The Louis Theroux Podcast - S2 EP6: Sanjeev Bhaskar on his ground-breaking comedy show The Kumars at No. 42, 'browning up’ in 1970s comedy, and his outrageous rider demands

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Louis meets star of Goodness Gracious Me and Unforgotten, Sanjeev Bhaskar. They discuss the late Queen’s favourite comedy programme - The Kumars At No. 42, 'browning up’ in 1970s comedy, and outrageous rider demands. Plus, Louis plays ‘Culture Wars Bingo’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, let's do this. Hello, Louis Theroux here, and welcome to another episode of my Spotify podcast called, yes, the Louis Theroux podcast. I never get tired of that joke. I do get a bit tired of it. And today, we are hosting the wonderful, talented actor, writer and all-round comedy legend Sanjeev Bhaskar. And I should also add to that friend, well sort of friend, friendly presence in my life. In as much as I'd been aware of him when I was working in the BBC in the 90s and early 2000s,

working in the BBC in the 90s and early 2000s. He was coming to fame around the same time in his trailblazing sketch show, first of all, Goodness Gracious Me, which had four talented sort of main actors, all of them of Asian heritage, and which was themed along sort of the comedy of the British Asian experience. And then after that, with his brilliant groundbreaking talk show, which was called The Kumars at Number 42, in which the concept was that he was hosting the chat show from his home with his parents and his granny all living in the house with him as these bona fide real stars came in, Phil Collins and Ronnie Corbett and many others, and were interviewed. So it was a kind of improv, Larry Sanders-esque. The other reference, I suppose, would be The King of Comedy. If you've ever seen the Martin Scorsese film with Robert De Niro, in which he's called Rupert Pupkin, I think, hosts a chat show from the basement of his

mum's house. So what I'm saying is he is and was a huge star and someone who kind of reinvented the genre. How big was The Kumars at number 42? Well, try this. When the queen was asked what her favorite television show was, apparently she said The Kumars. And it was just one of those things that happened in the culture where for a while, everyone seemed to be tuning in and enjoying it and the catchphrase kiss my chuddies was on everyone's lips chuddies of course being a word for underpants and which entered the oed as a word there's not many people who can claim to have actually got a word into the dictionary but sanjeev and his colleagues on the show managed to do that.

And apparently the entry name-checked Sanjeev. Anyway, we recorded this conversation in person at the Spotify studio in December of last year. It was a great chat. We sat down for a good, I don't know, more than two hours, maybe even three, and we've boiled it down to a very tight what is it a little over an hour there are some strong language some adult themes and also some of the usual culture wars talking points which I don't know may cause some sort of disquiet and perhaps need flagging up I suppose it's been brought to my attention by myself that in a lot of these shows, for some reason, I ask about Woody Allen. A lot of the guests have worked with Woody Allen or Harvey Weinstein or their experience of either blacking up or browning up

or working with people who have browned up or blacked up or their opinions on that. So it's become a kind of, and that's just to name a few, there's a kind of canceled, uh, or what is it? Cultural wars, talking point, bingo, or a canceled man, bingo. Anyway, some kind of bingo. If you have a scorecard and you'd like to play at home, feel free to make one up and tick the boxes for this one. Well, Woody is in. Woody, can I call him that? Woody Allen. Harvey Weinstein is coming up. I'm kind of giving it away by Lawrence Fox. He's not actually, that's quite a rare Pokemon.

I'm mixing up my game metaphors. That's a very rare Pokemon. That's not funny, man. Is that funny? It is quite funny. All of that and much, much more coming up. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, a man who needs no introduction, Sanjeev Bhaskar. You did it anyway.

That's a new thing I'm trying out. I'm honoured. You know, I just saw that and I thought, it feels like a chat show, kind of. No, it is kind of. Isn't it kind of? It is kind of, yeah. Do you have a podcast? I don't have a podcast. You're the last person in Britain to not have their own podcast.

That was my aim. My aim was to be the last person in Britain. In the Western world, to not have his own podcast. How are you doing? How's everything going? You well? I'm okay, yeah. It's been a challenging month has it because you

lost your my dad yeah i'm sorry my condolences thank you very much it was kind of um and then we had to move out into a rental property um was he living with you no he wasn't he was kind of uh living in west london so he was in hounslow but the day after the funeral we had to move out of our house into this rental property because we found a leak under the floor oh so it wasn't related to the leak to the leak it would have been but not to the bereavement no no no it wasn't no no i know i mean i'm sure there are i mean if we dig deep enough i'm sure we'll find a culture it's all a metaphor just after exactly so we had yeah we had two days the two days after the funeral we had to kind of shift all of our stuff so and at

the end of that week it was our son's 18th birthday so it was like all life had been compressed into a week you know which was joyous in its own way but you know you kind of deal with whatever's put before you you know i'm quite good at not dealing with stuff that's not put before me. So that whole idea of the what-ifs. Yeah. And if that happened, then what would, and then the plan, and then what happens to the plan? You're good at ignoring the eventualities.

It kind of, yeah, because it's such a kind of treacherous road to go down. Because where do you stop? I'd like to talk about your dad but should we should we come back to that because i feel like it could get quite heavy and also i want to um i mean i feel like our lives have been our careers anyway in some ways have been on parallel tracks a little bit yeah do you know what it's interesting you say that because i i mean i'm a huge fan thank you and because i think i became aware of your stuff just as I was starting my career. And I think it's a weird thing when you do something, especially with telly,

you just become more aware of telly and what else is on and who else is on. And so that period, was it the Michael Moore stuff maybe? That was 94, 95. And then 98 was when Weird Weekends came. So 98 was when Goodness Gracious Me, which is the sketch show that I did, that went on telly in 98. So yeah, started watching you then.

So I feel like our lives, our careers were on parallel tracks. I was sort of coming onto TV mid-90s, late 90s. You were, as you said, doing Goodness Gracious Me and then The Kumars at number 42, which followed up reaching, I would say, even bigger audiences, would you? Yeah, it did, yeah. I mean, bigger audiences in Britain, but also it was the first thing I'd done which went international. So it was big in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, across Asia. It was shown in America on on bbc america at that time

but some of the best reviews we got were from sort of places or certain publications i'd never heard of i mean it was i'm probably making this up now but the san antonio sentinel or something like that where they had no idea of who some of the guests were the british guests but they got the format so yeah that was the first thing I did, which was kind of, I think, was quite big, I suppose. But Goodness Gracious Me was big too, but maybe not as international, is that what you mean? It wasn't as international.

It probably had a bigger cultural impact here than Kamars did. I mean, other than bootleg videos, which was big business in India, certainly. So umpteen people in India watched a kind of 25th generation copy, slightly worn out and sound going and crackly picture. And I mean, I would like to sort of talk about, goodness gracious, me and the Kumars, but I'm also aware that's 15, 20 years ago.

Are you all right diving back? Because it feels like, in a way way correct me if i'm wrong the purest expression of maybe your sensibility and certainly the part of your work that was um did most to sort of challenge the landscape or at least change the landscape of british tv does that make sense yeah it makes sense yeah um it was quite a traditional sketch show, actually. The difference being that it was written and performed and produced by British Asians. And that hadn't happened before. And so...

It was you and your talented, brilliant wife, Meera Sayal, although she wasn't then your wife. She wasn't then my wife, no. She is now. She is. Nina Wadia and... Kulvinder Gheer. Who's very good. Yeah, yeah.

