The Roast of Minnie Dlamini

Launching a celebrity roast is risky. Doing it on radio is even riskier. Without visuals, tone can be misread and humour can tip into cruelty. To promote the Roast of Minnie, we needed to signal sharp comedy without alienating audiences, and controversy without backlash. The radio work had to capture the spirit of a roast while making it clear that this was clever, intentional, and self-aware.

The Insight

South Africans understand roasting best when it comes wrapped in everyday authority figures. Doctors, teachers, parents, and elders are allowed to say the things others cannot. When uncomfortable truths come from a place of care, they land as humour rather than offence. A roast feels safer when it is disguised as concern.

The Idea

Turn the roast into a consultation. We wrote a radio ad where a doctor calmly examines a patient, only to begin roasting them under the guise of medical advice. The doctor’s professional tone contrasts sharply with the brutal honesty of the commentary, mirroring the exact tension at the heart of a roast. Concern on the surface. Savage truth underneath.

The Execution

The radio spot opens like a familiar medical consultation. A calm doctor. A vulnerable patient. Reassuring questions. Then, without warning, the diagnosis becomes personal. The doctor dissects the patient’s life choices, behaviour, and reputation with clinical precision. Every line sounds helpful, but lands like a punch. The humour escalates steadily, allowing listeners to laugh before realising they are listening to a roast. Only at the end is the context revealed. This is not a diagnosis. This is The Roast of Minnie. The radio execution translated the format of a televised roast into a purely audio experience, using performance, pacing, and misdirection to pull listeners in.