey Trevor, so I read in your book."
You can't just be like, "How's Fufi?"
'Cause in my mind, who the hell, Fufi (cries).
No because, - [Audience Woman] Sorry.
because Fufi died.
(audience cries)
So for those who don't,
so I had a dog when I was growing up,
one of the dogs we had,
my mom was working at a pharmaceutical company,
and her colleague came to work one day and was like,
"Hey, my neighbor's dog impregnated my dog,
so now I have all these puppies I don't want,
and they're like this weird mix
of bull-terrier and a Maltese poodle.
So do you want to take them?"
And my mom's like, "All right, I'll take two."
And then my mom brought them home,
and I'd never had a dog before,
and I was like this is the most amazing thing in the world.
And so we raised them, and it was two beautiful dogs
that look completely different, but they were sisters.
They were the best, Fufi and Panther,
and my mom called the one Panther
'cause she had a pink nose, so the Pink Panther,
and then Fufi was like the dumbest most beautiful dog ever,
and Panther was the smartest, ugliest dog you'd ever seen,
and so I loved Fufi the most
'cause she's just looked really viscous.
And I used to think that Fufi was really stupid,
and then one day what happened was
at our house, somebody was trying to come into the house,
like a family friend, and they were trying
to open the gate, and then they moved the gate,
and then the gate fell, and then Panther ran away
'cause they liked to sleep by the gate,
and then Panther ran, but then Fufi didn't.
And then the gate hit her, and then it broke her spine.
It was devastating, so then we went to the vet,
and the vet was like, "I can't help her,
we've gotta put her down, put her out of her misery."
And the vet was like, "But this was amazing,
how were you guys, how did you guys raise a deaf dog?"
And we were like, "What?"
And we're like, "What do you mean a deaf dog?"
And he was like, "Oh, like afterwards,
when I was just going through, examining her
while she was still living,
I realized that she wasn't born
with I guess a certain part of the cochlea or something."
And we're like, "Wait, this dog was deaf the whole time?"
(audience laughs)
And we just genuinely,
we'd just be like, "Fufi, sit, listen to me, sit Fufi!"
And I was like, "You're so dumb, you're so dumb."
And I never knew that the dog,
and then we realized, what used to happen was,
when we'd call the dogs,
we'd be like, "Fufi, Panther."
And Fufi would never come,
but Panther would come running sometimes,
and then she'd look at you,
and then she'd run back, and then they would both come.
And I always used to be like, Fufi's just dumb.
And then I realized Panther was like,
"Ah, she didn't hear."
And then she'd go back and fetch her,
and then she would then, both of them would come,
and then like now, I went back,
and I was like (cries) Fufi, Fufi, I miss you Fufi.
So that's how Fufi's doing, she's yeah.
What happened to Teddy from my book?
You know what's funny is randomly one day,
I was driving to a car dealership.
I had bought an Audi, and I went to the car dealership
'cause I needed them to help me with something,
and then they said, "We will,
we'll call our top mechanic."
And just to give you a bit of a backstory,
Teddy was my best friend in primary school,
and him and I used to go shoplifting together.
And then one day, we were busted shoplifting,
and then we ran away, and then they caught Teddy,
but they didn't catch me, and then,
but they had security footage of what happened,
and they went to all the schools in the area looking
for who was shoplifting with Teddy.
And then they didn't know it was me
because the security camera was black and white,
it was like the old school black and white cameras,
and so they were like, "We're looking for a white kid,"
because on the camera, in black and white,
it chose, the camera chose white.
So then at the school they asked me,
they were like, "Trevor, come in here."
They're like, "You're friends with Teddy?"
I was like, "Uh-huh."
And they're like, "Well Teddy was caught shoplifting."
I was like, "Uh-huh."
They're like, "There was someone with him."
I was like, "Uh-huh."
They're like, "It was a white kid, who was he?"
I was like, "Huh?"
And then they just never caught me,
and then Teddy never snitched or anything,
but he got expelled from the school,
and then I thought he went to jail or something.
So, and I never knew where he ended up in life.
10 years later, maybe even more,
I was, yeah, I had an Audi, drove
to an Audi dealership 'cause they wanted
to help me with something.
And I pulled in, and I said, "Can you help me?"
They said, "Oh, this is complicated.
Let's call our top technician mechanic."
And then they call the guy, and they're like,
"Theo, come out," and then he came out,
and then it was Teddy, and I was like,
"Teddy,
Teddy,
Teddy."
So that's what happened to Teddy.
All right, let's do this.
I was devastated, and he was just like,
"What are you crying about?"
I was like, "I'm so happy."
He's like, "Dude, we were stealing chocolate bars,
why would you be thinking,
why would you thinK."
"I thought you went to jail for life."
It's funny, in South Africa,
we have a saying, and you must remember,
because of so many of the struggle leaders
in South Africa were either imprisoned or exiled,
the movement in South Africa was held together
in large part by women in the country.
And so it's weird for me 'cause I understand,
you travel the world, you understand that everywhere,
feminism is different, and the idea of women is different,
but I grew up in a world that was very matriarchal,
and where women were the most dangerous freedom fighters
that existed. (audience screams)
It's true, you read up on Winnie Mandela,
like Nelson Mandela was an icon,
but the police in the country were afraid
of Winnie Mandela, you know, they were.
And we had a phrase in South Africa that was,
we still use it today, which was
"Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo'"
which means, "You strike a woman you strike a rock."
And that's what
I grew up learning. (audience cheers)
That was, it was kudos, man.
It was fire, it was fire.
And a lot of the time, my mom would strike me with a rock.
("The Daily Show" theme music)