Orhan Boran

Orhan Boran — Biography

Orhan Boran was born on 30 June 1928 in Istanbul, the son of Dr. Hikmet Boran, known for his anti-mandate speech at the Sivas Congress. Enrolled as a boarder at Galatasaray High School at age ten, he first took the stage in productions directed by Necdet Mahfi Ayral; after graduating in 1946 he joined the Istanbul Municipal Theatres, appeared in seventeen plays, and interned for a year at the Théâtre des Mathurins in Paris. He said he found his true calling when Istanbul Radio went on air in 1949, and around the same time began the one-man nightclub routines that laid the foundations of stand-up comedy in Turkey; in 1959 he created the imaginary rabbit-like character Yuki, who ran on radio for fourteen years and was adapted into a comic strip by Altan Erbulak.

After placing first in an examination among 220 candidates in 1956, he spent four years in London working for the BBC's Turkish service and as a correspondent for the newspaper Dünya, becoming the first to report the 1959 Gatwick air crash to the world. Back in Turkey he wrote for Hürriyet and Milliyet, hosted his own television programs such as Panel and Orhan Boran ile Pazar Geceleri, and taught at Marmara University from 1992. He gave a farewell stage performance at Harbiye on 10 June 2005, and after refusing chemotherapy following a 2002 cancer diagnosis, he died in Istanbul on 26 May 2012 and was buried at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.