THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.119 - ROMESH RANGANATHAN

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Adam talks with British stand up comedian Romesh Ranganathan. This conversation was recorded on March 10th, 2020, a couple of weeks before the UK Coronavirus lockdown began.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for conversation editing.RELATED LINKSPREORDER RAMBLE BOOK WITH FREE TRIAL ON AUDIBLEHIP HOP SAVED MY LIFE PODCASTROMESH 'STRAIGHT OUTTA CRAWLEY' AUDIOBOOKBLUE CROSS - PETS AND CORONAVIRUS INFO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. I hope this finds you as well as possible.

I'm speaking from a farm track in East Anglia, UK in the middle of April 2020. I'm out on my lockdown exercise walk with my dog friend Rose. Anyway, listen, let's get into it, shall we? It was a longer gap than I expected between the last podcast I put out and this one because I was finishing the audiobook. It's nearly there. I think it's going to be available on April the 30th from all the usual audiobook outlets, Audible, etc. It's called Ramble Book. Don't know if I mentioned that already. It's a series of essays about important relationships in my life, particularly those with my dad, Joe Cornish, David Bowie.

Lots of stories about my adolescence, formative cultural influences, arguments with people on trains, my children, etc. I've tried to make it fun although it occasionally gets heavy like this podcast maybe not this episode of this podcast i don't think this one gets too heavy it is with british comedian romesh ranganathan a returning guest to the podcast a few brief rom facts for you actually these are recycled rom facts from the last time he was on but it doesn't hurt just to remind you romesh was raised in crawley west sussex he is of sri lankan tamil descent

he is a vegan he was raised hindu he supports arsenal football gang before going professional as a comedian in 2012 romesh was a maths teacher he is now married to Lisa, a woman with whom he has three human children as well as pretty much every British panel show ever created and various live and TV stand-up shows you may have seen Ramesh on

Asian Provocateur from a few years back in which Ramesh travelled to Sri Lanka with his mother to explore his roots. We talked about that show the last time we met, which I think we figured out was end of 2017. Wow, that was a long time ago, though. Different world. Romesh's mum also features in The Ranganation on BBC Two, in which Romesh, a couple of celebrity guests,

and an audience intended to humorously represent the diversity of British society, discuss a variety of topical issues. You may also have seen The Misadventures of Ramesh Ranganathan, in which he travels to various destinations off the beaten tourist track, and is shown around by locals. That's what I've put here. It's a good description. It's a good show, and we talk about it here, as well as, what else did we talk about? We talked about probably a few of the same things we talked about last time, but it's always fun to discuss insecurity, especially on TV panel shows.

Yes, I do wheel out my have I got news for you anecdote again. I also pitched a few ideas for new TV shows that I thought would suit Romesh. And he responded. We reviewed the reviews of one of his shows and we talked about the coronavirus pandemic. Have you heard of that? It's been on the news. My conversation with Ramesh was recorded on the 10th of March of this year, 2020, nearly two weeks before the start of the UK lockdown. And though it's hard to remember now, we were still at the stage back then when it wasn't really clear how the UK government was going to respond to the crisis and a lot of people were still unsure about how seriously to take the whole situation. Now I say that not because I don't think we said anything particularly

inappropriate did we? I don't think either of us said that we thought coronavirus was great. But anyway, that's when it was recorded. It's always good to see Romesh. He's great to talk to. And I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Back at the end for a tiny bit more waffle. But right now, here we go. the last time i saw you... Was in LA. Yes. In 2017.

And remind me again why you were in LA? We were doing this show called Just Another Immigrant where I booked the Greek theatre and had two months to try and sell it out. And I was in the middle of that when I saw you. Right. And I don't know how it went in the end. Did you sell out the Greek theatre?

No. The idea was we were going to just see what happened. Yeah. And as it got close, I told them to stop updating me. Okay. Because we did a few things that got a little bit of traction. So, for example, we deliberately, for the purpose of the TV show, did some mad stuff to try and generate some interest.

So we started building Trump's Wall at the Mexicanican border oh yeah to get some attention and that got like a fair bit of traction and then i started in my head in my delusional state i said i think oh maybe maybe this is going to bump ticket sales maybe people will come and see this but in the end we got like 300 300 people i think it's 350 and it seats 6,000. Okay. I think. So you got them all to come and sit at the front? On the stage, actually.

On the stage? Yeah, because there's a big steel garage door type thing. So I invited them all onto stage, shut it, and it was like a comedy club. So it was good in the end. Yeah. And the show we're very proud of, but it didn't really do anything. I haven't seen it. Where would I see it?

So it was on Showtime in America, and then they showed it on Sky One over here. Okay. I enjoyed making the show, and I think it was a funny show. This sounds like a lot of equivocation. But I don't think it was what Showtime wanted, really, in hindsight. I think they wanted it to be a lot less comedy and a lot more docky, I think. And so possibly they didn't know how to market it

or it was a different show to what they're anticipating. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I'm not ashamed of the show, but it was, in terms of breaking America... It didn't happen. It didn't happen it didn't happen but things have changed now though i mean do you tour in the states regularly now no i've just come from new york i did four nights at the soho playhouse which was nice and the gigs were fun but it's not raised my profile over there or anything the only profile i've got over in america is where americans have watched british tv it's not from watching that show but there seems to be an

increasingly large contingent of american comedy fans who are aware of what's going on in the uk yeah i mean so the first night i left the show there are people there with taskmaster books that they wanted to sign right okay there's a core of comedy fans over there that are really into british they're specifically into british, yeah, and that's nice. And you can understand, really, because there is something peculiarly British. Don't you think about comedy still? And there's lots of American influences in British comedy, but there is still something peculiarly. Maybe it's the sort of downbeat.