One of the best physical comedians I've ever seen, actually. So, traditional sketch show, but with an Asian twist. Yeah, and it was kind of... It was a viewpoint that hadn't been seen on TV before. And so,

we were able to do a mixture of some satirical stuff, some commentary on society, but also just silly. And I think we set out sensibilities were comedy first and political, if at all, second. And so people can understand our politics through small p politics through uh the sketches rather than you know the sketches should kind of like express your politics and so that allowed us to kind of do silly stuff we did songs we did kind of uh as i said you know in many ways a very traditional sketch show but through a prism i think that hadn't really been explored before perhaps most famously

like your version of the dead parrot sketch if you like is probably the i want to go for an english that's it yeah is it am i right that was in the first episode of the first series it was yeah yeah so you scored a home run right out the gate if i can mix my metaphors you absolutely can um yeah that was that was our kind of dead parrot sketch i mean it was uh who wrote it let's shout out the so it was it was two writers who who were the main two writers on the show charlotte sadana who is no longer with us unfortunately and richard pinto his writing partner and the very front of the sketch vitelli i wrote which was like a mock cinema ad that you used to see here,

certainly when you were growing up. It was like for a restaurant around the corner or something. It was very grainy. That's right, yeah. Almost shot in Super 8. That's right. Bad music. Yeah.

Slightly out of sync. Out of sync, yeah. That was giving me flashbacks to the cinema in Putney in the sort of early 80s. This is a cinema. Why does the ad look worse than things I see on TV? Yeah, it was good. But also, it was that wonderful mixture of,

you'd get at that time the very famous Pearl and Dean jingle. I'd sing the jingle, but we'd probably have trouble clearing it. Yeah. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. I think you can get away with that. Yeah. And then you-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. I think you can get away with that. Yeah. And then you'd have an advert for sort of local sort of shops. Yeah, like literally like a newsagent.

Yeah. Not a newsagent, but it'd be a restaurant or... I mean, it would be, I mean, there would be things like, you know, Himalaya, Indian restaurant, 20 yards from the cinema. You know, it was kind of like as if I've just been to see Indiana Jones. Yeah. And what I really want to do now is buy a carpet. Exactly. And go for a meal. the cinema you know it was kind of like as if i've just been to see indiana jones yeah and what i really want to do now is buy a carpet exactly and go for a meal you know 20 yards from the

cinema but you're you're so in your skit they advertise mount batten's i believe it was the mount batten english restaurant in downtown mumbai where you know the chef will delight you with his wonderful english cuisine which includes uh you know, potatoes and also peas. That was about it. And so the skip was a reversal gag on, at that time in the 90s, people would, in Britain certainly would, it became a shorthand to go for an Indian on a Friday night. So these were five people from Mumbai going out for an English on a Friday night

in Mumbai. And so where is he? Logged up, basically behaving a bit like pissed up, none too polite, none too decorous kind of English or British people who are, think it's funny to make fun of the accent of the waiter. Yeah. And we did a few like that. It became a sort of calling card. So we had deli backpackers coming to England to find themselves, to go on the kind of like spiritual trail. Where did they go? They went to London's famous convent garden. My favorite thing at the time was the evening paper in London, the evening standard. It's now a sort of freebie that you pick up as you're going around town.

But at that time, you paid for it. It wasn't much. But there was a great bit where Mira and Nina are haggling with this guy over an Evening Standard. He goes, it's 15p. And they go, yeah, don't give us tourist prices. The ones that tickled me in particular, one I watched last night in which it's a Muslim couple whose son converts to Judaism. Yeah, yeah.

And then you play the son who walks in sort of doing a Woody Allen impersonation and quite a good one. Thank you very much. and quite a good one, may I say. Thank you very much. And actually, there is a sort of political or at least a kind of cultural commentary going on to do with Jewish and Muslim relations being strained and then actually the deep kind of things that they have in common.

Yeah. That seemed to be what was going on in the text. That was one of the ones I wrote, but yeah. Was it? Can you still do a Woody Allen? You know, I can try. You know, it's trying. Sometimes the consonants...

I know that's where it starts. It starts. It starts. It's like, you know, there's a bit too much on the end of the word. Yeah, yeah. I wish I could... I can't believe you would do that. There you go.

When I'm called upon to do an impression, I go into final flight response when you say called upon i mean you called yourself i did yeah just want to make that clear i hadn't suddenly employed semaphore or something that people can't say it was me directing myself saying turn up louis this is your moment and then there's a series um not a series, there's a running series of sketches to do with a family or a couple called the Coopers. Yeah, it's two couples, the Coopers and the Robinsons. And they're actually called the Kapors and the Rabindranaths, but they refuse to accept they're anything but traditionally British. but traditionally British.

So interestingly here, when various members of the British Asian community have reached high offices of government, whether it be foreign secretary, home secretary or prime minister, somebody will send me either a clip or a photo of the Coopers and the Robinsons because they were trying to be more British than the British. So they hated immigrants. They hated kind of like, you know, if anyone referred to them as

being immigrants, they would be, you know, absolutely. They called themselves Chigwellian, Chigwell's place in Essex. So it was that refusal to kind of accept who they really were. And so, you know, whether it's been Rishi Sunak or Swela Braverman or Priti Patel, someone will always send me a reference point to those characters and kind of go, ah, they're just them. It's your fault. Yeah, it's interesting because obviously in the context of,

for the global audience such as we have, you know, we in the UK have a political class in which for both good and ill, we have you know we in the uk have a political class in which for both good and ill we have um many of the highest offices of state occupied by people of asian heritage including our prime minister rishi sunak also suella bravman who recently resigned sajid javid nadim zahawi which is a strange it's a strange situation, isn't it? Strange that in many cases, the most right wing, the most unapologetic proponents of what one might characterize as exclusionary policies. I mean, I go to bat for them in some cases. I mean, I have a I have a kind of, you know, theory about that.

Go on. Which is that a lot of British Asians voted for brexit voted for leaving the european union and i asked my mom why that was why so many of her friends had voted brexit and her first answer was they said there are too many albanians and i said that's way too specific i know that your friends couldn't tell an albanian from someone from greece or you know any part other part of europe to be quite honest. But I think it was that when they arrived, that generation arrived, they suffered the exclusions and they suffered the kind of, I mean, you know, racism is probably too strong a word to

throw in this early, but certainly prejudices they were subject to. And I think this was their first chance to prove how British they were by going going yeah britain britain alone yeah we don't need europe and look at all these kind of you know east europeans are coming here what about them so all the things that they were subject to i think unthinkingly they kind of played that out so i think in some respects i'm not surprised that you have people who are to the right of the political spectrum who happen to be British Asian because their parents probably suffered, you know, a level of prejudice that they didn't. And subconsciously, you're aware of that. And so if you then kind of want to prove your patriotism in some way, that becomes a very simple sort of banner to fall behind.

So well, a Braverman at times seems almost comically reactionary. Well, that's why the Coopers characters are thrown at me particularly because it's almost beyond satire. You know what? This is so boring for you, but we should probably do your... I think people would probably find it interesting how you came to be on TV because you came to it,

people always say quite late, although you were in your, what, mid, early 30s, mid 30s? Mid 30s. That is quite late to start. I suppose it is. Yeah, I wanted to be an actor or a writer or something creative

since I was four or five years old. And this feels like an apocryphal story, but it actually happened. But when I was four or five years old. And this feels like an apocryphal story, but it actually happened. But when I was about five, an uncle came to our house and said, well, young man, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, actor.

And my dad said, it's pronounced doctor. And I've heard you say that before. And I always assumed it was a joke. No, it wasn't. It was true. And it took me then 30 years to get started on it and it was but you know that 30 years was spent kind of uh mostly feeling like a failure because i tried to do what i thought would please my parents i was very very aware of how hard it had been and was for them when I was growing up.

So I remember being five, six years old and thinking, I'm recognizing the slights that are made at their expense more than they are. You know, subtle little put downs here and there. When you're out at the shops, like a tone of voice or a vibe? Yeah. So, you know, a patronizing tone. I remember somebody who came to our house once. My dad was given a painting that someone at the factory that he worked in had given him. The Nestle factory.

