Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer and performer who brought the British Asian experience to big audiences with Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42.
On the island
Eight records
I kind of first heard Elvis when I was probably about four years old and there was something that I really connected with with his voice. And at that point I didn't know what he looked like and later on I saw the films and thought, wow, what an incredibly good looking guy. And I think this particular song, If I Can Dream, I think he never looked better. It was the 1968 comeback special, wearing black leather, which I tried to wear once and is incredibly unforgiving. But I think this was his rebirth and what within the decade he was dead.
There will never be a greater pop band than the Beatles. They first of all they kind of uh epitomized a kind of optimism in Britain in the sixties. You know, this was Britain taking over the world again. These are perfect pop songs, and they will be sung and they will be listened to in a thousand years' time. It's just amazing.
This is a song from a film called Anand, which was a Bollywood film. Every weekend we would go to Southall where there were three cinemas that just showed Bollywood films. And thinking back on it now, the capacity of the cinemas, there may have been five or six hundred, maybe seven hundred, but about four and a half thousand people would turn up to each of these cinemas to watch them.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467: II. Andante
Radu Lupu and the English Chamber Orchestra
Well, one of the great things I think about university is the broader education. One of the great joys of that was that classical music for me stopped becoming the thing that you marched into assembly to, and I got gained a greater appreciation of it. And Mozart I think is extraordinary anyway, but his requiems I think are phenomenal. And I thought it was just amazing to me that he could someone who could write something as complex as the Requiems could then have the confidence and clarity to write something so simple and so beautiful.
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
Well, this is a song that's become important for lots of different reasons. I've always been a huge Monty Python fan. And Look on the Bright Side of Life, I think, is you know, if there's one song that epitomizes my journey so far, it's been that. And it there's a kind of poetic justice to the fact that I've ended up in the West End playing King Arthur in Monty Python's Holy Grail musical Spam a lot, and I get to sing this on stage. And every night when we get to this song, I have to pinch myself.
The Clash and London Calling, I think this is a great record and punk at the time, again I was slightly too young for punk and it just scared me. And I kind of now get it. And one of the reasons I get it is that I met and became friends with, alas for a very short period of time before he died, Joe Strummer, who was lead singer of The Clash. And I think that we're in need of something like that. I think we're in need of a punk-like youth identity and revolution.
David Bowie, David Bowie, and Life on Mars. Life on Mars I think is a great song anyway, but Life on Mars kind of epitomizes that moment of me kind of going, actually, do you know, I am I am successful and that's okay. I may not be successful forever, but for now I am, and that's alright. You know, I don't need to be embarrassed about it.
The Waters of MarchFavourite
Susannah McCorkle and The Waters of March and I think it's the most beautiful song I've ever heard. I find it incredibly moving. And it's also a song that instantly reminds me of Mira as well, and family, and friends, and those those that That you love, because I think it's Mir and I, if we have a shared philosophy, is that life is made up of a series of moments.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:58Your initial success was founded on the toss of a coin. What happened?
I got together with a friend of mine, Nitin Sorney, who's a composer who I'd been at um university with. We'd sort of done a double act thing at university and we thought well, you know, let's resurrect that… The flyers for the show had gone out and a couple of producers from the BBC had seen it. And apparently they said well look this'll probably be rubbish but um let's toss a coin and see whether we go straight to the pub or or go there and then to the pub. And fortunately for us the coin landed right, they came to see the show and came backstage and said this is the kind of material we're looking for for a new sketch show.
Presenter asks
6:09How did you find out that [your father's big dream when he came to Britain was to be a film director]?
I think he finally relented and told me. I you know, I then asked why he hadn't told me, you know, all those years before. And I think w what what I garnered from the conversation was that The crushing nature of having to give up all your dreams or your biggest dreams he didn't want his children to go through the same thing. You know, it gave me an idea of how desperately he'd wanted to do it.
Presenter asks
7:48What happened [when you were seven years old and discovered there was such a thing as racism]?
The keepsakes
The book
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Alright, it was a toss-up between Conversations with God, Book One, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm gonna have to go with Hitchhiker's, because I think it's played such a huge part in my life. From the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything being 42 and thus using it in the title of the Kamars, to it being what we Brits do really well, which is absurd humour. And I think that book contains it. It's smart, it's clever, it's funny.
The luxury
This may have been something to do with Kiss Chase. Yeah. Uh which is a shame. It hasn't become an Olympic sport. Maybe by twenty twelve it could. But uh when I was at school, uh Kiss Chase, you you ran after a girl and uh once you caught them you kissed them. And I was allowed to run after them and catch them, but I wasn't allowed to kiss them. And I couldn't understand why. I just thought, well, there are guys over there who certainly smell worse than I do, and they're allowed to join in. And then I it dawned on me, it dawned on me that this was about colour.
Presenter asks
17:36How much debt were you in [during the desolate years]?
Um I was I think it was about fifteen thousand pounds, which probably doesn't sound a lot now, but… I got a series of marketing jobs and the last marketing job I had, I had to sue them. I took them to court, sued them for breach of contract. They ha they weren't paying me, they weren't paying me expenses and I was kind of using my credit card to kind of keep the company going. And during that two years I couldn't get any kind of job at all because my references were tied up with the court case.
Presenter asks
21:56Do you think [the BBC bigwigs] were resistant to the idea [of an Asian sketch show]?
I think yeah, I think they were, yeah. But I but I had the same thing when when it came to the Kamars as well. I mean, they I had sort of it was rejected for about four or five years before uh anyone took it up. And that was just a bunch of people saying I don't get it. But, you know, I'm I'm grateful that they at least gave us the opportunity to try. But yeah, well, I think we had to go through more than other people did.
“I think that I'm I'm never going to achieve anything greater than what my father did.”
“I was kind of embarrassed about being Asian. I remember kind of trying to I tried to toy with the idea. Somebody kind of said to me at the swimming pool once, and I must have been about nine or ten, and they said, What's your name? and I went Devon? And it was just so utterly lacking in confidence.”
“The one great thing about becoming a parent of the many, many great things, uh is that you are forced to live in the present. And it's the one thing that we're not socially taught to do.”