I think the downbeat, self-deprecating, almost apologising for turning up and performing nature of British people. I mean, when I saw you last, you were doing gigs in America. I don't know. I was there to do, specifically to do. You were doing Bug, right? Bug show, Bowie show, which was great. It was like, yeah, that was fantastic. But my delusions of going out and sort of picking up a few other gigs and you know yeah i'll do 15

minutes here and 15 minutes there and then they'll probably be quite a massive buzz and then i'll probably get invited back to do it no that doesn't happen you have to really work at it yes i think if you want to do america yeah as a comic you have to go right i'm gonna spend a few months out there i think the idea that you're gonna go over there and suddenly really go oh my god this guy's in town yeah it doesn't happen that much i don't know not really have you done conan and things like that i did the late late show cordon's one okay i've done that a couple that's quite a big one though isn't it yeah but loads of comics i was doing gigs at small comedy clubs in la and almost everybody i was on the bill with were both people i wasn't really familiar with and also

people that had done stand-up on late night shows so i think it's much more of a war of attrition because most of the time people are just going on and trying not to embarrass themselves correct but then someone turns up and they're super confident and they're a tiny bit crazy, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do think slightly not giving a shit is really conducive to doing well on those. Yeah. How's your not giving a shit chops coming along? My not giving a shit chops is good on stage and when I'm doing stuff outside of that, it's not.

I saw you on Jonathan Ross and you looked pretty okay yeah that I mean I don't get nervous about things like that because I'd be crying no you wouldn't I would I definitely would yeah yeah I'm not being self-deprecating for the sake of it I just freeze up and every now and again I forget that that happens to me and I'll say yes to something because I'm flattered to be asked. Then I'll turn up and I'll freeze up and then I won't get invited back. Well, I had that a little bit actually. When I first went on Jonathan Ross, my profile was relatively unknown and probably I would say one of those bookings

where people watching Jonathan Ross think, I've never seen this guy before. And so when they book a comic at that level, they essentially want you to do bits i guess yeah you're doing either material or an appropriation of material or some story that you know is going to work i guess because nobody's really interested in what you've got to say above and beyond being funny and so that was very easy because i had an idea of what i was going to say. I knew these stories had endings and whatever. The second and third time I did it, I didn't want to do that.

I just wanted to talk. And that was slightly more nerve-wracking because I'd be in the middle of saying something and I'd think, oh, shit, I don't know where this is going. The number of times my internal monologue after I'd finished speaking on that said, that was neither funny nor interesting, Romesh. I hope that the next thing you say is better than that. That happens the whole time I'm on the thing.

I become very aware of what my face is doing. Right. So I just grin because I think, well, look, if I don't grin, it's going to be obvious that I'm about to cry. So I've just got to really grin and keep grinning. I'm laughing. I'm loving this. Everything everyone says is funny.

Because if my face relaxes, it will start twitching. Oh, God, it's so awful, isn't it? Have you really frozen? You haven't frozen. I've seen you on stuff and you look eminently comfortable. No. You've never seen, I talk about this a lot, but you've never seen the episode of Have I Got News For You I did. No, I haven't seen it.

No. Not many people have. I often feel sorry for them because, you know, they repeat those shows endlessly. They're very repeatable. But I've never seen my one repeated. I think they may have burned it because I poisoned the whole thing. In what way? Because I was so bad.

And because it was one of those shows, you see them every now and again where the comedian is really struggling. Right. And they don't really say very much. And I was with Amanda Iannucci and Bill Bailey was hosting. Were you looking forward to it or were you shitting yourself? They called me in at the last minute because someone dropped out. It's my usual call up.

Yeah. Are you somebody who's across the news? Not really. Right. I mean, superficially. You know, I'll watch the news and I'll read the news websites and things like that, but I'm not a news junkie. Yeah.

So I had no business being there, really. And, yeah, Ian Hislop lot i was on his team yeah he said a bit of advice he came to my dressing room before nicely before yeah and he said bit of advice get in there early just start saying things i've seen people be sort of respectful and hold back and then suddenly half an hour's gone by you haven't said anything and that's you done and that's exactly what happened it's by the way that's happened to me a lot right that's horrible isn't it yeah it's bad because when you've been quiet for a little bit the pressure on the next thing you say is exponential. It's like, oh, what's the quiet guy saying?

Oh, the quiet guy's talking now. What's he got to say? Oh, that. I know. I remember I did, I've talked about this before, but the second mock the week I ever did, I was so nervous doing the first one and did it. And it was, you know, everyone was happy, delighted, blah, blah, blah.

So I get invited back to the second one and I'm doing the second one and I'm just on it. And it's, I'm just sitting there relaxed, waiting to do my thing. And I said something early on. I wasn't quiet. I said something early on, but I just dropped such an egg. It was such an unfunny, I can't even remember what it was, but it was such an unfunny thing that I'd said. It just sucked the energy out of the room.

And I had a visceral reaction to what I'd done. And I was like, oh, that was awful. And then eventually after everybody had sort of driven past the car crash, they continued talking and started, but then I thought oh my god this you got ptsd yeah you're so you're so unfunny this is so bad this audience think you're shit now so if you say a second shit thing you might as well get up and leave you know it's really i was

having all of that eventually i've been quiet for a little bit my recollection is i just thought i have to say something and i said something like i am romesh just just just to say something out loud that would be good you suddenly said it start turning into an android who's malfunctioning i am romesh joke a joke a funny thing a humorous line i think the tories are unsympathetic do you agree your kip are racist uh uh brexit uh please help help me please yeah so it was a bit like that and then I finished the show

because you're forced into Mock the Week because even if you don't do anything at the desk you then do the scenes we'd like to see so I'd talked to you know I'd obviously had to speak at the microphone at that point and I came off thinking I wonder if that was as bad as I thought it was. And then as soon as I came off,

my agent Flo said, should we have a chat? And then she said to me, she said to me, you were silent for the best part of an hour. I had thought it was a few minutes. She said to me, I was sitting there watching this. She was in the green room.