The Nestle factory in West London. And so he'd been given this painting. And they'd never had a painting before. They didn't know anything about art that wasn't a particular interest of theirs, but they were given this painting, an oil painting in a frame. And I was 15 at that time. And someone came to the house and they very, they were showing everybody who came to the house. I said, look, we've got a painting. It's a real painting. And this person said, uh, yeah, it looks like cheap constable there, doesn't it? And I thought, you know that my parents don't know who Constable is.

And I was absolutely incensed. Really? And I was 15. And I said to this person, I said, which Constable painting has a stream in it then? I didn't know, but I was pretty damn sure they didn't either. And then they kind of backtracked. And I said, oh, you probably don't know. I think it's the Hayane isn't it yeah is it is but that's not the point of the story no uh no i then looked it up but um but it was you know and that's the subtle end of the uh the put

downs um but also i remember what was we lived above a laundrette. Which your dad owned? Which my dad owned, yeah. So he worked in a factory and then ran this laundrette as well. He was anyway an exemplar of a very classical kind of Asian entrepreneurship. Like working in a factory, buying his own laundrette. I mean, just that on its own is kind of... It's very impressive. It wasn't unusual.

Well, this is on its own kind of. It's it's it's very impressive. It wasn't unusual. But also, I think that people always forget this about an immigrant work ethic, which is that people don't move to have tea breaks and holidays. They move to work. That is the primary purpose for if they're economic migrants, they're there to kind of earn money, send it back to their families to support their families. They're there to kind of earn money, send it back to their families to support their families. And I remember this as, you know, being said to me as a criticism, which was kind of like, well, I just, you know, they're just sending the money back. And you go, yeah, no, they're paying their taxes and they're spending money in shops and restaurants and cinemas and all the rest of it. And whatever money they have left, it's kind of up to them what they do with it.

You know, whether they go and buy a Rolls Royce or whether they kind of go and gamble or whether they send it back to support their family. And so, so many people did that. And so, for many of them, it wasn't, it was a temporary move. Then they had children and then children went to school and established kind of friends.

And so, they ended up staying. But I've always found it really interesting. My dad came to Britain in 1956. Now, this is 10 years, less than 10 years since British rule in India. And I've always found that fascinating that so many people, I mean, in the modern parlance, it would be, you know, to choose to go and live in the land of the oppressor. And I think that's fascinating that they had grown up with a view of Britain, which was given to me by my dad particularly, which was the British R.

Actually, do you know an interesting thing? I did a documentary series when I went to India. And I didn't on camera because i just forgot and uh but i did put it in a book that i wrote afterwards i asked people what this would have been around gosh 2007 ish i said randomly if i say the word britain to you what words come in india you're asking people yeah all of them said more or less the same thing which was they kind of said You're asking people, right. All of them said more or less the same thing,

which was they kind of said, good manners, very polite people, law and order, very important, creativity, literature, Shakespeare, music, Beatles. And that was their view of Britain. And I remember thinking and writing in the book, it seems such a shame that we don't aspire to the way that we're seen. And my dad came with exactly those,

that notion of those credentials as being british and sort of like encouraged us to follow those you know be polite work hard and embrace the the cultural aspects which was the kind of the you know music and literature particularly dickens and you know all that sort of stuff is what they would quote at me and Your parents would? Yeah. Really? Yeah, in terms of fitting in. You know, as children of migrants,

the one thing that your parents want for your kids is that you can fit in in a way and be a part of society that they couldn't. And so for them, whether it was language, whether it was accent, whether it was cultural reference points, you know, they couldn't. They never felt like they completely fitted in. Whereas me being born in London, I had the same cultural reference points as anybody else,

except I had a bunch more via my parents. But in terms of pop music and films and TV and, you know, all those cultural touch points, I had exactly the same as everyone else. So, you know, that notion of fitting in was more embedded in me than it was for them. They always felt like they were outsiders. It's worth reflecting that your dad came to England having already been displaced once, in one sense, like this was part of a longer journey he was making from his ancestral

homeland in the Punjab. Is that right? Yeah. So he was in sort of British India. He was in what then became Pakistan. So India and Pakistan were created in 1947 when the British pulled out. And it is still to date the biggest exodus in history. It was kind of 15 million people, I think.

Were displaced, uprooted, moved. A million people i think were displaced uprooted moved a million people lost their lives uh and that was just on the western border so there's a monument on the border between pakistan and india to the one million people that died um so it was partition which i think it was to do with like obviously said, well, we've got Hindus and we've got Muslims and we better basically have them on different sides of the border, right? Yeah, well, that became the reasoning for it. So there were the British governments of the time, they were kind of afraid of not having any influence in that area. So it's also called the Great Game, which was influence in that area so it's you know it's also called the great game which was influence in that part of asia so between britain which was the main kind of colonial power and the

russians who were kind of like you know trying to extend their influence from the north famously brought to life in the sean connery michael caine film the man who would be king that's right based on a story by kipling i think kipling yeah well that's largely in afghanistan is it it is but it was part of the same yeah it was it was that border yeah they were kind of like fairly porous geopolitics was like a game i guess anyway and so that was being played out particularly in that part of the world and so i think britain was worried about losing influence and so they thought at that time, if they could separate and support separate Muslim homelands in that area, that they could retain some sort of influence in that area. So they created two countries, Pakistan and India. There was West Pakistan

and East Pakistan. East Pakistan then latterly at the beginning of the 70s had its own war of independence and became Bangladesh. But the irony has always been that there have always been more Muslims in India than there ever could be in Pakistan or Bangladesh. So I think India has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. So there are more Muslims in India than there are across the Arabian Gulf, just in terms of numbers. At the risk of sounding naive, is there a scenario where there was no partition and what was then the Raj just became a big country that included Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India? Yeah, I think probably up until the early part of the last century,

that was the case. So they were all part of one party, which was a kind of what they had in common was to you know get the british out and to self-rule but i think that idea of a separate homeland started to be um the idea was kind of implemented you know it always probably been around but that's where it became a serious thing so muhammad ali jinnah who became the head of the muslim, which were initially, you know, connected to the Congress Party of India, which was Nehru and Gandhi himself.

Gandhi didn't want any kind of separation of state. He kind of went, we're one people, we've all got this in common, we've got language and food and blah, blah, blah. And it should be an egalitarian country and i think i mean despite subsequent governments i think that the constitution of india is still secular i think by constitution so um that's what gandhi wanted but um is that dream still alive in any form the idea of a state that unifies pakistan bangladesh and india you don't hear about that very much i don't think there is i don't think there is i think there's now almost too much history that's happened for that to to walk back but certainly there is maybe a quieter voice now than it has been in the

past but uh an idea of a secular india i think is still quite a strong idea although that has been eroded by various kind of like, you know, right-wing sort of parties and views and government since. But yeah, I thought that was one of the strengths of India was that there was no national religion. And in fact, the symbol on the India-Pakistan border is a combination of all the other religious symbols, which makes a statement in and of itself. is a combination of all the other religious symbols,

which makes a statement in and of itself. So at that time, Hindus and Sikhs, non-Muslims, I suppose, who found themselves in those areas of East and West Pakistan had to move to what then became India, and Muslims went in the opposite direction. So if you were, quote-unquote, on the wrong side of the border to be part of the majority religious affiliation, you were not forced to or you were? You were forced to move or you just thought,

I'd better prudentially move, otherwise it's not going to be good? You weren't forced legally, but there were other pressures. There were rampaging people. There was some sense of a very heightened atmosphere of incipient violence. Yeah, and the two wagon trails going in opposite directions from India to Pakistan were sometimes only yards apart. And so the violence erupted then, trains that were going from one direction to the other. People were massacred on the trains. I mean, it was a million people to a lot of people. There's an extraordinary bit in your India documentary series.

