My Favourite Game Njambi McGrath

How Doom and Mario Kart reflect different sides of the Kenyan comedian’s personality

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Njambi McGrath is a Kenyan-born comedian and writer, performing her sharp, one-liner style of stand-up regularly on the London circuit. She attended university in both London and New York, has an IT degree, is fluent in three languages and is currently writing a book.

What game first got you excited? 

I grew up in Kenya, so while most people had all the technology to play games and all of that stuff – my husband, he got the chance to play games in arcades – my first game was Snoopy. It was the most unsatisfying game, because he would just walk up to the roof, and then you’d make him sleep… That was the first game I can ever remember playing.

What did you play that on? 

I don’t know whether it was made in Japan or China or whatever, but it looked like a very crude version of a Game Boy. It was just a single screen. Somebody brought it to school, and it was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s that?’. We played it for ages and ages. I was in boarding school, and so people used to bring all sorts of things. We would trade sweets to be able to play games. That’s the only one that I’ve never seen again – I don’t know where they got it from. That was the first game I kind of got addicted to.