Imagine that as an agent, sitting with the other agents of the other people on the show. Yeah, that's right. Yours isn't doing very well. So, sorry, is Romesh an elective mute? It was so bad. Wow, your agent was straight with with you at least my agent's one of the nicest people in the world right so she knew better than to do that with me my agent said you looked very handsome on the monitors

that was all she could come up with it It's just horrendous, isn't it? But now, now you've got that lovely bed of, everyone knows you. It's like, hey, how you doing? Good to see you, Ramesh. You know, you've got nothing to prove in that way. Yeah. I mean, you must be very recognisable. Do you get stopped a lot now in the street?

I mean, you're on TV a lot now. Yes. Yeah. I get stopped a bit now in the street i mean you're on tv a lot now yes yeah i get stopped a bit i guess it depends on the context you know my pro i felt my profile has increased when i say i felt my profile as i've noticed it from when i'm out and about that my profile has increased but i think i don't get it as badly as other people because I think I give a vibe of being unapproachable. Right, you're grumpy. I guess so. And so sometimes I'll get tweets from people saying, I saw you out today.

It was going to come up to you, but I didn't want to get called a prick. But I hope you have a nice day. You know, things like that. And also, a lot of the time, I'm out with my family. When you're out with your family, people tend to leave you alone, don't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. People are normally pretty cool about that. But occasionally when I go to the football,

I'm an Arsenal fan. I've noticed that has increased so much, the number of people wanting photos and to say hello. So yeah, yeah, I do get stopped a fair bit, I guess. The thing that always occurs to me when I see you pop up in a new show,

I'm like, whoa, he's got another new show. Surely your marriage is falling apart i mean maybe that you might not think that this is the perfect place for you to admit to all the domestic struggles that you're going through but how that's the thing i think is like how's he got time to actually maintain a family it is something that i've thought about in the last year more so than before i think not because let's if you do something like for example i do a show for bbct called the ranga nation and yeah it's a topical show that show is essentially six weeks of my time and i'm in an office and i

work on the stuff for the show i come home and i'm basically doing an office job until the night of the record and then i go to the so actually weirdly that's better in a way you know it's i do see my family then and come home every evening and have dinner with everyone and and that's that's okay the It's the travel shows that really do have an impact and it's something I've had to think about because the last series of misadventures I did, we have to, obviously we have to get them done in quite a tight block of time.

So essentially I'm going to one place, I come back for a little bit, then go to another. It's a few months on and off that I'm away from home and that is difficult and my wife is very understanding but you do have to balance that up against the fact that like our eldest son is 10 he is on the very cusp of still finding me acceptable as a person to hang around with yeah and i'm conscious of the fact that if i miss that time by the time i get

around thinking i'm going to stop doing all this i'm going to be at home a lot more he's not going to give a shit he's going to be off and doing stuff with his mates and so that has been a consideration and i've had to for example i've i have started to cut back on my workload and i won't do appearances on stuff now so i don't do any panel show stuff that i'm not you know i do league of their own but that's because i'm a team regular on that but i don't do any any other panel shows i've just sort of stopped doing that completely even the ones that are fun there's loads of ones that i enjoy but i just thought i'd rather not and have time at home but i'm still doing the travel show i mean i'm

doing another series of the travel show. But I've spoken to my agent and the production company about trying to space that out and give me some time in between because my wife is very understanding. You've said that twice now. I know. She's so understanding. But she's understanding to a point that I just worry

that one day I'm going to come home. Sure, yeah. And she'll have not said anything because she's so understanding. But she's understanding to a point that I just worry that one day I'm going to come home. Sure, yeah. And she'll have not said anything because she's being understanding. And actually, I've just hit the tipping point without realising. Yeah. How cool are you going to be when she goes and decides to do a travel job? Exactly. Well, let's just hope that never comes up.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no considering the pandemic like fucking hell the timing though as soon as brexit's finished i know coronavirus i know are you worried about it yeah i suppose i mean not in the same way that i'm you know i don't lie awake worrying about it in the same way that i do with the climate you know like the climate every time i think about that that ruins my day it doesn't ruin my day with coronavirus because i'm not in the danger category health wise i don't think yeah i am of course concerned for the people i know who are and that's worrying the disruption it just seems sort of surreal like as we speak it is the middle of march and the government are talking about implementing an italian style lockdown do you know the way the way you just said that yeah was you were leaving a recording for Society in the Future after it had all gone tipped up. So you're now listening to us in the middle of March.

As we speak now, we do still have supplies. But I don't know how long we've got left. Ramesh and I are still recording. We've got no idea if anyone will ever listen to what we're putting down. We're still doing it just in case. If anyone's listening to this, if anyone's left, please like and subscribe. It really helps. Sorry, anyway.

We're laughing now. I mean, who knows? Who knows how serious the situation is going to get? But I mean, still, I think it's helpful to laugh. Yes, it is. I don't know if it's medically proven to keep the virus at bay, but maybe. But I think yesterday as we speak, or maybe this morning, Italy was locked down. Everyone has to stay indoors for, what, three weeks or something?

I think so, yeah. That's the idea. Yeah. Getting food deliveries from's the idea. Yeah. Getting food deliveries from licensed deliverers. Yeah. Authorized delivery people. And that may be what's going to happen in the UK as soon as two weeks' time. So this means that all of us in this country will just be in our houses for three weeks.

In theory, except for the delivery drivers and the people. And how likely is this scenario? I mean, you're not asking the right person because I'm stupid. What does a stupid person think the likelihood of this happening is? Well, now you're asking the right person. And I would say it seems to me like pretty likely, 75% likely. Okay. But have you had to have a radical change to the way you wash your hands?