When did that go out, by the way? 2007 or 8. Yeah. Yeah. In the second episode, where you go back to find your sort of old homestead, or rather your father's, which is now in Pakistan. And you arrive at the temple at Amritsar, which is a Sikh temple, and you meet a man who tells you, do you remember?

I do. An amazing story. Yeah, it was horrific. Yeah. It's one of the only occasions I think I've interviewed somebody and inadvertently discovered my hands over my mouth. I didn't realize it until I started to speak. But he was, yeah, he was a Sikh kid in a village in what was Pakistan. And his father had been head man of this village. And they were aware that there was a baying bloodlust mob that was surrounding the village that they said,

they're just going to kill us. They're going to kill all of us. So they made the decision that they would fight to the death, but to stop the women from falling into their hands. Being converted to Islam. Yeah, or worse. It was that they would kill their own uh women and they had this discussion and it was the head man's daughter the guy i was interviewing his sister who proffered her head first which was duly removed i mean it was just i i'd never heard anything like that certainly not firsthand and i kind of said what happened then and he said well they when they saw that they kind of backed off effect the mob backed off they kind of went okay

this isn't going to end well for us and so they backed off at that point you know i don't know i've never been in a situation where i can't see any way out and i don't know what happens to your head at that point so you know whether that was a pragmatic move, whether it was a practical move, what it was was a story about sacrifice at its most extreme level. And so, yeah, there were many instances of that kind of horrific,

almost ritualistic approach to death. I think you find that the more east you go, actually. I think there's a very Western view of killing and death and all that sort of stuff, which is not as ritualistic. And so I think incrementally, as you go further east, we can read about things or hear about things that we think is kind of savage and and brutal which it is but it's within a different cultural kind of uh context it makes sense to them you know martyrdom for instance is not something that you know is a concept in the west that we kind of have grown up not anymore although it's foundational to the church of england really but it all happened in the late 16th century with people being burned by mary the

first and fox's book of martyrs was a big part of they'd say was go this is the part where i quote nietzsche who said well this isn't very apposite but he said a good war will make any cause sacred and the idea that once blood is spilt any belief system becomes almost sort of consecrated by that by that example and that sort of sense of the stakes being raised do you know that reminds me of a quote by chaplin in a film called monsieur verdue it was one of his kind of talkies so after the great dictator and he played a serial killer in paris chaplin yeah interesting yeah it's kind of it's a really interesting film and so he basically murders uh widows for their money befriends them and then kills them and takes the money and sorry if it's a spoiler to anyone but

and he gets caught and in the end he says look i did this to support my family because the you know a priest or something says to me you've got a wife and kids and when you're thinking about them and he said that's exactly why i've done this i've done this purposefully you know these were widows they were approaching the end of their lives they had no other family i was very careful and so these three or four women i killed them for the money so i could support my family and kids and he says at one point you know in war hundreds of thousands if not millions are killed you know and chaplin's line is he said numbers sanctify you know which was that yeah somebody who kills three or four people is a monster which obviously they are. But once you get into huge numbers,

then it's sanctified in some way. It's a cause. So your father was one of those displaced and he went to Delhi or New Delhi? He went to Delhi or New Delhi. It's the same thing. Well, the new bit is just newer. It's more recent.

They're all part of the same city. It's the same city. Yeah, yeah. New Delhi, I think, became... It's not like York and New York. It's very different. I'm trying to think of other places now which have got new in front of it.

New York, New Delhi. New Malden? New Malden. Is that near Malden? I mean, it has to be, doesn't it? I've been to New Maldon. Have I been to Maldon? Most of the time it's in America, like New York, New Orleans.

But New Maldon is not southwest of London. It is, yeah. So that's not part of the New World. Is it New Maldon? It's a strange concept. I mean, maybe they just built it over Maldon. It's part of the colonial project maybe they were trying to tell the king like we've made huge inroads we've now established new malden and then just pretended it was like in america

um so basically your dad having been moved or you know moved himself moved himself to Delhi and then he's already, his ancestral, his centuries old, the continuity they had as a family, the lineage had been severed. And so now, having been a stranger in Delhi, he was then a stranger in West London. I mean, they were refugees in Delhi. So they lived in refugee encampments and stuff like that. But you're absolutely right. It's no surprise to me that most of the people who came to Britain or Canada or the US in the 60s and the 70s were part of that group that had been displaced, whether it was on the Bangladeshi side, or whether it was on the Punjabi side or Gujarat underneath, is that these were people who'd been displaced. So that was a much bigger displacement for them. Whereas, as you say, you know, they had, you know, centuries of kind of connection to that land. And your mum came over a bit later.

A few years later, yeah. And then you grew up with this sort of foot in both worlds. And when I read about you going back and forth, you sort of would do your summer holidays back in india right to reconnect you to the mother yeah it would be well it'd be once every kind of five or six years oh it wouldn't be that often no because the tickets were expensive and so we what we didn't have were regular holidays here so uh across the summer my dad would be working. My mum then started work as well. And it would take my dad four or five years to save up the money

for us all to be able to go. So my summers were really stuck in a room in Hounslet above the laundrette. Really? Yeah, which was okay. I mean, you accept the reality that's given to you. Not even like, I don't know, like caravanning or B&B? No, we never understood caravanning. It was kind of like, I mean, there was a line in the Kamars

when we were interviewing someone once about somebody who was outdoorsy and went camping. And we said, look, why do you live in a tent for three weeks? I mean, we moved here to get away from that kind of lifestyle. And this idea of putting a small box room on wheels and then driving around in that, what's that about? No, we had, I remember as a kid, we went to Wales for four days where it constantly rained. And we had an old estate car that wouldn't go up hills. So we had to get out to lighten the load so it could go up.

And then we'd be on top of this hill and my dad would be going, and this is Lake Bala. And we couldn't see a thing. It was just, and so my experience of Wales was just, it was mist and rain and, you know, land of intrigue because I hadn't seen anything. So we did that and we went to the Lake District once for three days. In hindsight, was it kind of fun or?

It was okay. It was kind of, as I said, as a kid, you just accept the reality. Do you have siblings? I have a younger sister. So it'd be the four of you? It'd be the four of us. And I think four of us and somebody visiting from India. So that would be the treat for them. Right. So it was more for them in a way. It was more for them. Yeah. Otherwise my dad would just be at the Nestle factory doing overtime, which I didn't mind

at all because, I mean, I've always been very comfortable with my own company, but that was a time to read and watch things. And it was all that kind of thing. What were you watching? Gosh, at that time, and the things that we watched. You were born in 63? Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm seven years younger, but still, it wasn't radically... We're similar vintage. Yeah. You were probably watching a lot of Open University, were you? I mean, Open University... Because that was the only thing that was on a lot of the time. It was quite intriguing, Open University.

I couldn't watch it for long, but it was that weird thing where it was some bearded bloke with patches on his elbows. Yeah, and huge flares in front of a blackboard in front of a blackboard yeah talking about subatomic particles for younger listeners we should explain that there used to be just uh well i i remember only three channels that's right and um there was no internet no maybe i don't have to say that but i think it's worth reminding people so instead of 10 million youtube, not to mention sundry streamers and cable, you had three things that you could watch on TV. And a lot of the time, none of them were showing anything. So it would be a test

card of a girl playing noughts and crosses on a blackboard with a doll. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. And you would put that on. It was a clown. With a clown, you're right. Even that was better than nothing. Yeah, I mean, they even had, which I very vaguely remember, a potter's wheel. Right.

It was just a potter's wheel. Somebody sort of, you know, throwing... Throwing pots. Throwing pots. That was on a loop? Yeah. They never finished the pot. I mean, it was like, this was kind of going to be the most extraordinary pot.

