Charles Hyatt Jr ... I pay attention to the hilarious side of life, which is all around us. - Contributed

The week before Charles Hyatt Jr changed his international dialling code to 876 last year, he told someone at Negril, a popular restaurant in the Washington, DC, area, about his plans. "I said, 'Miss Chin, I'm moving back to Jamaica'," he told The Sunday Gleaner.

If Hyatt thought he were breaking hot news, like the spicy stuff he will present as the newscaster on DNN (De Nedda News) in the second season of the Ity and Fancy Cat Show, he quickly discovered that he was late. Many years late.

Miss Chin simply said, "finally. I met you when you were 11 years old and you said you were going back to Jamaica."

Not that he was a stranger to the land of constant comedy. As Hyatt puts it, "I dropped out in England, was raised in Jamaica and moved to the US to get refinement." It seemed that the Jamaican version of 'refinement', somewhat like shaping a plank with a machete instead of a plane, was more in order. So at 12 years old, two years after migrating to the US, Hyatt Jr was returned to Jamaica for a year to facilitate some more smoothing down.

In more recent years, he was one of those who made the baggage carousel at the airport work harder each summer, making the annual trek home.

finding a yard

Hyatt took the long way home when he left the US last June, visiting Zimbabwe (where he had previously lived for a year in 2001), Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. When he got to Jamaica in July 2008, he quickly found a 'yard'.

"I went to a 'Laugh Out Loud' (at Heather's in New Kingston) and I saw Blakka (retired stand-up comedian and actor Owen Ellis). I went up to him and said hi. He said I want you to do some work," Hyatt said. When he went to Ellis' Kingston stand-up comedy farewell at Backyaad on Constant Spring Road, comedian Ity also invited him to get into the business of laughter.

Hyatt was not involved in comedy previously, "other than my everyday life". He did do "a few things" at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, USA - one of those not intended to be a joke but which ended up earning him a huge laugh.

Hyatt says it was at Lincoln (where he did health science) that "I built the thick skin that is needed in comedy. I tend to have the knack of being laughed at. When I was at Lincoln there was no shortage of being laughed at."

On his first day of track training, the former middle distance runner stepped out in what he considered the height of cool - oversized shorts and knee-high bobby socks, complete with the strips of colour at the top. "They laughed me to scorn," he said. And that included the only other Jamaican runner, Clive Terrelonge. "My name was 'Socks' from then on. I don't think the coach knew my name," he said.

These days Hyatt keeps in shape, "but the running I do is of my mouth".

stand-up comedian

He has not yet got the opportunity to 'run his mouth' as a stand-up comedian, the Portmore Crack-Up, at which he should have made his debut, not materialising. Maybe the set he had planned to deliver would be adjusted, as "every day for me is filled with material. The material I already have from my life experiences is enough for a colourful show".

Hyatt says stand-up comedy is "a depiction of life. It is to bring some real belly laughter to real-life situations for the audience. Its main goal is to bring hilarious laughter, which is needed in every corner of this earth". And he says that "Jamaicans like laugh at themselves more than anybody I know".

He will have ample opportunity to explore this side of the Jamaican people as the DNN newscaster, where "I'm all the reporters. I'm doing all kinds of different characters, depending on what I'm reporting."

"Life for me is a joke. I pay attention to the hilarious side of life, which is all around us," Hyatt said.