Or were you always pretty good at washing your hands? I was always a pretty good hand washer. 20 seconds? Happy birthday twice? Were you that level? Maybe not 20 seconds. Yeah, you do realize like, oh, gosh, yeah, 20 seconds is a while, isn't it? But I've been carrying around the hand sanitizer

is that is that also pointless or not i don't i don't know they say well there's certain brands that don't have enough alcohol in them you've got to have ones with loads of booze in yeah and they'll do the job yeah i've been sanitizing i've been more aware of not touching my face yeah you haven't touched your face at all since i've been here and i have i've been conscious of the fact that i have touched my face four or five times i'm a beard stroker though are you yeah me too yeah yeah yeah do you know that we're supposed to shave our beards off really i read something about facial hair makes you more susceptible oh i heard that it made you less susceptible because it was filtering things out. No. I heard that it was like things live in there.

Welcome to the Coronavirus Information Podcast. Where two wildly misinformed individuals speculate on the best advice to give. Oh, man. I hope that society doesn't crumble. Me too. Everyone. And it's worth saying that. We both hope that yeah luckily i'm in one of the industries that will be least affected yeah i.e bollocking on and then

putting out a podcast yeah and we can we can carry on doing that although presumably we still got to maintain all those servers all those fucking servers pumping oh now suddenly suddenly you've got some skin in the game now haven't you yeah that's the thing they had a report on the news the other day about the amount of damage these server farms do to uh the environment i really yeah they're all of course like how do you expect they work they're these giant complexes with all these machines whirring away and they're being powered some Some of them are like coal powered. Are they?

Yeah. Holy shit. There's no free fun. One way or another, you are fucking things up. Yeah. Think of like, what is guilt free fun? I was trying to think of this the other day. What is one thing that is entirely harmless?

There's no victims. Did you come up with anything? The only thing i could think was music right people making music sitting down singing and playing but you have to be there in the room with them yes if you're as soon as you start trying to record it yeah that's a problem that's a problem but yeah like a concert you, acoustic concert in a hall for 100 people or something. That would be okay. I think that's okay.

But then people have to get to that hall. Yeah, they can walk. It's only for local people. Okay, so it's an acoustic concert for people who live within walking distance. That's the only fun that's left. Yes. Okay, I'll live with that. I mean, what else though? what else in the modern world though

today i was thinking about how much i hate clickbait right and i was thinking clickbait's everything that's wrong with the world fucking clickbait why doesn't anyone do anything about clickbait and i know people are probably listening to this going duh it's fucking clickbait you moron everyone knows that you're not supposed to click on it but the thing is that people do yeah evidently and it's just become so normalized now it's at the bottom of every single website however sort of high-minded the website might be there's just a load of clickbait really obnoxious shit clickbait about like what like well i'm looking at some right now this is one site that seems to have cornered the market or maybe it's just my browser yeah now goes oh you like clickbait we'll take you back here

every time but it seems to be at the bottom of a load of websites and articles zerg net you ever come across no i've never come it looks like this look so read a few of those out uh paul walker's disturbing autopsy report is now out in the open love scenes that went too far that winnie from wonder years that'd be one i'd probably click on winnie from wonder years is in her 40s now and crazy gorgeous the never-ending it's loads of these creepy stories about like either how this aging celebrity lives now is particularly sad yeah that's one of the phrases they use disturbing things everyone so willingly ignores about tom hanks all of them without exception are underwhelming and obvious. Even when you've got to a point where you're expecting it to be slightly underwhelming,

it will still disappoint beyond that. Beyond your expectation. Exactly. It's so bad. Billie Eilish's transformation is seriously turning heads. And the other thing is, the reason Billie Eilish wears baggy clothes is particularly sad. It doesn't say that. Have you made that one up?

No. Why do you think Billy Eilish wears baggy clothes, Romesh Ranganathan? It's particularly sad. What is the reason? She doesn't want people to judge her on what kind of body she has. She's a sensible person. She realises that

people in the media are fucking idiots and that if she gives them an inch they'll take a mile and so she's like no you're not you're not gonna shame me because my bum doesn't look right so i'm gonna wear baggy clothes and you can fuck off that is particularly sad isn't it it's particularly sad Thank you. okay talking of the misadventures of romesh ranganathan your show which i really enjoyed by oh thank you very much and my wife was very excited when i said that i was seeing you again she's like i love romesh oh did she say that that's so nice and it was one of the few shows on tv it felt like an old-fashioned show that we used to grow up with right that would have been hosted by someone like clive james or something you know yeah

or even a michael palin i'm sure people have thrown that at you as well of just a very likable host with an intelligent show and seeing countries that are not often featured in these kinds of shows i really enjoyed it but did the reviewers enjoy it actually you started the show yeah with a montage of negative tweets yeah was that right were they real yeah were they really yeah but i did think like they're always the same ones though you should vary it up a little bit oh do you mean every episode yeah oh yeah that's true come on mate yeah there must be more than just those there is but we did loads of them oh maybe we should do that maybe we do that next have different ones each

time you think so yeah for regular. I would appreciate some variety. Do you want a good review first or a bad review? We're going to review the reviews. Okay. We'll do the good one first. Okay, fine. This is Carol Midgley in The Times. Are you okay with this?

Totally. Okay. Totally. Romesh Ranganathan has nailed the celebrity travel documentary. Nailed it, says Midgley. No other celebs need bother trying. Wham! Wham! The misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan

has somehow found a formula devoid of any smugness. Devoid. There's no smugness. Even when doing smug things. Even when he's doing smug things,'s no smugness such as getting within touching distance of a rhino in zimbabwe that is very smug to get in touching distance of a rhino his self-deprecation and unfailing deadpan humor helps you learn things without really noticing in these films which are full of what are probably scripted moments of comedy true no no but don't feel like it says midgley in the times that is a rave it's great review what a peach yes christopher stevens

daily mail not so keen television is more ignorant patronizing less informative and simply stupider than 50 years ago and if anyone doubts it the proof is on bbc iplayer first take a look at the misadventures of romesh ranganathan the 41 year old comedian and stalwart of numerous panel shows was dispatched to make a travel log about zimbabwe cynical and smug he's not agreeing with mid-winterly about the smugness yeah never bothering with a joke when sarcasm will do he sneered his way across the country like a no old teenager determined to prove he's too cool for the school trip sneering your way across zimbabwe yeah i don't think that's a fair review though obviously part of your shtick can be written off as smugness but it's so clearly part of the joke yeah those moments yeah you were unfailingly

