A moment in time with John Riley

John Riley, the founder of the Sector 7 comedy group, talks about riding the wave at the right time, and stepping off the hamster wheel. A tall man who wears a hat and who has a strong British accent tells a story to two other men at a terrace in Bucharest: some years ago, he got an invitation to a Lenny Kravitz concert, in Tokyo, that included a backstage meeting with the artist. So there he found himself waiting for Lenny, near a bunch of teenage Japanese groupies, but the star was too drunk to show up. The man who tells the story is John Riley, the founder of the Sector 7 project, a Bucharest-based comedy group and also a digital guerilla agency. That wasn't Riley’s first trip to Japan, nor his first encounter with a famous musician. At the beginning of the ‘90s, when he was 22, he moved to Japan for two years and had the time of his life. Later on, in the mid ‘90s, when he moved back to Great Britain, he shared an office in London with the press teams of U2 and Motorhead, and met Lemmy, the vocalist of Motorhead. The list could go on, because one way or the other, John Riley's life has always been linked to music and travelling. Now he's 44 and has lived in Bucharest for almost ten years. He stepped away from his Sector 7 project a few months ago, and wonders what he'll do next. The comedy The car is speeding on the highway to Constanta and the five people inside are quite silent because they don't know each other. The driver picked up four hitchhikers going to Vama Veche, so everybody is there just for the ride. With my headphones on, I'm listening to the interview I did with John Riley a few days ago. "It happened to me quite a few times to hear people in bars talking about Sector 7, and hearing kids doing the lines back and forth. It's simply amazing," I hear Riley's voice in the headphones. After about one hour of silent ride, one of the other passengers dares to start a conversation, "Sorry, what are you listening to?" I tell him it's an interview with John Riley, a British guy who founded the comedy group Sector 7. He seems a bit confused by the name of the group, but then another girl in the car explains, "you know, the group that made the video with the sunflower seeds addiction". Everybody goes: yeah, that was great! The mood suddenly shift in the car: everybody seems more relaxed. It's comedy that always takes the burden off tense situations, Riley thinks. He experienced the power of laugh many times in his life, including more than 20 years ago, when he found himself in front of a class of Japanese kids, having to teach them English. “A bunch of seven-year olds were staring at me, waiting to say something. I was 22 and I was pretty scared. That’s a time when I felt: oh my god, I’m on a stage, what I’m gonna do next?” But he’s always had a bit of a laugh, he grew up like that, so “I started making fun of them and the kids started laughing. And that was it. After that, I never had stage fright again.”