And you kind of then look at kind of Chinese pots from the Ming Dynasty, and you go, they made thousands of them. How did it take them? Exactly. So do you remember the moon landing? Because you would have been, what, six or seven years old? Yeah, I kind of do. I was woken up to watch these grainy images.

I had no idea what was going on. But my mum woke me up because there was this moment in history. I remember looking at it and thinking, it's not as good as Star Trek. I mean, you know, what's going on? A, it's black and white. It's so boring. B, it's, yeah, it's quite dull. And, you know, and dull and you know and also you know subsequently you kind of go well that extraordinary quote you know the short step for

man one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind is i mean that's an extraordinary quote it's a fantastic quote he had it written beforehand had he do you think he'd been practicing yeah he had it written down and then he bungled it if you listen he goes that's one small step for man one giant leap for mankind and he was supposed to say for a man oh was it yeah of course that's the whole thing for a man being me taking a step one giant leap for mankind but if you say that's one small step for man you're contradicting yourself one giant leap for mankind yeah yeah yeah now i've got just images of him looking at a mirror going one giant walk no yeah well he would i wonder if he got help he probably got someone a ghost writer you he would have known like i better say something cool when i step onto

onto the moon as opposed to wow here we are feels weird. This feels so weird. Everything's slow. I would have liked to have been in that room where they were workshopping different lines. That would have been great, wouldn't it? Hi, I'm Louis Theroux, and you're listening to the Louis Theroux Podcast. And now, back to my conversation with Sanjeev Bhaskar. How are you doing? How's your energy? Yeah, it's good. Do you need anything?

No, no, no. I mean, no, I still have some of my rider. Your rider? Yeah. I kind of like, just to explain that, I kind of emailed you to kind of say, no one's discussed my rider and I'm going to list my rider now. Coffee. And that was it. And so the first time I was on the Parkinson show, which was the big talk show to be on. How many times were you on it?

Three. God, boast much. Calm down. You asked me, what am I going to do? Make something up? I suppose I could have done. How many times have I been on it? Once. Nonce. what are they going to do make something up I suppose I could have done how many times have I been on it once nunce ah you see I've imagined you on it you were brilliant

by the way nunce you were brilliant in my imagination you were fantastic on it so the first time I was on they said to me

what about your rider and I said my what and they said rider and I said what is it I have no idea I thought they were talking

horses or bikes or something and I said I don't know what that is and they said, Ryder. And I said, what is it? I have no idea. I thought they were talking horses or bikes or something. And I said, I don't know what that is. And they said, what would you like in your room beforehand? And I said, well, what have other people asked for? And this is reportage here. This is just what I was told. So they said that Paul McCartney had asked for organic fruit. That made sense.

They said Michael Crawford had asked for warm sliced chicken breast uh j-lo had asked for the whole room to be white stop it white room white couch and mariah carey you can't put that on a rider you put anything you want on a ride i mean the whole blue m&ms thing started from some rock man that's right famously well rock bands used to increase their cachet by making outrageous unfulfillable demands so yeah you can do that sort of stuff apparently and mariah carey had asked for puppies and kittens to stroke come on this is what i was told you're not making that up no this is what i was told and at at the end of it, she said, I said, you're kidding. And she went, no, no, that's what people have asked for.

And she said, what would you like? And I said, some coffee would be nice. And that's how down to earth you are. I couldn't think of anything more ludicrous. I mean, I couldn't have said a jet ski or something like that. That would have been interesting. Is that legally actionable, do you think? Mariah Carey.

It may not be true. It may not be true. That's all we need to say. I mean, you know, that's what Iiah Carey... It may not be true. It may not be true. That's all we need to say. I mean, you know, that's what I was told, but it may not be true. I don't think it's libelous. It might be. It's a non-themed one.

I don't understand how it would be libelous. If you said to torture, she wanted puppies and kittens to torture before she went on the show, that would be libelous. Yeah, because there's an inbuilt character thing there. Do you remember in the 70s, there used to be these rumors that went around

where you said such and such a pop star demanded 20, not as a rider, just as recreation, a number of baby chicks because he wanted to stamp on them. Do you remember that story? I don't remember that one specifically, no. Do you remember the one about

such and such a pop star collapsed on the way to a gig and had his stomach pumped and they found the semen of 20 different men? I do remember that one. And I remember who it was said about. More than one person. Well, 20. The semen. But there were two pop stars. One was RS and one was MA. ma yeah the second one was the one that

i recall i like the vision that it conjures of the doctors saying good god this looks like semen have it tested to see how many different men it is like so they'd go to the trouble but not even tested it may be somebody with that instinctive thing that looks like semen i'm saying it's 20 20 20 but i'd like confirmation you want to get it take it to the lab it's the jaws moment yeah it's how many men semen do you think that is 20 25 25 gonna need a bigger vial yeah um there was one other one which was oh um such and such a pop star would pass around a mug and have everyone spit in it oh yeah i do so that he could drink it yeah i do recall that one and that was on his rider

i demand a mug with the semen of 20 men and another mug with the spit and sputum of 20 other men. But they can't be the same men. We've very much, we've lowered the tone. One of the things that's striking about your story is, well, not just that you came to fame relatively late, but there was also this sort of previous life in which you worked, having gone to college and studied marketing. Business and marketing. Business and marketing. Done a bit of drama, which you then sort of to college and studied marketing business and business marketing done a bit of drama which you then sort of that fell by the wayside not having done much drama at school or any i think none either the a levels i did pure and applied maths physics and

economics were not the natural ones for me to do and so that was about trying to please my parents trying to sort of fit in you know with, with parent society, what other people were doing. There was no one around me that kind of really was interested in films and music and creativity. And it was only when I met Nitin Sawni that I found a kindred spirit. Nitin Sawni, the celebrated and much garlanded and brilliant musician and composer. I mean, he's a phenomenon in terms of he's, you know,

one of the few geniuses I've ever met. And, yeah, we kind of, I mean, we were, funny enough, I saw him last night for dinner and we were talking about it. We kind of both talked about the fact that there was nobody that we could see in the public eye that reflected our experience of being British and of Asian heritage, South Asian heritage.

And so we said, why don't we do something? And why don't we mix comedy and music? And so that's been riven through everything I've done. So whether it was sketches on Goodness Gracious Me or Kumar's or anything else that I've come up with, it's preconceptions I'm playing with. And that was born out of that partnership with Nits and Sawney because it was, well, there are going it's preconceptions i'm playing with and that was born out of that partnership with nits and sawney because it was well there are going to be preconceptions about two south asian

blokes on stage how do we mess with that so we would do sketches but then he would suddenly play a flamenco piece and then we'd do some impressions and then we'd sing volare in italian yeah and so in a way it was a challenge to the audience to kind of go, you guess what's coming next. And so that really, if I hadn't met him, I don't think it would have remained this pipe dream. It all seemed so distant. If you hadn't met Nitin,

you think you might never have gone on and fulfilled your creative ambitions? I don't think so. I don't think I would have had the confidence. I would have always had the interest and the passion but uh never have had the confidence so a bit like your well whether it was confidence or circumstances but you've spoken about your dad having creative ambitions wanting to be a film director yeah you're never having the opportunity to do that yeah you know he knew what it felt like to close the lid shut on a passion and so i think he didn't want that for his son so i didn't know that he was interested and had pursued it

to some degree until i was in my 40s and so it's one of the things that i'm the many things i'm grateful for in terms of the relationship with my dad was that his first 30 years were incredibly traumatic for him and his next 30 years were just about working and providing and so I'm really grateful that he had 30 years where he saw the fruits of that you know and he was happy and you know saw me do well and you know was he very proud of you yeah I think he was yeah towards the the end it wasn't you know demonstrative 30 years oh really because one of the things was also i heard you say well his sense of unrealized artistic ambitions maybe made him less tolerant right of your artistic bent right and i was thinking well it could just as

