I’m a comedian – worse things have happened to me than having a bread roll chucked my way
Nish Kumar will be recapping the headlines as his satirical and surreal news show The Mash Report returns to BBC2 for a fourth season. The comic tells to about making the hit, and how recent developments regarding the coronavirus crisis might affect it
So now the upcoming series of The Mash Report will see the whole cast filming themselves at home.
Nish will be joined virtually by guests including Rachel, Geoff Norcott, Ellie Taylor, Catherine Bohart, Desiree Burch, and Ahir Shah.
The Mash Report has cultivated a loyal following and clips such as Rachel’s ‘How NOT to sexually harass someone’ sketch became viral hits, so far amassing an impressive 1.5 million YouTube views.
Nish’s take on why the series has been a hit is in part down to, he says, the need for people to have a laugh during dark times. He explains: “I would say that there’s been a space for this for a few years; there’s certainly an audience for it. “If I wasn’t hosting the show, I’d be watching this show. I’m exactly the audience that has been cultivated on American late-night topical shows, and there’s been a real thirst for something that’s done in that same format but that’s aimed at a British audience.
“I think also in the last few years, the pace of change and the intense – at times weirdness – of current events... I think there’s an appetite to see people talk in a funny way about things that happen in the news, just because it’s been so chaotic the last few years.
“There’s definitely an appetite for people to watch something that engages with current events in a less serious way.”
Off the screen, Nish made headlines when he had bread thrown at him and was booed off stage last year after making a political joke at a charity cricket lunch. The event’s organisers issued a statement after the incident, saying they do not “endorse the reaction of a minority of audience members”.
For Nish, the incident was “part of the job of being a stand up”.
He explains: “I’m entitled to express my opinion and they’re entitled to express their opinion about my opinion. I don’t really have a problem with people booing me, because I’ve got my right to my opinion, they’ve got their rights to their opinion about my opinion.
“I think the guy that chucked the bread roll probably needs to be on an anger management course because I just think anytime as an adult you’re flinging bread at someone, you’ve taken leave of your senses.”
The baffling element, for him, he says was the intense media interest over the incident, which he refers to as a “storm in a tea cup”.
“I found that element of it absolutely baffling (the media interest). But certainly the actual