"He's the joy of people," says Mohamed Osama, an Egyptian, who is another Informal Talks presenter. "He's always making people laugh, and I know he enjoys it."

Estilaf's pet refrain, "Ai ya ma ya", (Holy cow!) which he utters with goofy facial expressions and body movements, gets plenty of laughs from his audience.

This kind of humor makes Estilaf one of the program's favorite presenters, says Wang Ziting, who works on Informal Talks.

Estilaf, with his family, moved to Shanghai 2006 and began studying Chinese at East China Normal University. He was a contestant in the first Chinese Bridge language competition for foreign students in 2008, and he finished as a top ten.

In 2010 he enrolled in the Shanghai Theatre Academy in a master's degree course in broadcasting and presenting, something he has now completed. He is now studing for a doctorate at the academy.

Estilaf says his father, a merchant, had expected that his son would follow him into that field of work.