THE RISE OF ROMESH

A former maths teacher with a passion for hip-hop, Romesh Ranganathan isn’t your average comedian. After a decade on the circuit, he tells Ella Dove what he’s learned about love, laughter and the importance of honesty on and offstage

From teaching maths to performing stand-up, Romesh Ranganathan charts his path to comedy fame

romesh Ranganathan sits across from me in a west London office building; arms folded, baseball cap pulled down low on his forehead. ‘It’s not like I’m Bieber or anything,’ he tells me with a sardonic smile. ‘People do recognise me, but they mostly leave me alone. The only time someone’s asked me for a post-gig pint, I asked if it was a serious offer and they were like, “No, mate.” I don’t come across as that approachable.’ I disagree. With his distinct Crawley accent and wry, self-deprecating humour, Ranganathan is the epitome of a bloke you’d like to meet down the pub. Today, he sips his Diet Coke as we chat, pausing to consider each question before launching into an eloquent, discerning and refreshingly honest response. ‘Getting recognised is a by-product of my job that I really hadn’t thought about before it happened,’ he admits. ‘I just wanted to do comedy. It only really occurs to me when I’m with my wife [Leesa] and kids [Theo, nine, Alex, seven, and Charlie, four] and Leesa ends up having to play the role of photographer – then, I think, this is kind of a thing that affects them.’

Ranganathan caught the comedy bug aged nine, after he performed a stand-up routine at a holiday camp in a Sri Lankan accent, a nod to his family heritage that he thought would ‘give [him] an edge’. But for many years it was no more than a hobby. After completing a maths degree at Birkbeck, University of London, and a master’s in economics, he became a maths teacher and head of sixth form, ‘a really highly respected job in the

Sri Lankan community’.

‘I was an educator,’ he explains. ‘When I left that after eight years to go and tell dick jokes in a pub, I know a lot of my mum’s friends went, “What is Romesh doing?”’ He says this last sentence in a strong Sri Lankan accent, likely the same one that won over his audience at Pontins.

‘I loved teaching, although I was shit at it,’ he laughs. ‘I was all right at interacting with the kids and controlling classes, but I was terrible at everything else. I’d be late filing reports, I’d turn up to an assembly not knowing what I was doing. I really infuriated the people I worked with.’

After a few years of unpaid stand-up gigs on the open mic circuit, the turning point came in 2010 when Ranganathan entered a stand-up comedy competition called So You Think You’re Funny?, and reached the final. ‘One of the judges told me, “You’re going to be a comic,” and that’s when I thought, “Wow, this could be my job,”’ he says.

But if it wasn’t for teaching, I point out, he wouldn’t have met Leesa, who was a drama teacher at the same school. His face noticeably softens when I mention her name. ‘I didn’t know she existed for a while,’ he admits. ‘I didn’t really venture into her “take your shoes off, call the teachers by their first names, this is a safe space” department.’ It was a school trip that eventually brought them together.

‘We were nervous about being two teachers who were getting together,’ he says. ‘But once we did, things moved very quickly. Some of my friends were like, “Jesus Christ man, relax.”’ He shakes his head fondly. ‘But you know when you start chatting to someone and you just have a connection? She was besotted. Write that down, will you? She’ll love that.’

Leesa, he says, was always wholly supportive of his comedy dream, but things were hard when he left teaching. ‘We were completely broke,’ he says. ‘I’d made this vain decision to become a comic and throw my family into poverty. It was tough to square that with myself as a father and a husband. I was very close to giving up.’

But then, in 2015, came the coveted offer of a spot on BBC’S Live At The Apollo. ‘It made me realise I wasn’t flatlining,’ he says, drawing an invisible graph in the air – he might not have been a great maths teacher, but he still has the habits of one. ‘I guess a part of me knew that if you keep at something, you’ll eventually get somewhere.’

And get somewhere he did. Fast forward four years and Ranganathan is a regular on TV panel

‘HONESTY BECAME A THING I WOULD CRAVE DOING’

shows, has done two live tours, has written an autobiography, hosts a podcast called Hip Hop Saved My Life and has created several of his own TV shows, including BBC Three travel comedy series Asian Provocateur, starring his mum, Shanthi.

