I don’t know the answer to that question. Maybe a reader can help. But seeing as I’m over in the States visiting my US co-workers right now, I thought I’d do a bit of market research.
We had a team-building dinner yesterday. And on an impulse, I asked the person sitting next to me: so how famous is Stephen Colbert?
“Who?” came the reply. And a similar response from the next person. In fact, on my table 5 out of 7 Americans had never heard of him. On the next table, the hit rate was slightly better. But overall I estimated that, in the extremely unrepresentative sample of university educated US investment bankers, 60% of Americans do not have a clue who Stephen Colbert is1.
Fans of Rain should take comfort from this.
Links:
- Stateside celeb update, LKL 23 May 2007, with the Stephen Colbert / Rain video.
http://www.comedycentral.pw/video-clips/59lqle/the-colbert-report-he-s-singing-in-korean
- The original Rain video which the Colbert Report video was based:
- And of course, the only reason that I, a Brit who doesn’t have access to Comedy Central, have heard of him is because of his Rain video. [↩]
ha ha ha! great job! colbert became popular outside USA because of RAIN!!! AZA! AZA!!