easily be the other way around where he thought don't make the mistake i made son pursue your dream you know don't get locked up in a preconception about you know needing to be a professional yeah i think i mean i think that's perfectly valid i think but also you know going back to what a migrant mentality is is that you kind of go, I don't fit in. I want my kids to fit in. I want to be able to see that my kids are an integral part of this society more than I can be. And that becomes paramount. And so that then is about safety. And so whether it's about those kind of jobs, which you think are essential to society, being a doctor or being a lawyer or something like that, an engineer or something that's vital and important, you think are essential to society, being a doctor or being a lawyer or something like that,

an engineer or something that's vital and important, you think that will be the shorthand for your kid being settled and viable, financially viable, certainly. And then things will build from that. There's a stability that comes from that. The problem is now in the modern world, there is no stability to any of those kind of jobs. And to me, the journey is everything. So, you know, everything else are stepping stones,

you know, they're going to go on to something else in some shape, way or form. And so then it becomes about do you control your narrative? So for me, it was about getting confident enough to go, I'm going to start writing my story, no matter what. And I think my dad at that point, then also realized that I was writing a story that he had some familiarity with. So basically you had a bit of success at university, but not so much that you thought, this is it. This is what I'm doing. It didn't feel as though the scales fell from your eyes and you thought, I was born to do this and I can never look back. No, I mean, I loved it. And this is what we were talking about last night,

Nitin and I, that we would spend maybe a month coming up with material and then we'd do one show. And that was it. And that was it. Yeah, and then we just wouldn't do anything else for another year. I mean, it was kind of, it really was our enjoyment and the reactions were great,

but it wasn't a commercial environment. Where were you at university? It was then Hatfield Polytechnic, University of Hertfordshire now. Right. Yeah. But if you had been at the, you know, the cliches that, you know, Oxford or is it Cambridge, the Cambridge Footlights, and then you meet your Emma Thompson and your Stephen Fry, and then you're part of this little talented group that goes on and makes movies. But I suppose it was a little different.

The agents from London weren't trekking up to the talent spot, the next Peter's friends. Not in Hatfield. But also the Footlights at Cambridge had a history. So you could go back and you could look at Peter Cook and you could look at John Cleese and people like that at that time. And you say there was a history so you could go back and you you could look at you know peter cook and you could look at john cleese and people like that at that time and you say you know there was a history to that so there was a well-worn path but um no we were just two people who were studying different things who had a friendship who did this stuff and watching tv growing up and then later you know i would be remiss if i didn't mention that, surprise, surprise, some of the content was, well, slightly racist, right? That actually on shows like Ain't Half Hot Mum.

Yeah. Do you remember that one? I do, yeah. It's interesting you bring that one up because I've always defended it. We used to watch it in our house. And, you know, I even hesitated when I used the word racist because that's a strong term. It is. They didn't set out to say, like, let's make a program that's really racist.

Notwithstanding that, it had a guy who was, I guess, browned up. An actor was playing. Michael Bates. Michael Bates played the character. Ranji Ram. You got it right. Yeah. I've always defended that program, actually.

Go on. Talk about that. I mean, I get the browning up thing. And I understand you wouldn't do that now but you see my kind of litmus test for shows that were racist on tv were how it impacted on me and the impact on me was illustrated by what names i got called in the playground the next day. So shows that were big here, like Till Death Us Do Part,

which in America, I think, was it All in the Family? Oh, All in the Family. Yeah, you're right. In America, it was All in the Family and it was Archie Bunker. Yeah. And so after those shows, you know...

Which was lauded as a kind of the time, oh, we're making fun of the bigoted attitudes of the suburban man. That's right. And he was sort of racist, but it was framed as we're laughing at how small minded he is. And he had a more progressive son. Right. And in fact, everyone around him was more progressive. Yeah.

Wife was. But the devil had the best lines. Yeah. And so those are the shows the next day that i got called names really way to school or in the playground i remember saying to someone once about the racism stuff i got school and they said well kids can be cruel and i said i'm not talking about the kids i'm talking about the teachers and so really yeah i got i got called names and all the rest of it from adults. Forget about kids.

Kids you could deal with. But it ain't our top mum, which, to explain the premise of the show. Thank you. If nothing else comes of this episode, if it gives a second life, I shouldn't, okay, the irony is on their nose. Overreaching. It was kind of funny, wasn't it? I want to say it was written by Seals and Croft, but they were...

Perry and Croft. Seals and Croft were an R&B duo. I mean, maybe they moonlit. They moonlighted writing sitcoms in the 70s. Perry and Croft, who also did Are You Being Served and a few others. And Dad's Army. And Dad's Army. And so all of their stuff really was about Britain and class.

And so was It Ain't Our Fault, Mum. And they had actually, Perry and Croft had also been in the theatrical troupe on the Eastern Front. Do you know what I mean? The Eastern Front on the Asian Front. In the Second World War, they had real experience. And so the sitcom was based on that. It was the last stages of the second world war and there's these people basically avoiding active duty by being by putting on shows for the troops right which is a kind of a brilliant premise it's

a it's a great premise but uh you know their immediate superior uh is a sergeant major who absolutely believes in war and fighting. By Windsor Davies. Windsor Davies. Who says, lovely boys, lovely boys. He's Welsh. Welsh. But it was a bad class because the dimmest people were the people who were right at the top,

were the kind of colonel and the major, who were overall in charge, and they had no idea what was going on. And the smartest person in the show was Ranji Ram. Yeah. So, you know, the day after that was shown i never got called any racist names because the power lay with you know the south asian characters even though one was browned up but he spoke fluent urdu did he yeah you know we watched it as a family and there was no offense

taken by my parents because they kind of understood the archetype. They understood that type of wily sort of Indian character who is kind of really controlling everything. He's not in charge, but he is. And they wouldn't have minded too much that he was played by a white character. No, because I think the performance was great. And so it's the same as Peter Sellers. I mean, one of the films that I thought I would die laughing at when I was 11 was The Party.

And in it, Peter Sellers plays an Indian actor, so he's browned up, who gets invited by mistake to a kind of big Hollywood party. And it's mostly mime, actually, but I was 11. Directed by Blake Edwards. Blake Edwards, yeah. Playing Harundu V. Bakshi.

You knew it. And, It's quite funny, isn't it? Or should I say that? No, I think, see,

I think both of those are great comedy performances and you've got to understand that I think, you know, at that time, across the 60s and the 70s,

there was no sort of South Asian representation on TV. So even someone browning up for us was kind of a step closer to seeing ourselves reflected. or peter sellers in the two films where he played an indian character was that we we thought with both of those that the target wasn't us wasn't kind of indians we didn't think that was the target you know he played a character who was ridiculous and silly and but we never felt it was personal. Whereas there is a very famous, very short-lived sitcom in Britain called Curry and Chips with Spike Milligan dressed up. And Spike Milligan could also speak the language. Really?

Because he was, again, the amount of time he spent in India. But the characterization was that his accent was the joke. Whereas with Peter Sellers, the accent wasn't the joke. And similarly with Michael Bates, the accent wasn't the joke. You had him there and you had two real Indian actors with genuine accents. And those were the heroes of the story. So no one was going to mock us, you know, me as a kid, for being the hero in a story. But if you were the target of the story so no one was going to mock us you know me as a kid for being the hero

in a story but if you were the target of the story then of course you know then it was fair game and there i think there's a difference there always has been difference between punching up and punching down did you ever have the experience you know i was reminded of uh of dave chappelle and him he did a lot of racially charged humor on his Comedy Central show. And then he ended up walking away from the show because he felt things he was saying from a place of lived experience, and I guess affection and familiarity about, you know, the black community and the black experience in America were being received slightly differently. And he didn't like the way, I guess, a white guy's quoted as saying like there was a white person laughing in a way he felt uncomfortable

with. And I'm wondering whether there were jokes on Goodness Gracious Me that, you know, quite rightly a white comedian or actor wouldn't have been comfortable them doing, but did it ever feel to you like it was being received, if people were sort of doing the skit and they weren't didn't have asian heritage let's say was it ever a time when you felt like oh actually i feel like this is in danger of getting out of control does that make sense yeah no it never felt like that and i think it was primarily because uh i never felt that we were the targets uh we were uh involved and so you know, if they're repeating stuff. It would have felt friendly.

