Gernot Kulis

Austrian comedian Gernot Kulis was born on August 11, 1976, in St. Paul (Carinthia). He grew up aiming to become a professional soccer player, but after graduating from high school, he began to work at a private radio station (Antenne Steiermark) and then became a comedy writer at Ö3, one of Austria's biggest radio stations. In January 2002, Kulis started his comedy radio show Professor Kaiser, and in June, he released a song called "Was is' mit du?", recorded with Lukas Rupp (the duo was credited as Professor Kaiser and Schüler Mayerhofer), which reached #1 and stayed in the Austrian charts for 18 weeks. A follow-up single, "Ho ho ho (Weihnachtsgrüße)", wasn't as successful, however. Kulis is probably best known for his comedy show Ö3 Callboy, where he makes hoax phone calls to celebrities, public offices and even private people (during his time at Antenne Steiermark, Kulis had a similar show called Nervensäge am Rohr). Numerous CDs have been issued with Kulis' hoax calls, several of which have gathered gold awards, and albums collecting material from his other shows have been generally successful, too. Kulis started another comedy show, Die Zwoa Lofntola, together with Christian Schwab, recording sketches about two characters always caught at a location relevant to topical news. He also became a member of the comedy group Comedy Hirten, parodying several celebrities on radio and on stage. ~ Christian Genzel, Rovi