respectful and kind and interested with everyone you came across in that show yeah thank you you don't do you do you seek out the reviews i had read that christopher stevens one did someone send that to you or did you find it well we used it in the show actually we used a quote from one of his reviews in the show oh yeah right from the first series because he was he wrote a similar review about the first series okay and it's we sort of joked about the fact that he obviously doesn't like me he doesn't like the way i do things he hates and he's reviewed other stuff i've done in a similar way and i joked about it to the guys when we're doing the first series i said just so you know the daily mail won't like this show there's

a guy there that everything I've done so far, he hates it. And so they sent me the review for the first series. Somebody working on the show said, oh yeah, you're right. He does really hate you, doesn't he? So we read that review and we used the quote in the opening to the show. And so I have seen that.

It's weird. I thought I would be upset by negative reviews like that, but he obviously hates me so much it kind of liberates you from yes from any kind of impact also it's the daily mail so there's that kind yes true yeah you can kind of feel like oh well at least it's not the you know liberal elite yes telling me that sure suck does your mum read the daily mail or anything like that my mum gets very upset about those reviews oh does she yeah she gets very upset on your behalf yeah she gets really upset by it and becomes worried that my career is going to end as a result of it and okay she

once phoned me up and asked me if she could get the how do you find the addresses of people posting on instagram and i said why and apparently she'd seen a comment on something i'd posted saying i didn't think you were funny or that thing you did was shit and she wanted to have a go at this person personally yeah and i said you just got to disregard that but then like so rob beckett and I hosted the Royal Variety, this last Royal Variety, and I'd made a joke to Kate and Wills about regretting having three children. Mm-hm. And I think it might have been the Express or somebody twisted that into disrespectful comedian

ridicules Kate and William for having three kids or something like that and my mum read that and she was really like worried about it she got in touch with me and she said what what is this everybody's saying about you being rude to kate and william and i said well i said not everybody's saying it first of all i said it's like one sort and secondly you were there you were at the raw variety because she was involved in the show. I said, did it feel like that to you? Did you see them looking upset by me ridiculing their family situation? She goes, no, they were laughing. I said, so you know what actually happened.

I said, so don't worry about it. But it's difficult because, you know, my mum is so worried about her kids getting on. And then suddenly she sees a national newspaper saying this thing about her son and obviously it's going to freak her out you know she does get worried about it and i'm able to to not care or not not care that's an exaggeration but you just you you give it the you can rationalize exactly and so it doesn't really bother me but that is when it does sometimes i'll see something oh god that was funny or that was a bit mad or they hated me for that but it's only

when my mom finds out my mom my mom is it has the biggest impact on my mom of anybody yeah what she like these days to deal with as a celebrity commodity because she now has quite a significant profile i saw you in one of your stand-up specials talking about it yeah a little bit and it i mean i had a tiny taste of it with my dad because he was in the tv show we used to make yeah you're the originator well i don't know i'm sure people exploited their parents for entertainment purposes before me and joe did that but um our show was different because i never really appeared on camera with my dad right so that relationship was never exploited because it would have revealed immediately that my relationship with my dad was totally dysfunctional yeah you know that that uh there were all sorts of

issues we had yet to sort out yeah so we just played it for laughs we inserted him into festivals and reviewing pop records or whatever but actually laying bare the nuts and bolts of our relationship i was too cowardly to do that we didn't see a way that it could be done in an entertaining fashion yeah as a little short segment on a a larger show but you you've done that very well i mean it was that happened by accident though if i'm being honest because when we do an asian provocateur it wasn't by design we were doing asian provocateur and the whole premise of that show is that my mum sends me to sri lanka to get in touch with my culture so by that very nature of that she was going to be involved in the show

we didn't know how much and so we decided that she was going to be in the show in the uk bits and we'd have at the top of each show her sending me on my mission for that episode or whatever and then it just turned out that she was it was just funny seeing her talk honestly to me and the bickering nature of our relationship was funny it wasn't funny initially she was the first few times that we did it she was too worried about the cameras and she kept second guessing herself and doing what she thought we wanted her to do and then she she just stopped doing that and then it was funny but i mean she's really reliably funny on yes ranganation yeah she is actually she's really good i mean she's i i can't think of a time when i've thrown to her and bearing in mind i throw to her during

the show randomly i can't think of a time when she hasn't said something like funny when i've gone to her she's she's good and and often she tunes out during the record and that's funny as well she's not always listening yeah um which i get you know which is fine i'm not expecting her to be fully engaged the whole time well i guess i am actually okay but i think she's i mean she's loving the experience i don't think she i don't think she could have ever imagined that she would be in a position where she's getting recognized and she she loves it she revels in she revels in that side of it more than i do and do you like who looks after her showbiz wise does? Does she have an agent? My agent kind of takes care of her as well. Right, okay, cool.

So she doesn't have a separate agent or something? No. She hasn't moved. I'm sure she would consider it. Trying to get her better billing and... No, it's not moved to that yet. That is a possibility though, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

I think my agent would be very upset if that happened though. If my mum accused my agent of lowballing her and moved elsewhere, I think she'd be pretty pissed off. Are you doing more Ranganation? Yes, we're doing another series of that. That's a funny show, man. And for people who haven't seen the show, you've got a group of what? 25. 25 people.

Members of the public. Yeah. The Ranganation play a huge part in that show. And they each have a name tag that says something like... Yeah, so we have privileged because he's super posh. Yeah, they're kind of demographic labels. Yes, exactly. It's sort of their most defining characteristic, I guess.

