Small but mighty, they say. And Bernhard Hoëcker should actually agree with that. After all, he is one of the most famous comedians in the country. Nevertheless, he struggles a bit with his height of 1.59 meters.
Bernhard Hoëcker suffered from his height as a child. At 1.59 meters, the comedian is well below the 1.79 meters of the average German man. “Being small is totally stupid,” he says in an interview with “Bild am Sonntag”.
It is particularly exhausting that he is expected to compensate for his height with knowledge: “Isn’t that bad? You’re already small and then you have to be smart too!” jokes Hoëcker. “Can’t I just be small and stupid? That would be fine too!”
Height used to be particularly “stupid” when it came to love: “Because of course all girls always wanted big boys,” says the comedian, who is now married and has two children. “Women always orientate themselves towards taller men. (…) Big means dominance, protection, security. When the lion comes, I don’t know if I can help that much!”
To this day, this affects him: “Not so bad anymore, but when a basketball player sits next to me on a show, people don’t laugh because my gag was so good, but because I look so funny next to the giant. You always laugh the little ones, rarely about the big ones. I also find jokes about my size incredibly boring because I’ve heard them all in my life.”
But Bernhard Hoëcker also suspects that the conspicuous height could have helped him in his career as a comedian: “The size definitely gave me a unique selling point in the industry. As with the rate show “Genial next to it” back then: “‘Der Little ones on the right’, everyone always knew that was Hoëcker!” says the 52-year-old. “And since I’ve never really been physically able to assert myself, I probably have the missing centimeters with my language balanced. And that’s always worked out really well.”