Up next is a second series of his semi-autobiographical Sky One show, The Reluctant Landlord. It features Ranganathan as ‘a version of himself’, taking on the running of a local pub after the death of his father, something that actually happened in real life when his dad died of a heart attack in 2013 – ‘except my brother and I gave it up,’ he adds. ‘So this is basically what would have happened if we hadn’t, almost like a Sliding Doors thing. There’s a lot of myself in there.’

I wonder if it’s cathartic, injecting himself into his comedy. ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’ He pauses, running a hand through his thick beard. ‘It wasn’t a calculated thing. It just happened that I became increasingly honest on stage, and then honesty became a thing I would crave doing. All my favourite comedians have an outsider quality to them. They’re wired slightly differently. I’m the same, I think. My stand-up is me opening up in front of an audience.’

He reveals that in his latest stand-up show, The Cynic’s Mixtape, he talks graphically about his sex life. I’m curious as to what Leesa thinks about this. ‘Honestly, she doesn’t seem to give a shit about what I say,’ he smiles. ‘Obviously, if she genuinely told me not to do something, I wouldn’t. But if something makes me feel uncomfortable to share, I normally know that it’s a good thing to do.’

Does he ever feel like he’s gone too far? ‘It’s more people’s reactions that I regret,’ he says. ‘Sometimes, I talk about my second son being a real handful compared to our eldest, and I remember someone messaging me once saying, “It’s so funny how you hate your kids.” I don’t hate my kids. I’ve never said that! I’m just trying to put across the fact that being a parent doesn’t make you some altruistic, magical Mary Poppins kind of character. The truth is, you’re still the same

– I’m still selfish, I still get snappy. I never want people to think that I don’t love my kids but, at the same time, my second son is a nightmare!’

It’s obvious that behind the gags, Ranganathan is deeply family focused. When his career took off, Leesa gave up teaching to be a full-time mum to their boys, a decision, he says, ‘she relished’. ‘I’m constantly away and my hours are erratic, so we’re lucky to be in a position where we can do that.’

So does he worry about not spending enough time with his family? ‘I feel like time passes very quickly,’ he says. ‘But when I’m at home, we do proper family stuff. We play games, we watch Arsenal play and we’re obsessed with theme parks. Sometimes the kids love it and sometimes it annoys them because they just want to play video games. It’s hard to find the right balance, but it’s important to try.’

Next year, I discover, marks a special milestone for Ranganathan: it’s his and Leesa’s 10th wedding anniversary. So what has he learned about love? ‘Being in love with somebody means being completely yourself,’ he says. ‘Leesa and I are very close. The problem with that unconditional thing for her is that I’m not guarded at all, which means she sees the absolute worst of me. It does make me feel bad for her. Love for us now is an evening in front of the TV, hoping we don’t fall asleep before the programme ends. People sometimes assume that means the passion has gone out of our relationship. It hasn’t.’

He references ‘people’ a lot during our chat, yet insists public opinions on social media don’t worry him. ‘I’ve had people telling me I’m shit, that I need to disappear, that they’re going to kill me,’ he says. For someone who claims not to care, I notice he can recite tweets word for word. ‘There’s no point letting it upset you because you just don’t know what someone is going through behind the screen,’ he points out. ‘I feel weirdly protective over those people sometimes. You don’t know what’s really behind that angry, racist tweet.’

When it comes to diversity in comedy, he’s thoughtful and direct. ‘It’s definitely got better,’ he says. ‘But

I don’t fully agree with how it’s been handled. Like, the decision to have a woman on every single panel show is a great idea. Announcing it is a terrible idea because suddenly it seems tokenistic. If I’m shit, people don’t go “All Asians are shit” or “All men are shit”, they just go “Romesh is shit”. In the same way, women shouldn’t be expected to represent their gender every time they appear on a panel show. It’s an imperfect solution to the problem. Although, too many Asian comedians might erode my USP…’

Is there an endgame for him, I wonder? ‘Honestly? No,’ he says. ‘I never set out to achieve anything, so I don’t know what success looks like.’ He adjusts his baseball cap and downs the rest of his Diet Coke before shooting me a brief yet canny smile. ‘Ultimately, I’m just going to do what I love and enjoy it. As I say to my sons, it’s when people stop asking for photos that we need to worry.’

‘BEING A PARENT DOESN’T MAKE YOU MARY POPPINS’

The second series of The Reluctant Landlord airs on Sky One and NOW TV in September