I want to be like Robin Williams – do serious acting and stand-up
Comedian Paul Chowdhry tells MARION MCMULLEN why he’s not playing it for laughs when it comes to acting
You are known as an awardwinning comedian, but has acting been keeping you busy lately?
Yeah, I was in Rome filming the second season of Devils about a banking crisis. That was 10 episodes with Patrick Dempsey and will be on Sky Atlantic in February.
Then I did a cameo in an episode of The Cleaner on BBC1 with Greg Davies who is a good friend of mine and I did another cameo on the movie Cruella with Emma Stone.
I quite like the acting. It’s very different to stand-up unless you’re a character comedian. With standup it’s a performance, an exaggerated version of yourself. It’s basically you up on stage talking for an hour and a half.
Acting can be about four hours of filming for three minutes of film... if you’re lucky.
Could you see yourself stepping into Daniel Craig’s shoes as the next James Bond?
It’s funny. I’ve had a few tweets on Twitter asking ‘Are you going to be the next James Bond?’ I’d love to play the next 007, but they talk of a black or a white Bond not a British Asian one. There’s not that diversity.
I’d definitely be up for that though, but I’ll probably get to play the baddie than Bond.
I’d like to be like Robin Williams. He was acting in serious films that people did not expect from a comic, but was still doing stand-up as well. I’d like to do the comedy and get serious with the acting also.
I’m a regular on Devils and it is a serious acting role, but there are elements of comedy to it. There are so many different things between stand up and film. There is a lot of hanging around while acting and getting angles right and filming reactions.
You’re heading back out on tour with new adult stand-up show Family-friendly Comedian. How did the name come about?
(Laughs) I want to be mainstream like Ant and Dec.
I’ve been called controversial, but there is not really anything controversial about me. I just speak the truth on stage.
I think we took live theatre for granted really before we lost it.
Are you looking forward to being back on tour?
It’s great to get back out there. I didn’t think it would be possible at one point to be back out there performing in front of a life audience.
It was always felt our industry was almost recession-proof, but the pandemic has been difficult for theatres.
I’ve done a lot of online performances, but they don’t really work very well.
I was doing jokes on Zoom for 500 people and you get some who have forgotten to turn their microphones off and you get talking over the punchline and feedback through the speakers.
It was just a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh sound coming through the speakers.
I’ve done some live preview and warm-up shows just to get ready for the tour and there is nothing like a live performance.
It’s not like watching some panel show where four hours of film is edited down to just 28 minutes to get comedy gold.
How have things changed on the comedy scene?
In the 1990s the diversity and inclusion was not really active. It’s changed a lot since then.
Before the pandemic, I played to 100,000 people at Wembley. It was one of the top-selling shows of the year and was up there with Jack Whitehall and Micky Flanagan who also played Wembley that year.
I was probably the least known out of all of those. I can still go out to the supermarket and not be bothered.
What have been some of your comedy milestones?
I’ve been doing stand-up for 20 years now. In 2012, I was the first British Asian to host Live At The Apollo and the following year I hosted Stand Up For The Week on Channel 4.
It featured comics like Josh Widdicombe and Seann Walsh and was Romesh Ranganathan’s first show and I was the host of it.
What do you like most about stand-up?
I’ve never been a television-made comedian. TV can build you up fast, but then you can disappear just as quickly. For me it’s been a long build playing up and down the country, putting on shows and playing to 50 to 100 people.
You have to build up a trust with the audience. When people pay to see you live they have to trust you for an evening and then they say ‘We had a good time let’s go to the next one’.
Family-friendly Comedian runs until December 16. Go to paulchowdhry.com for tour and ticket details
DURING his live concerts, Dave Grohl keeps a clock to the side of the stage. This is not so he can count down the minutes until the end of his set.
Quite the opposite, in fact. The timer is there to stop him from playing one, two, even three hours over his allotted time.
This entertaining piece of information is just one of many contained in the newly published memoirs of the veteran rock and roller, titled The Storyteller.
He calls me the morning after debuting his accompanying self-written one-man show at the Savoy theatre in London.
“I had shaped and formed and written it just a few days before and wanted to keep it really loose,” Dave says in his instantly recognisable, chesty growl.
“Because that’s what I do.” The event saw Dave deliver a series of vignettes from the book. He charts his childhood in Washington DC, his rise to fame as the drummer in Nirvana, the tragic death of singer Kurt Cobain and his own continuing success with stadium rockers Foo Fighters.
“I was afraid that I wasn’t going to say enough – and I feel like I said too much,” he adds with a booming laugh.
Unsurprisingly, Dave’s show ran over time, despite the presence of his trusty clock.
The 52-year-old is releasing his memoir as Nevermind, the beloved second album by grunge pioneers Nirvana, turns 30. But The Storyteller focuses less on narrative sweep and more on individual moments that, through his enthusiastic delivery, tell a bigger picture.
The idea for the book emerged from an Instagram account – Dave’s True Stories – that he started during the pandemic.
“My mother was always very supportive and encouraged me to follow my own path,” he tells me of his youth in Washington DC.
“My father was a conservative Republican speechwriter so I don’t know that he understood a child like mine’s mind...
“So, when I felt it was time to move on with life, and travel the world playing music, he did not approve. But that was OK with me. It was fine. I didn’t really need his approval to do it.”
The Storyteller hurtles through
Whenever I see a young artist becoming famous overnight, my initial reaction is concern. It’s a difficult path to navigate
My father was a conservative Republican speechwriter... so I don’t know that he understood a child like mine’s mind.
Dave Grohl
Dave’s time in cult hardcore band Scream before delving into Nirvana’s rise to international fame.
“Nobody paid attention to us,” he recalls of his four years beside frontman Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic.
“Bless all the people at the labels. We love them. They’re great. But nobody had the foresight to imagine we would become a hugely popular band.
“I think the original pressing, I think it sold 6,000 copies in its first week or something like that. But then it was when the video hit MTV, that’s when everything started to explode.”
With that success came some financial stability, something that had been absent in Dave’s life since he left home as a teenager with Scream.
“One of the most difficult parts for the band was just accepting the fact that we are now selling millions and millions of records.
“And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t have a problem with it.
“As the drummer, of course, I wasn’t the spokesperson or front person for the band. I thought of it as a blessing or a luxury. I didn’t have to work at Furniture Warehouse anymore.”
Dave writes eloquently about the death of Cobain, who killed himself in 1994, the subsequent dissolution of Nirvana and the period of soul searching that followed.
The book will do nothing to dispel his reputation as the nicest guy in rock but it does add nuance.
“I am a generally happy, positive, hopeful person,” he explains. “I try to be at least. I can understand the catharsis or release in those chaotic moments. It was one of the things that attracted me to punk rock.
“It was really all about that release of energy that was real and raw and powerful and pure.
“But yes, there were times where smashing a guitar or jumping into the drumset could be a celebration, or it could be a sign of crisis.
“And just a matter of intuition, gauging which was which.”
As a father to three daughters, he has his own fears about the challenges faced by young musicians coming up today. “Let’s put it this way,” he says.
“Whenever I see a young artist becoming famous overnight, my initial reaction is concern because it’s a really difficult path to navigate.”
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl, is out now.