That’s the name of Nish Kumar’s new tour, but there’s just no need because he has got our city sussed – Bath is fancy and full of millionaires. *Shrug shoulders * What more do you need to know? The post-electoral honeymoon will have dissipated in October, but expect debonair, outraged conviction and a quota of political commentary. Just don’t throw any bread rolls. Words by Emma Clegg
”I feel nothing but sympathy towards anyone who saw me perform before about 2015”, says Nish Kumar. The stand-up comedian, television presenter, political commentator and podcast host has been performing on stage since 2006, so that’s quite an induction.
“I’ve been doing stand-up professionally since 2013, but it’s really only from 2015 onwards that I can stand by a lot of the work that I did. Much of what I did in my twenties was dubious at best… The funny thing about being a comedian is that you have always been going five years longer than people think, and that’s a good thing.”
Some over-dramatisation may be at play here, although it’s true that Nish first became well known in 2017 as the host of satirical comedy The Mash Report, later Late Night Mash. He has also presented BBC Radio 4 Extra’s topical comedy show Newsjack, the Comedy Central series Joel & Nish vs The World (with Joel Dommett), BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz and is the co-host of the political podcast Pod Save the UK. He also appeared in Series 5 of Channel 4’s Taskmaster.
I ask if Nish was the sort of child who would show off in the classroom to make his friends laugh. “You have asked two different questions there”, he says in his distinctive sardonic drawl. “Was I trying to do that, and was I successful? I’ll say yes and no. I think I was practising trying to do it for a long time. Whether I was successful or not I’m afraid that is simply not for me to say. I have friends who I knew from school who are not surprised at my current career. Maybe the only surprise is the relative level of success.”
Nish was immersed in the comedy world as a child. “I loved going to stand-up when I was a kid and I really was a big fan of various sit coms and sketch shows like Goodness Gracious Me and The Fast Show. So I was a huge comedy fan and I was smuggled into comedy clubs from when I was around 15 by my uncle. I was just impressed with the idea that it seemed like the funniest thing to do. It’s just a hobby that got out of hand.
“I think I get closer to the style of comedy I imagine every year. Around 2014 I started to do stuff that felt as if it was narrowing the gap between intention and execution. It’s also the kind of stand-up I do – as I get older what I do on stage is changing. That’s interesting, but it means that you’re always chasing something that you might never catch up to. Part of doing stand-up for a long time is realising that I’m actually doing OK. But chasing down the dream is what makes it interesting.”
Nish is known for the political commentary within his material, which isn’t always a safe way of winning people over. “Using politics definitely opens yourself up to a different type of criticism. Comedy, if you don’t enjoy it, is in itself a deeply frustrating experience. In comedy an audience will not say ‘that’s bad comedy’, they will say ‘it’s not comedy’. So you start from a position where if it doesn’t work it frustrates people. If you then layer political references on top that they don’t agree with you are adding fuel to the fire. And then if you super-charge your stand-up with the broad tension of Brexit and the 2019 election, that’s when it happens.”
The allusion here is to a charity gig in December 2019 where Nish was heckled by the crowd and had a bread roll thrown at him when he was making jokes about Brexit during the Lord’s Taverners’ Christmas lunch at Grosvenor House in London, and was eventually booed off stage. “In my defence, it was only one bread roll and it missed me,” Nish says.
“I had become a lightening rod for somebody else. A focal point for anger with a particular group of people – and it got out of hand. The thing that was strange was the fallout and why it was so much in the press the following day. The pressure was enormous and with the benefit of hindsight that feels absurd.”
Absurd is definitely a recurrent motif for Nish. When he appeared on Taskmaster – which specialises in absurd tasks – he never won an episode, but did excel on his prize choices, including bringing in 14kg of curry in a giant wok for ‘most awkward item to take home’. Nish says, “The sort of impact of Taskmaster globally has been unreal. James [Acaster] and I have both found that the number of people that come to see our stand-up as a result is incredible.
“James and I also believe we are the only competitors that have been taken away from the set to have a personal telling off by [presenter] Greg Davies. Greg said to me, ‘you’re not a bad guy Nish’, and then took me off the set to bollock me. And the same thing happened to Acaster. I think James was trying to get told off and he was very jealous that I got a specific bollocking. I guess we both hold the distinction of being two spectacularly bad contestants. Not even bad, but bad with flair.”
Nish Kumar: Don’t Kill My Vibe – “The title is a Kendrick Lamar song and to the stand-up I do where the subject itself is not intrinsically funny. But hopefully the jokes are!” – is Nish’s new show and the content is indeed politically charged. There are likely to be jokes about climate collapse, income inequality and the emotional sensation of being a British Indian man who won’t vote for a British Indian Prime Minister. “It’s 80 minutes of sweet, sweet vibe killing”.
Nish prepares most of his material well in advance: “I like to have a 60-70 minute chunk that is solid, and then I leave 20 minutes open for rewriting and reworking whatever is going on when I’m touring.”
Expectations are high. “You are going to stand there on your own with your stupid f*g opinions so you’ve got to make sure it’s good and that it works. But one of the things I like about stand-up is that there are no rules and you can find an audience and work out how you get from point A to point B where they laugh.”
Nish has performed in Bath before and is looking forward to freshening up his image of the stereotypical Bathonian. “You have to mock specific places for their wider reputation and obviously it’s very enjoyable to make fun of Bath because everyone is a millionaire. Which obviously isn’t true, but you pretend it is.”
“You are always trying to narrow the gap between what you’re actually doing and what you think you’re doing,” says Nish. Based on his current form, perhaps what he actually does is all that matters.
Nish Kumar – Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe, The Forum Bath, 12 October, 7.30pm. Tickets: £22.50; bathforum.co.uk.