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A lecture for the “Professor”

An agency booked a comedian to give a talk on phone scams. The word “Professor” in his stage name had helped secure the job.

Before the story

The comedian Professor Owa (大輪教授) has “Professor” in his stage name; it is not a university title. Here he recalls a talk about phone scams in which callers pretend to be family members.

The booking was already made

I’m not a professor who teaches at a university. I’m a comedian with “Professor” in my name.

One day my agency called about a job. I asked, “A comedy set? Hosting?”

“Neither. We want you to give a thirty-minute lecture to a thousand older women about watching out for family-impersonation scams. We put ‘Professor’ in your profile, and a prefectural government got in touch.”

“Why don’t you turn it down?”

“We’ve already accepted…”

But I didn’t know anything about those scams.

So I crammed for three days and nights on the internet. I even made a silly checklist where you marked circles or crosses. Eight to ten circles: “Maybe you’re an easy mark.” About five: “Neither good nor bad, maybe?” Corny Japanese wordplay on kamo: an easy mark, and the sound of “maybe.”

After a senior prefectural official had spoken, they announced my lecture on avoiding those scams. I started going through the material I’d prepared.

I happened to look to one side. There was a woman interpreting in sign language. Farther over, on a screen, every single word I said was being transcribed as I spoke. Even “Neither good nor bad, maybe?”

At the end I asked the audience, “Who thought I was an actual university professor?”

Every one of them raised a hand.

So who was the scammer here…?

A large sweating profile of a person in glasses beside rows of seated people raising their hands, with red emphasis marks.

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