Yeah. And also, you know, language wise, we were fairly clean, you know, so it wasn't that any of that language is going to be used against anyone that could be, you know, quoted back to us. Some of the catchphrases were, what was it? Chuddies? Eat my chuddies? Kiss my chuddies.

Kiss my chuddies. Chuddies are underpants. Kiss my chuddies. Kiss my chuddies. Chuddies are underpants. So when Boke in a Pub is saying, a white guy saying kiss my chuddies in an accent would be okay. Yeah. In fact, the first time I realized that the show had crossed over, I was walking along Upper Street in Islington in North London.

And it was quite a hot day. And I heard someone say, oi, in a slightly kind of like boyzy aggressive way and i thought outside a pub and i thought i'll just keep walking and then he went oi goodness gracious me bloke and so i turned around and saw him with two kind of um skinheads who were sitting with him so i walked back and he said uh chuddies i said yeah he said it's underpants isn't it and i said yes it is and he went i told you i told you to these guys and i thought wow the show's crossed over it's crossed over to a mainstream audience because i wouldn't have thought they would have been the people who'd get it or watch it so um no it didn't it didn't it's kind of um you know most people that i've met i've been lucky

enough to meet bump into say something they're generally quite nice and so and so therefore you know if they're repeating something even with a hint of an accent i'm not thinking oh you're mocking me or you're mocking south asians or you're mocking immigrants i kind of go well that's a quote from a show i've done so that's fine when um when you had ronnie corbett on the kumars yeah i thought he was quite brilliant he was great yeah and um you asked him if he do an indian accent right do you remember that gosh i don't remember that but yeah very lucky we did yeah well because he'd probably done it as part of the two ronnie's sketches at some point and i thought this is interesting i wonder what the correct form is right for him and he said oh i he said you're very kind but i i'd feel self-conscious doing it

in front of such experts and so he declined yeah we asked that a couple of people actually mini driver we asked her to do an indian accent and did she do one she had a go and she said god i sound like i'm from glamlamorgan in Wales. Yeah. So that was great. She was game. Tom Jones, we said, you sound, you know, the Welsh accent is very similar to the Indian accent. You sound just like, you know, Uncle Devinder who runs a shop.

Could you say, oi, only two school kids at a time? And did he do it? He did, yeah. And we said, yeah, that sounded just like like uncle davinda so we've had fun with it i mean yeah you know um that's lovely that you can dispel so i wondered whether what does it get awkward if he does the act if he does an accent but actually you would have been very understanding that he's in a safe space and it's coming from a place of affection and mutuality yeah i just never thought you know when when he had done the the accent on

two ronnie sketches i never thought oh this is him being nasty about you know the asian community or anything like that you know and as i said you know it's it's different times it's kind of like at that time that was acceptable yeah now it isn't doesn't mean that that is now unacceptable it's it was it's a thing that now it's it strikes me so weird that in so many discussions where non-binary becomes a topic, that arguments are so binary. I mean, it's either this or that. And the thing, the casualty is context. You go, there's no context. People don't have time for context.

They'll hear a word or a phrase or an opinion and they'll go well that's it no i don't need to hear anymore while we're in sort of culture wars territory i mean i'm not inviting you to get yourself into hot water i think i once heard that you were friendly with lawrence fox is that i was yeah i mean i did an episode of lew Lewis that he was a regular in. And I'd worked with his dad, James Fox, who's absolutely lovely. I did a film that he was in. So I kind of, you know, got on with, you know, the Foxes. So I was in touch with him.

I mean, yeah, I'll let you ask the question. Well, I suppose if you felt, do you feel like you can shed any light on what's going on with him? No, not really. I mean, cause I, you know, I didn't know him very well. I always had, you know, perfectly, he was perfectly nice to me and civil and friendly. And so a lot of his views now, I don't really understand where they've come from. And, you know, I don't agree with many of them. You know, I'd like to believe and this may be just me being optimistic that he's not fundamentally a racist person. But I think that he got a lot of love from the right wing of society.

And that's where he felt loved and accepted. And being loved and accepted is fundamental to us being able to kind of get up and do another day. But, you know, there is a kind of an entrenchment of views that he has that I don't fully understand. So I think he's coming from a place of the anti-racists are the real racists, right? Yeah. And that his evidence base seems to be, to my mind, quite narrow. So he's characterizing an area of progressive ideology

as all-encompassing and completely suffocating and saying that we're sort of under the jackboot of this ultra-woke agenda. And so he recently, I think he's in litigation at the moment, people accused him of being racist and he called them in turn pedophiles and now they're in court. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, again, it's this libertarian view of kind of, you know, free speech and the, when I kind of read about, you know, libertarians or a particular viewpoint, particularly when it comes to free speech, it tends to be very, very personal.

It tends to be, I should be allowed to say whatever I want. And if you then, you know, call someone, and this is, I guess, what his court case is about, is that, you know, he's saying, well, you know, you call me racist and that is a slur. And if I call you a paedophile, then that's obviously a joke because you're not really. And you kind of go, well, wait a minute, where's the free speech libertarianism then? Where does that fall? You know, either, yes, everyone can say what they want, but it's not that. It's generally, you know,

I want to be able to say what I want and not get into trouble for it. And that's the thing that it doesn't work for me. Hi, me again, Louis Theroux. Just to remind you, you're listening to the Louis Theroux podcast. And now back to my conversation with Sanjeev Bhaskar. podcast. And now back to my conversation with Sanjeev Bhaskar. Okay. I know time's dribbling on. Not dribbling, gushing, coursing. Oh man. I want to circle back. We're going to have a big finale in a minute, but while we're just ticking things off. You were in a Woody Allen film.

I was. Yeah, I was. It was called Sco called scoop it was shot in london did you have lines i did have lines i had i was in two and a half scenes which got two of which got cut so i'm now in the film just saying well we're here to play poker so let's play that's it but i had many more lines i had a scene. I had a couple of scenes with Hugh Jackman, who, you know, the value of that job was that I became friends with Hugh, and so I remained friends with Hugh. Right. So that was lovely. You weren't friendly with Woody?

No, I was kind of, I mean, I was, Woody Allen's comedy writing was a huge influence. So particularly those films in the 70s and early 80s. There's a kind of banner period, which I think the films are extraordinary. no i just met him and uh that was it there's two people i've met much direction very little actually um he would say chief i love what you're doing with the part i can't do it it's yeah but you people would instantly know who you're doing that's the thing isn't it it's kind of it's not it's not, it's not priceless to be honest.

My interior's got bananas. That's a Simpsons gag. It's a very good one. So you were in it and then, and then he didn't give you much direction. No, he doesn't. What year was it? Oh gosh, well, this would have been, it was post-Kumars. So, not post-Kumars, but during Kumars.