Yeah. And the whole idea of giving those labels were that those kind of labels give you a preconception of what those people might think about certain things yeah and the idea was that some of those people might have views that are in keeping with your expectations sometimes i have views that completely sit in opposition to that so that's the idea and so we go through it so i'll introduce a topic we have two guests as well it tends to be like a comedian and a celeb from a different world and we go through all these different stories and

the ranga nation give their take on it and we try and use them as a barometer of what we think about these different issues a discussion show essentially yeah and all of the piss taking i do or not the piss piss take is the wrong word all of the joshing and fun that i have with the bants the bants all the bants is fairly affectionate most of the time yeah definitely you know that's the thing about your stuff is that it does have that warmth to it which plays very nicely i'm analyzing what you do yeah thanks what's that like to hear i like it i enjoy actually yeah the warmth is a nice counterpoint it underlies and enables the enjoyment of the more pointed grumpy side of your personality that is how what you do works in case you were wondering oh thank you i haven't thought about it um yeah no it's good man congratulations and then you've got judge romesh yeah which i haven't seen so much but um i've come up with some other ideas for shows okay go for it all right now these are

admittedly shows that rely on wordplay involving your name. Okay. Well, that's not, I mean, that's in keeping with. It does seem to be the way that some of your shows have come about, especially Ranganation. Judge Romesh, maybe not so much. So this is an idea that my son came up with. Okay. And the show is called Romesh, Rang and Nathan.

I think I might know what the show is. Yeah. Well, you describe it to me. So I'm assuming that it's each, I don't know what the show is. Yeah. Well, you describe it to me. So I'm assuming that it's each, I don't know how long each call would be. Half an hour. Okay. So it's I, for half an hour, call a Nathan. Someone called Nathan.

Someone called Nathan. And just have a chat with them. Yes. Are they celebrity Nathans? Well, can you think of any? No. Neither can I. So it'll have to be like dave gorman style you're just finding people called random nathans yeah ramesh ranga nathan

and you think the phone call would be half an hour i mean it's got to be unless you want to pack a few phone calls with different nathans into one show i think you'd have to yeah different nathans from different nations yeah yeah ramesh ranger nathan yeah channel that's going to work on any channel yeah i mean what channel is that not going to work on if it's vice then you can ring edgy nathans yeah ring some far right nathans ring some nathans on psychedelic drugs yeah if it's channel four fuck it just just make it up as you go along justify it later any old nathan doesn't matter and then i mean you know i'm spitballing here but yeah i think it's gonna work yeah okay wherever you know you're good at crowd work and talking to audiences yeah you could do that i did something well i've done phone call related bants on i did greg james's show do you know greg james

have you been a guest on that show no so they put you in to take calls from members of the public and i think the last time i've done it a couple of times the last time i did it it was people talking about things they were proud of about their town that people didn't know about so it might be a park that was really nice or a fish and chip shop that was amazing and i would say i got as much as I could out of those phone calls maybe a minute and a half in. So... So you're thinking one call for Ramesh. I think it would have to be a few. Also, the thing is that the show could start with

this is what happened when Ramesh rang a Nathan. Right, good. And then you go off on some fucking adventure. It's good. All right, you ready for another one? Yeah, go on. This is very strong. Okay.

Stronger than the previous? No disrespect to my son, but yes. Okay, okay. Ranga management. Romesh is put in a variety of infuriating scenarios to see if he can keep it together come on tell me why that isn't ready to go that genuinely sounds like something that could happen i mean that is so what type of scenarios are we talking about? I mean, something that would genuinely make you angry. What makes you angry on a regular basis?

I mean, you seem like a sort of calm, level-headed person, but when you do start losing your shit, what is it about, generally? It was little things, really. For example, I find it infuriating when people are rude to service staff yeah i agree with you because you and i work in an industry where i would say people talk to you in a way that there's a lot of bullshit basically and so people are nice to certain people because they feel like they should be nice to those people and you're conscious of the fact that i'm conscious of the fact that sometimes people are being nice people for reasons other than human decency right if you're in a restaurant

that is you the way that you talk to that person is how you'd really talk to somebody if there were the stakes were zero there's it's not going to affect you at all so this is just how you decide you're going to interact with somebody if you choose to be a prick to somebody in that situation i think you're unacceptable as a person it's awful it is awful rank management what's the angriest you've ever been like do you ever lose your shit in public i have on the phone i've probably lost my shit on the phone with people. Face to face, I can't think of a time. Oh, actually, on one occasion, I was at a gig near Oxford somewhere. And I was closing the gig.

And I didn't have a lot of money at the time. And I'd bought a saver ticket to get back to Crawley. And the gig had run late. And I was looking at arriving home about 1 32 o'clock and in the morning and I was on this train and I'd been told that my ticket was valid for this train journey and I sat on the train we're pulling up to I think it was Reading station or something and this conductor came up and he checked my ticket and he said uh you can't be on this train with this ticket and i said well i was told that i can and he said you can't get off you got but

the way he was speaking to me was like he i was trying to pull a fast one yeah and so i was emboldened by this sense of injustice that i'd been reliably informed or unreliably informed as it turns out that I was okay to get this train and what he was saying to me was that you're gonna have to get off and get another service which is going to add about an hour to my journey it's much slower and much more convoluted and I said I was told by one of your guys I can get on the train and I was sort of panicking because I didn't want to get home I was just sort of freaking out about getting home too late and I started like raising my voice to him to the point where it

then ceased to be a discussion about whether a ticket was valid or not and i had started to become a nuisance on this train so as we pulled up to reading he called for help and this other guy came on and then they started talking to me about me having to get off the train and i got off the train i was absolutely furious i'm not proud of this but as the train pulled away the guy was stood in the door and i for a while i followed the train shouting at the guy running alongside yeah i i don't know what good i thought was going to come of it but i i just felt so passionate that i wanted him to know that i was not somebody trying to pull a fast on. I'd been told by somebody else.

