we would throw Raivo Heinas with a banana

Already at the end of January, the nervous Mart Võrklaev is sitting on the stage, and with the help of Antto Terras, all the sins of the former finance minister will be pierced. Actually, it could have been Kaja Kalla instead of Võrklaeva, but it turned out that way.

Although the Estonian is only estranged in Terra by his father, he takes the audacity to speak about Estonians in Finland. For ten years he’s been a full-time writer and comedian, but for all of this he’s found inspiration in a rather unusual way.

Who are you really?

When we talk in Äripäipäs, I am an entrepreneur, I organize roasts (a form of stand-up comedy in which a well-known person takes center stage and is made fun of on stage – ed.). There is no right term for who I am in Finland, but I am probably the best-known Estonian there.

People of my generation there know who Anu Saagim was, they know who Raivo Roosna or Alex Lepajõe is. But their fame is that Anu is the old l*** who stole Ristomatti Ratia’s money and Alex Lepajõe was the robber. I am an Estonian who has written 23 books in Finnish. It’s a different thing to be known for something stupid or when you’ve done something.

The majority of Estonians still build walls or drive buses in Finland. There are also very practical ones: doctors, surgeons. But they are not known.

You haven’t always been famous either. Before becoming a writer, you had a very strange job: detective in a department store.

Yes. I lived in 1997, a lot of thugs came to Finland from Russia and Estonia. In Finland, stealing was not punishable and you just got a fine receipt, which you could not pay and no one would pick you up at home. Therefore, it was necessary to catch the thieves in the department store.

Thieves came to the shop, however. I knew Russian and Estonian, and I attended Tampere University at the same time. I was hired because of my language skills. Soon, Karl Stockmann personally invited me to be a detective in Stockmann’s privates. I could see right away when someone came to steal: in the 90s, you could see from a kilometer away who was Estonian. Why does he climb Stockmann? Of course to a thief, because at that time Estonians had no money.