Egypt’s John Stewart Bassem Youssef has announced in his personal account on Twitter that he and his work team of his popular satirical program ‘The Program’ will have a leave.
In one of his recent tweets, Youssef said: “The Program’s work team has been continuously working since August, and it’s time to take a break”
In another updated tweet, the satirical TV presenter noted that the leave will be for two or three weeks at maximum, adding that more details will be further disclosed later on The Program’s coming episode on Friday.
Moreover, the satirist stated in a third recent tweet that the work team has been planning to take such a vacation since the beginning of launching the new season of The Program.
Through the two or the three-week vacation, the CBC channel will rerun a value collection of The Program’s previous best episodes, Youssef added.
The popular political satirist denied reports that the Egyptian authorities were behind his decision to stop airing his show for a few weeks.
“I can’t understand those enormous rumors circulated nowadays about holding my TV show.”
“Is it extraordinary to take a rest my work team and me after working for 9 months and 15 hours every day even on Fridays, what is your point, folks?”
Moreover, Youssef explained that he will be attending a number of international key events. The satirist further disclosed that he will be attending YouTube’s celebration to honor ‘The Program’ Channel for exceeding more than one million viewers.
The satirist is famous for regularly skewering the country’s ruling Islamists on his wildly popular weekly program, which is modeled on Jon Stewart’s U.S. satirical The Daily Show.
An Egypt court has summoned Youssef on grounds he insulted Islam and the president, a move which raised international concerns over freedom of expression in Egypt.
“If the regime thinks I am a clown, why are they scared?” Youssef asked.
“If my program brings down a regime, then this means it was a weak regime that did not deserve to stay in place. I never heard of a program that brought down a regime,” he said.
“We did not revolt against a regime that suppresses freedoms to replace it with a regime that [always reminds] us of the [alleged] freedom it gives,” Youssef said, adding that Mohamed Morsi took the right decision when he dropped all charges against media figures.
