Orhan Boran is a Turkish

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

 radio and TV host and actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

. He is also widely known for his laudable usage of the Turkish language

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

.

Early life

Boran was born in Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 in 1928 as the son of Hikmet Boran, a graduate of the medical college. At the age of ten, Orhan enrolled at the famed Galatasaray High School, where he was a boarder even on weekends. His first stage experience came when he was still at Galatasaray as he took part in school drama productions. The plays were directed by Necdet Mahfi Ayral

Necdet Mahfi Ayral

Necdet Mahfi Ayral was a well-known Turkish stage and cinema actor, as well as theatre director. While alive, he held the record for being the oldest actor who was still active...

, a fine actor with the Municipal Theaters, and Boran had the leading role.

Career

His stage career was launched when he graduated from high school in 1946. A year after joining the ranks of the Municipal Theaters, Boran found the opportunity to go to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and work as an intern with a theater known as Les Mathurins. He came back to Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 in 1949, feeling that the theater was not for him. That same year, when Radio Istanbul went on the air, he ‘found his calling,’ as he puts it. The programs he did then, at the age of 21, gave him instant celebrity. And it was at this time that he began doing one-man stints in night clubs, laying the foundations for the Stand-up Banter that has become synonymous with the name Orhan Boran.

In 1956, by taking first place in an examination given by the British Consulate in Istanbul, Orhan Boran found himself in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where he worked for the Turkish service of the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

. He was also London correspondent for the Turkish daily news Dunya

Dunya

Dunyā is a word in Arabic which means, in Islamic terminology, the temporal world—and its earthly concerns and possessions—as opposed to the eternal spiritual realm, or the hereafter . Dunyā literally means 'closer' or 'lower'...

. His success as a correspondent was to bring him within the sphere of Hürriyet

Hürriyet

-External links:* * ** * *...

 and Milliyet

Milliyet

Milliyet is a major Turkish daily newspaper founded in 1950.-History:Milliyet came to publishing life at the Nuri Akça press in Babıali, Istanbul as a daily private newspaper on 3 May 1950...

, leading Turkish newspapers, and start his 25 years in print.

On returning to Turkey in 1960 he quickly went back into radio. It was also at this time that the 'Stand-up Banter' performances began, forerunners of today's stand-up comedy in modern Turkey. Boran's stories were mostly based on his imaginary family and the conversations between the family members.

At a time when he hosted nearly all the radio quiz programs in Turkey, he also created a famous fictitious character named Yuki (a rabbit-like character voiced by Boran himself) for a radio show during 1960's. Boran created other characters besides Yuki, entertaining listeners for years and years with the stories of the derelict brother-in-law, the sister-in-law doomed to be an old maid, and many more. In the late 1990s, an animation series for Yuki also produced for the TV based on the scripts taken from the early radio programs, however, because of the marketing problems, it failed to hit the screen.

Boran ended his long stage career in 1981 with a show called A Musical Belly-Laugh, written by himself and featuring a number of artists. He then started to host his own television programs: Panel, Hello Friends (Merhaba Arkadaşlar), Sunday Nights With Orhan Boran (Orhan Boran ile Pazar Geceleri), and Moments With Orhan Boran (Orhan Boran'lı Dakikalar).

Having won numerous awards from the Ministry of Culture and the Turkish Language Association

Turkish Language Association

The Turkish Language Association is the official regulatory body of the Turkish language, founded on July 12, 1932 and headquartered in Ankara, Turkey...

, Boran in 1992 joined the faculty of the Marmara University

Marmara University

Marmara University is a public university in Turkey. Situated in Istanbul, Marmara University has succeeded in becoming the second largest university in the whole country...

 School of Communications in order to share what he knows with the younger generation who have always meant so much to him. But although he loved being an academic, his heavy work schedule forced him to resign from this post.

After 59 years, Boran retired from show business

Show business

Show business, sometimes shortened to show biz, is a vernacular term for all aspects of entertainment. The word applies to all aspects of the entertainment industry from the business side to the creative element ....

on June 10, 2005.

External links