But now, as soon as I got home and that ceased to be an emergency or, you know, in the forefront of my mind, all rage inducing. I'm just thinking this guy just thinks that somebody had a ticket that wasn't valid on the thing. I know, I know. But it's so unreasonable afterwards. It's so difficult afterwards it's so difficult and well i don't know i mean for normal people maybe it's not difficult but for a very little man like me it can be very challenging in those situations biscuits i am in love with you

i'll dip you in my tea I am in love with you. I'll dip you in my tea. But pull you out before you fall apart. I won't abandon you. Biscuits, biscuits. Nice. All right. Last idea.

By the way, can I say, I'm really enjoying this development meeting all right good it's great now this one needs a little bit of explaining this one is called you rang a nathan okay it sounds very similar to the first idea no it depends on how you say it so it would come with this sound effect you like you ever watch the adams family yeah with lurch the butler yeah and lurch would say you're right and nathan let's hear that again you're right and nathan and it is you romesh becomes a butler for a different celebrity each week ideally tom cruise kendrick lamar kylie jenner greta thunberg rihanna prince harry and the duchess of megan and that's our wish list more likely it's probably going to be jemma collins danny dyer chris eubank and scarlett moffat but you'll be the butler yeah did you pitch this thinking that i was going to think this is ridiculous because i

think it's fairly plausible isn't it because it's funny you know there'll be stuff about class about power dynamics but there'll be a lot of scope for lols and you'll get to see inside their house it'll be a bit like a kind of hello magazine celebrity profile thing can i ask questions as if this is really being pitched to me? Yeah. How would my day look? Because theoretically, I'm not going to be with them the whole time. So I'm somewhere else in the house, and then they ring their bell or whatever or press their buzzer, and then I go...

You rang, Nathan? Nathan, yeah. And then they say, can I have a cup of tea? And then immediately I leave them, don't I, to go and make this cup of tea. No, you hover. It's like an old old it's like think lurch okay fine so you hover you're in livery whatever the word is for the uniform you got a silver tray yeah you know it's old school butler and i'm just there the whole time yep and i would interview them? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Okay.

I'm just, this is early days. Sure. Okay. But something like that. It's mainly based on that audio sample and the name. Okay. So to be honest with you. The thought process hasn't gone.

No. Okay. It hasn't gone further than that. And the wishlist. By the way, how wishlists work versus reality. Absolutely. How it goes, how wish lists work versus reality. Absolutely. How it goes, isn't it? But some people have access to like incredible, like don't you think, I don't know if you listen to Mark Maron's podcast.

Yes. WTF and Conan O'Brien, you know, he has. I mean, there's just these people who have access to the A-list, cream of the a-list yeah it's just extraordinary i know holy moses do you ever send emails or requests to people who are beyond the realms of realistic possibility yes and do you get responses no does that happen most of the time? Yeah. Yeah, I have the same experience. Total silence.

I have the same experience. The thing is that probably you and I have done exactly the same thing, right? When asked by other people to do things. Sure. You know, this is the thing. I tell these kind of stories as if I am always really good at getting back to people who ask me to do things. I know. And I'm fucking awful.

Yeah, I'm definitely worse than you. who asked me to do things i know and i'm fucking awful yeah i'm definitely worse than you i had it this morning where there's a kid i used to teach and he was working as a broker and doing quite well and decided he was going to give it all up to become an actor and he got in touch with me and said would it be possible to have a chat with you i know you're in that sort of area i know you're not an actor but would it be possible to have a chat and i said yes of course and i had a phone conversation with him and i said i'll keep in regular touch i'm happy to help you out as much as i can and i genuinely meant that and then i just became shit at getting back to him and then this morning i'm getting the train to come here and he's at the train station no yeah thankfully i'd replied to a text the previous

week he'd said to me can we have a chat and i said i'm away at the moment but i'll get in touch when i come back bumped into the train station and i just spent the first however long just apologizing to him because how i've behaved to him is so different to what my intentions are i really want to help him out. I really want to do everything I can to help this guy. He was a great kid. I mean, he's a great young man. And whatever I can do to help people,

I would love to. I would love to help him. But I'm just a shit person. And it became apparent to me from talking to him, I think to myself, your perception of how I feel about this is so different to how I actually feel about it. And that's because I've just been bad at admin,

at doing these things. Because I kept saying to him, man, I really want to do whatever I can. Please keep in touch with me in anything I can do. I'll try and get you in touch with the casting director. I'll try and send you details of agents that you can speak to. I'm saying all of this. And in my head, I'm thinking to myself, he doesn't believe i want to do any of this but i do i do it's just

i'm shit now everything you're very busy as well i guess so but it's it's no i think some people are good at that and some people are not and who knows what the reasons are and i'm defending you because i think i'm the same and i in my head i I think, oh, I'm a nice person. But it isn't nice to just, I should just fucking respond to emails when they come in and text and things like that. But I regularly will text people back. I mean, I think that I don't leave anyone hanging full stop. I don't just ignore it full stop. But sometimes it's as much as three or four weeks. And then I'll reply and i'm like oh i'm no

good at replying to texts but that's not really a good excuse just to say oh i'm not very good at that it's not very hard i know and then i think to myself well how can you say that you really want to help somebody if you haven't prioritized it because you can't want it that much. If I want to pay my tax bill, I do that. Yeah. As soon as it's required. Yeah. So I can't want to help this guy as much as I want to pay my tax bill. If you want to go to the toilet.

I do it. You go straight away to the toilet. If my wife texts me about something at home. Yeah. I tend to reply straight away. I don't. Do you not? No. Not always. at home yeah i tend to reply straight away i don't do not no not always i mean my excuse which is generally true is that i'm on my bike a lot of the time i on more than one occasion have been on the

phone to my wife when i've been out and about something i've had to go to do something and i said i'll call you back in a sec and then then just not called her back. And not realised. Go on about the rest of my day. Yeah. And I get back home, and I think she enjoys the reveal. LAUGHTER They got to get themselves a podcast I will do yours and you'll do mine We're sorting out the problems of the world so fast Are you religious?

