To say that Montreal comic Sugar Sammy had a good year in 2012 is indeed an understatement.

The Sugar Sammy steamroller actually began in October of last year, during a press conference at the Bell Centre to announce a one time only “franglais” bilingual comedy show called “You're Gonna Rire” that was scheduled for February 29 at the Olympia in downtown Montreal, to mark his Leap Year birthday. Before the conference ended, it was announced that several more shows were going to be added due to an already increasing demand for tickets.

And that's when everything started to snowball for Sammy. “You're Gonna Rire” played 45 sold out performances. He then embarked upon a unilingual French-only tour of Quebec, which had 80 sold-out shows. And a total of more than 100,000 tickets were sold for Sugar Sammy shows; in fact as of November 21, his ticket sales went at a rate of 775 tickets a day, which is quite impressive for a comedy tour that is traversing solely within the boundaries of the province of Quebec.

“Twenty twelve has been a good year, a fun year for me. In fact, it has been quite career changing, and the success of my shows have taken it to a whole new level,” said a grateful Sugar Sammy during a recent phone interview with the Grapevine.

And as a way of thanking his loyal Montreal fans for helping to make 2012 such a mega successful year for him, Sugar Sammy will be returning in 2013 to the scene of his stand up triumph, the Olympia on St. Catherine Street East, for a week-long series of “multicultural” comedy shows. It begins on March 27 with his “En Francais svp!” show, followed by a unilingual English show called the “Illegal English Edition” on March 28, then a return of his landmark bilingual “You're Gonna Rire” show on March 29, and concludes with his “Indian Edition” show on March 30.

And never to shy away from a linguistic challenge, Sammy will perform the final show in four languages … English, French, Hindi and Punjabi. Sammy admits that the idea of doing a quadri-lingual show came from his fans, and he is not deterred by the challenge of comfortably shifting from one language to another (especially four of them) without breaking his train of thought or his comic timing. “Me and my siblings speak to each other in all four languages at home on a daily basis, so I have no problem with it,” he said. “And when the Indian community heard about the English/French/Hindi/Punjabi show, they thought it was a great idea and immediately jumped on the bandwagon to support it.”

With Sugar Sammy using comedy to help promote the idea of linguistic harmony, he shouldn't have any problems when it comes to maintaining his own bilingual status. “In fact, I thought I could work towards the goal of one day getting the rest of the country to become completely bilingual,” he added.

Tickets for all four of Sugar Sammy's “multicultural week” shows in March are still on sale with prices ranging from $37.69 to $57.69 (and they certainly make a great last minute Christmas gift or stocking stuffer). To purchase tickets, call 1-855-790-1245 or go to www.admission.com.