Stefan Raab

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since July 2006.

Stefan Raab

Stefan Raab (full name Stefan Konrad Raab, born on October 20, 1966 in Cologne, Germany) is a German entertainer and comedian who formerly worked as a butcher.^[1]

Stefan Raab became popular as the host of the comedy show Vivasion for the German music TV channel VIVA in 1996. Since 1999 he has hosted his own show TV total on the channel ProSieben. While TV total started as a comedy format, it soon turned into a late night show with musical performances, remotely similar to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

1 Musical career
2 TV total
3 Private life
4 Legal actions
5 External links

[edit] Musical career

Raab began working as a freelance producer and composer of Jingles and Radio commercials in 1990 at his own studio in Cologne.

He wrote the music for the German entry in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1998, Guildo Horn's "Guildo hat Euch Lieb", and in the Eurovision Song Contest 2000 he performed himself with the nonsense song "Wadde Hadde Dudde Da?" (What do you have there?). Other famous songs include "Böörti Böörti Vogts", "Hier kommt die Maus", "Maschen-Draht-Zaun", "Gebt das Hanf frei!" (featuring Shaggy) and "Space Taxi".

Raab cast the German entry for the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest on his show in a competition he called SSDSGPS (Stefan sucht den Super-Grand-Prix-Star, Stefan seeks the super Grand-Prix star -- satirising the title of the German Idol series Deutschland sucht den Superstar, commonly abbreviated to DSDS). The winner of this casting, Maximilian Mutzke, came in 8th place.

Bored with the Eurovision Song Contest, Raab came up with the Bundesvision Song Contest in 2005 (Germany officially being the Bundesrepublik Deutschland). The contest featured representatives from each of the 16 states of Germany (Bundesländer) and stipulated that their song had to be (at least partly) in German. The first contest in 2005 was won by the band Juli from Hessen, followed by Seeed from Berlin in 2006.

He is an autodidact, playing various instruments, such as piano, drums, guitar, ukulele, bass and some wind instruments.

[edit] TV total

Stefan Raab can be called the inventor of wok racing, when in November 2003 he initiated the first "official" World Wok Racing Championships in Winterberg, Germany. While Raab won the title in 2003, he subsequently lost to Olympic luger Georg Hackl in 2004 and 2005. Special Guest since 2004 is the Jamaican Bobsled Team, which became famous through the film Cool Runnings. He also arranged and took part at different Sport-Events, like a boxing-match against Regina Halmich (WIBF's world champion) and an ice-skating race against Claudia Pechstein.

[edit] Private life

There is hardly anything known about Raab's private life, which he keeps hidden from the media at all times. He has a girlfriend who is 8 years younger and a daughter, who was born April 17, 2004.

He likes sailing and American Country music.

[edit] Legal actions

This article or section needs copy editing for proper spelling, grammar, usage, tone, style, and voice.
You can help by editing it now. A guide is available, as is general editing help.

During his career, many lawsuits have been filed against Stefan Raab, some of which have gained public attention. Two famous examples are:

The 16-year old-student Lisa Loch was excessively ridiculed during some shows through Raab's assertion that her name ("Loch" meaning "hole" in German) made her more likely to find a job as an actress in pornographic movies. Loch claimed she received anonymous obscene telephone calls, was mocked by her classmates and in public and as a result suffered sleeplessness and was afraid to leave her home. The court in Hamm eventually ordered Raab to pay € 70,000 in compensation due to gross infringement of privacy.

During the 6 September 2004 episode, Raab showed a clip, originally destined for a news broadcast, of the 28-year-old Turkish mother Nil S. holding a Schultüte. Raab's comment, "Unbelievable! The drug traffickers are disguising themselves better and better", resulted in repeated lawsuits, and after a Munich court ruled against Raab, Nil S. settled for € 20,000 compensation accompanied by a written apology.