So, 2004? Had-Kumars. Not post-Kumars, but during Kumars. So 2004? Had he seen Kumars? No, Hugh had. And so that was the thing that really threw me. But when I got to the set, I saw Hugh Jackman, who's wonderful. He's just a lovely guy and so handsome. And he looked at me and he said, Sanji. And I said, whoa whoa how do you know

and he said kumar's right he said i used to watch you in australia and i was kind of like oh my god that's a nice feeling so he seems like a nice man really lovely yeah so yeah you know it was it was valuable for that you know this that whole thing about worth and value is something that i've kind of learned as the career has kind of dribbled on since you've introduced the word now it seems apt um which is that it i mean it's a very lucky dribble but um is is that whole thing about you know meeting people having experiences is where the real value of life is and you know so much of society tells you ascribes a number to it whether it's how much you earn whether your house is worth league tables so it's that idea of seeing worth and value beyond numbers that kind of really

draws me to either projects or experiences or whatever it's kind of it's that because that's what sustains me that's what's interesting to me woody allen called you tomorrow and says i'd like you to play the lead in my new movie yeah i'd say can i see a script you read the script you you think it's a return to form it's visionary and brilliant this is about you, you know, cancelled Woody Allen, isn't it? Is it? Sneaky bastard. It's a tricky one. It's a really tricky one. I mean, it's because,

you know, to hold a viewpoint on this, it kind of kills you either way. Feel free to dodge. I think you're mid-dodge i am mid-dodge i am mid-dodge i'm mid-dodge because i don't really know i don't really know and that's that's the difficulty it's lucky that your scenes were cut in a way because at least you weren't really faced with the dilemma of like well a lot of people timothy chalamet you never said he wished he'd never done a film with woody allen you know, these other actors. But you were never, I suspect your phone wasn't ringing off the hook with people saying like,

do you stand by your crucial role in Scoop or not? I wish I'd never worked with Woody Allen. I'm disgusted and I'll be returning my fee. No, you can't because you know what you know at the time. And so. But we're talking about now. You feel free to dodge. Yeah, but. Would you? Would you? what you know at the time. But we're talking about now. You feel free to dodge. Yeah, but...

Would you? Would you? I'm still going to dodge, I think. Yeah, dodge away. I am going to dodge. Because with someone like Harvey Weinstein... Did you do a Harvey film? No, I had a deal with Miramax.

So I did meet him. No, you didn't. I did, yeah. What kind of deal? It was a writing deal. I had a three-picture deal with Miramax. Stop it. To write. That's a scoop. No kind of deal? It was a writing deal. I had a three-picture deal with my boss. Stop it. To write, yeah.

That's a scoop. No pun intended. There's our clickbait. Yeah, I met him once or twice. He wasn't the most pleasant person to me, I have to say. Woody Allen was not unpleasant to me, but he was very in his kind of directing mode. And so there was very little chit chat and stuff like that.

But Harvey. Yeah. You got your deal. Yeah. He'd seen, he'd seen some of the sketches from goodness gracious me and the ones that he liked happened to be some of the ones that I'd written. And so on the basis of that, he said,

you know, give this guy a three-picture deal. And so I like the cut of this guy's jib. I don't know what he sounds like, but I'm more comfortable with that kind of voice. I think let's just say that he's phenomenal. Yeah. I got a, you're hilarious. You're hilarious.

And then you show, this is awful. This is risible. This guy can't write. This is shit. Worth for shit. It's kind of like a one-man state of Moldov. This sketch is wonderful. This made me laugh.

Well, some of it made me laugh. Well, the first line was funny. It's terrible. Funny in a strange kind of way. The rest of it was awful. In fact, the title is awful. This is shit. This piece of shit.

Get out of my office. So how much did you deliver on the deal? I didn't. It was a very instructive and illustrative experience. It sounds like Barton Fink. In my head, that's where I was going with it, where they flew you out, give this guy a three-picture deal. I walked in and they said, oh, this is Sanju.

He's got the, you're hilarious. Really? Write me some funny stuff and then that was it and then did you get you handed nothing in they sent me a script and said about rewriting it and i kind of gave my ideas for that and there was a discussion whereby someone actually said yeah the problem with this is there's just too many indian characters in it and i said what too many indian characters in it. And I said, what? Too many Indian characters?

They went, yeah. And I said, why have you brought, I don't know why I've got a deal. It's kind of like. So you kind of dodged two bullets. Next you'll be saying you nearly got a pilot away with Russell Brand. One bullet. It's the magic bullet theory.

It's the same bullet. It skipped around Woody Allen, went past Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. And then came out. Came went past Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. And then came out. Came through Russell Brand's legs. That's right. Oh, my God.

Real hot, hot. But, you know, I appreciate you going down the road. You still haven't answered the Woody Allen question. I have. I have answered it. I'm agnostic. I don't know. I genuinely don't know.

You would take the role. What you said was if the script was right, you would take the part. I mean, you know, but then you'd make that decision then, you know. I think we've dribbled brilliantly. I mean, good luck with the edit. That's all I can say. Well, Millie does. Thank you so much for coming in, Sanjeev.

No, thank you. It's been wonderful. And thank you for being generous with your time. I mean, I've got more, but let's stop there. Come on, stop it. Stop it. And scene. Thank you so much. Okay, so there you are hope you enjoyed that a little trip down memory lane for you boomers

out there the world of three tv channels test cards cinema adverts for restaurants around the corner and and then for the younger folk perhaps an education on uh what a deprived upbringing we older folk had we suffered so that you could enjoy a million channels on youtube um check out those sketches many of which are on iPlayer and easily findable there and on youtube you could easily find uh the Kumars at number 42 as well. I think it's on BritBox. And they get guests of absolutely the highest caliber. Phil Collins, you don't see him on much, do you? And there he is looking tanned and relaxed and enjoying the high quality bands. Cliff Richard, Elvis Costello, David Hasselhoff.

It would be quicker to tell you the people who haven't been on it, like me and the Queen. What else to say? Like, basically, what a pleasure to sort of just enjoy chatting and, you know, and laughing about our comparable, in some ways, experiences of life in the public eye and out of it. And the sense that he's a warm person, a person who's likes to see the good in people, who's refreshingly, can I say that indulgent of different times having different mores. The takeaway from me was that it ain't half hot, mum, which I think still isn't shown on TV because of the browning up that for him that was at the time a kind of form of representation and felt that it was not aimed at Sanjeev and his family so thank you to Sanjeev for coming on and giving so much of his time if I can clarify and amplify

a couple of things if you've got time if you you need to go, go. There's nothing essential. We've covered most of the main points, but if you're still here, the Nietzsche quote, it's also translated as, it is the good war that hallows any cause. So in a sense, it's not that you have to fight for a good cause. It's that in the act of fighting, you make the cause good, in inverted commas. Like if you went to war for a podcast, if I declared war on a rival podcast and my producer died, suddenly like our podcast would have this sort of renewed sense of nobility and reverence because we'd be part of a tradition that was consecrated by the loss of our producer. Does that make sense? If we were going to declare war on a podcast, a rival podcast, it's interesting to wonder which one it might be. You'd probably choose the one you thought you

could defeat most easily. Rory Stewart, is he tough? He walked across Iraq, didn't he? Or something. He's pretty wiry. And then he'd have backup because Campbell would be there and he's quite big and he runs marathons. You'd want to go for one of those comedy ones, off menu, something like that. James Acaster. He's a nice guy, but there's different rules in war. Regarding the semen in stomach rumour, it's worth saying it's been attached over the years to, it says here hundreds of celebrities. That seems like an exaggeration, but definitely more than two. It's been attached over the years to, it says here, hundreds of celebrities. I don't know. That seems like an exaggeration, but definitely more than two. It's entirely untrue. I mentioned RS and MA.

If you want to know who those people are, email me and I won't tell you. On Lawrence Fox, since recording took place, he lost his libel battle with the two Twitter users he called pedophiles. He'd been sued by Simon Blake, a former Stonewall trustee, and Crystal, a drag artist, over a dispute on Twitter in October 2020. They'd called him racist, and they were not found guilty of libel for that. I mean, the details are quite colorful if you want to dig into them in your own time. And finally, we spoke about Woody Allen and Russell Brand. Both have repeatedly denied the allegations made against them. Credits. Produced by Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Maan Al-Yazari. The production manager was Francesca Bassett and Credits.