No. Were you brought up religious? Yes. Were you? Vaguely. Kind of, you know, Protestant. Go to church every now and again yeah go to schools where you had to go to church sing hymns i like all of that yeah i do too i mean the good bits of religion are

pretty good i used to love going to the temple yeah my parents are hindu i used to love it it was a ball like because they would go to the temple went to is in wembley but i like being in places of worship so what do you do at temple you just sort of wander around there and it smells amazing you could ask for a blessing if you wanted and the priest would do it completely unintelligible to me and to everyone else i think it's in all in sanskrit and it was i love i really enjoyed it how long did it though? Did you have to sit down and do prayers and things like that? I'd be there for about half an hour. Oh, right.

Something like that. That's good. You see, for me, it was just total boredom. Right. You're in there for an hour. It's like, let us pray. Here we go. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Stand up. Do the hymn. I don't like this hymn this is boring i want to be at home watching tv yeah let us pray again okay and stand up and do another song blah blah blah blah blah blah and then i'm going to talk to you for 15 minutes now about some things that you should be doing and you should be thinking about let us pray again yeah and so i just thought it was a load of balls and i didn't like it and it didn't mean anything to me and i had no spiritual connection intellectual connection with it didn't see the value in it it was just a thing that i had to do that i didn't want to do right so that was my whole association with it and then when i got a bit older i found

myself i'd sort of pray when i wanted things yeah yeah yeah and i'd also pray to look after people and you know like can you help out this person and that person and look after mom and dad they don't seem to be having a nice time or whatever. So slightly altruistic. Very sweet. And that was quite comforting. And I had a kind of spiritual life, very, very vague. How old is this? Teens. Right.

Up to the end of my teens, probably. And then it just fell away when all my most selfish impulses took hold in my 20s. But now I'm 50 and people are dying members of my family etc and i'm going to more funerals and things like that i've had i've realized that the most comforting and meaningful times i've had recently have been in church at a funeral or whatever and listening to people talk about someone who died and how much they loved them and how much they meant to them and what that person was like and the whole ritual and the sense of community and religion at its best basically yeah it was really moving and

affecting and i just thought shit i i wish this was part of my life without all the other stuff. I find the idea of faith very reassuring because you sort of have faith in nothing, don't you? That's not true. I'm being needlessly harsh there. But I think that that sort of rock of faith, completely unshakable faith, I find amazing. Yeah, but it's like an act of massive self-delusion in a way but it depending on i mean this is a this is a big conversation i know apparently some people feel very strongly about this do you ever watch stuff online with people debating all this yeah yeah atheists going at it with yeah with uh

religious people and it's you never get anything out of it do you i mean you never come to the end of something and go no i think i've changed my mind a little bit do you know you know it'll just be really really clever atheists delivering zingers one after another and withering put downs of someone who's goofy enough to believe in something magical and unprovable and and you'll be in awe of sometimes if it's someone very articulate the religious person you're sort of like oh yeah they're brilliant and oh i don't know so i watched i don't know if you saw ricky gervais on he was on colbert and stephen colbert is religious and he asked basically opened up a debate to Ricky

who's obviously a passionate atheist and he said one of the things, one of the points he made was that if you were to destroy all books the science ones would be written again they would come back because people would

rediscover those things and that's the difference between science and religion and his thesis was that that wouldn't you couldn't say that about about religious books about the bike yeah yeah i don't think that's true though don't you i mean i think that that is a fundamental urge in people is to tell those stories and to believe those things they might write those books but say if if all of that was wiped say for that i think the point is making if all that was wiped from existence the memories of it or whatever yeah that the science books would be written because we'd rediscover all those things again whereas you're not going to get another bible that's identical to the previous bible do you know what i mean right that was the point he was making might be be even better, Bible 2.

Oh, because the thing is, because I rewatched, when you watch Force Awakens, I watched Force Awakens with my son, and Force Awakens is essentially a reboot of Star Wars. And I sat there with my son, he was absolutely gripped, and I watched that thinking, this is Star Wars for someone with his attention span. Because in the original Star Wars,

there's a 10-minute scene where Luke Skywalker's just in Obi-Wan Kenobi's living room and they're just talking about stuff. And there's nothing that requires that attention span in Force Awakens. It's just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I think that's what the Bible 2 would be like. Miracle after miracle.

You just can't breathe for miracles. It's just bang, bang. You think Jesus is done, he hits you with another one. And it would be like really good, exciting miracles as well. Wait. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop.

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Someday this war is gonna end hey welcome back podcats thanks very much indeed to romesh ranganathan you will find in the description of this podcast one or two Ramesh-related links, links to his excellent Hip Hop Saved My Life podcast, on which he has serious and not-so-serious discussions about the hip hop music he grew up on and is still passionate about, with a few sort of heavy hitters from the hip hop world, as well as a few total morons like myself. I was on there a while back. And Louis Theroux is on there as well, actually. That's quite a good episode.

Also a link to Ramesh's book. He wrote a book. Everyone's writing books. Straight Outta Crawley is Ramesh's book. He wrote a book. Everyone's writing books. Straight Outta Crawley is Ramesh's book. That's it for this week. I'm going to head back. A few more tweaks on the audio book. Going to record another podcast as soon as possible with someone else on lockdown.

Put that out as soon as I can. Until then, I hope you're doing okay. Whether you're at home or on the front line, I salute you. And in my mind, I hug you. I kiss you.

Not inappropriately, I would never do that. But, you know, if you're up for it, then yeah, a little bit inappropriately. And I just hope that you're doing all right. Okay. That was my sincere voice there. But I'm sincere. Till next time. Take the best of care. for goodness sake remember I love you BYE Thank you. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up It's nice to get back with a thumbs up Like and subscribe Like and subscribe

Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Thank you.