SANJEEV KOHLI
AS A London-born Asian child in Glasgow, Sanjeev Kohli might not have been the most obvious kid in the class to ask about the nuances of his adopted city’s peculiar culture. But that didn’t stop one of his teachers. “I had two parents who weren’t born in the UK, let alone Scotland, and when I got here I had a steep learning curve,” said Sanjeev, speaking ahead of a new clip show from BBC Scotland exploring representations of Scottishness on TV and film.
“I remember I made an arse of myself because I didn’t know what a wally dug was and I neatly embarrassed myself at school because I thought an Orange Walk was like a harvest festival.
“Maybe my teacher thought that because I was good at English, I would know. I’m born in London of Indian descent. Of course I’d know…”
These days, he isn’t only a key player in one of Scotland’s most popular TV shows but a high-profile example of the multicultural face of modern Scotland.
The 45-year-old is the face of Wha’s Like Us, a clip show typical of TV schedules at a time of the year when our national tendency for nostalgia, sentimentality and expressions of Scottishness are to the fore.
The programme is a run through the ages and stages of filmic representation on the big and small screen from Brigadoon to Trainspotting, exploring the notions of the Scottish cringe and traditional kailyard representations of life in our small country.
For Sanj, moving to Glasgow from London at a young age meant he escaped the cringe. In fact, the opposite was true.
He said: “I wasn’t going to be embarrassed because I haven’t had that generational feed from my parents. The cringe wasn’t in my house. I had a slightly outsider perspective.
“But you know how religious converts are always the most zealous? I assimilated pretty quickly because I had to. And I was happy to, because I found Scottish culture pretty vibrant and there was a lot going on.”
Like many of his generation, he admits to a peculiar feeling of excitement upon realising that Scotland was actually being represented beyond its shores.
Sanj recalled: “The first time I really remember seeing Scottishness on the big screen was The Great Escape, when there’s that conversation between Angus Lennie and Gordon Jackson talking about getting out.
“Not only was there more than one Scottish person in The Great Escape, which was always the biggest film on Boxing Day, but there’s a line about ‘being on Argyle Street’. I remember a shot of validation going through me when he said that.”
Films by the likes of Peter MacDougall played a part in forming Sanjeev’s Scottish cultural identity.
He said: “Films like Just Another Saturday – still when I watch it now I find it utterly compelling. You can taste Glasgow.
“It was through films like that I realised Scottish film-makers were telling their own stories for the first time, rather than non-Scottish filmmakers making films about Scotland or Scottish film-makers trying to placate an international audience with certain depictions of Scotland.
“And the look of films like that one felt like the