The Chronicle (South Tyneside and Durham)
We’re in it together and we have got each other’s backs
Who is the strongest comedian of them all? MARION MCMULLEN chats to Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett about new challenges in Rob & Romesh Vs
COMEDIANS and best mates Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan are back for a fourth series of Rob & Romesh Vs.
This time, the Bafta-nominated series sees them taking on the world of strongman competitions, the West End, winter sports and restaurant management.
We will see to the two funny men appearing in Disney’s The Lion King musical, going head-to-head at an international biathlon competition, opening their own restaurant and finding out which one really is the strongest comedian.
Here the pals tell us more...
How much notice do you get of the TV challenges?
Rob: It sort of changes a little bit, don’t you find Rom?
Romesh: Yeah. We talk about what we are going to do and run through different ideas and stuff beforehand.
Sometimes the challenge is locked in and they [the programme makers] tell us well in advance, and sometimes they’ll decide on a challenge and as we are doing it they’ll say, ‘No, that’s not hard enough. We’ll do something else’.
So it’s all up in the air and Rob and I have this kind of conflict of interests where we want the show to be good, but we also don’t want to do the challenge thing.
Inside, you [are] thinking, ‘I want to say this is an absolutely awful idea. I don’t want to do that’, but you do know it will also make the show better. So you do have this battle.
(Laughs) I’ll be honest there have been times when I’ve said, ‘Oh, I’m not sure about the editorial justification of that’ just because I can’t be a **** to do it.
Rob: Sometimes it is slightly sprung on us, like the strongman episode.
They said, ‘We’ve been given access to do this competition at an event next week’ and, especially with sporting stuff, a lot does depend on access.
We’ve got to do stuff that is slightly embarrassing, so that people don’t hate us for travelling around the world doing things, but we’ve been to Birmingham, Milton Keynes and London for recent challenges.
We’ve not really been to exotic places.
Was the strongman episode in the new series a tough challenge?
Rob: That was so hard on my back. Romesh: That gym in Iceland, I reckon they have to sluice out the testosterone at the end of the night. Rob: (Laughs) That’s where Will Smith trains.
Romesh: It’s just really full on. World’s Strongest Man champion Magnus Ver Magnusson is such a nice bloke, but that gym he trains at is called Jakabol (Nest Of Giants) and it is like they have taken a hit of smelling salts and they are ripping these weights into the air.
It’s just so in opposition to how I conduct my life. We were just screaming to try and lift these heavy things up. It’s mad.
Rob: (Laughs) It’s still less intense than a gym in south east London.
You also try to get a part in a West End musical for the new series. Was that more of a challenge than strongman? Rob: No, I’d rather do strongman. I wouldn’t be able to compete at the level of strongman, but I quite enjoyed that training. Romesh: If there was like a Sunday
league, like five-aside, I’d do that level of strongman, but West End is just so hard. It’s just so difficult.
The level of training and preparation and the talent that all the performers have to have. Rob: Strongman training is tangible – you lift it or you don’t.
In the West End, you could be supremely talented but if you don’t know the right people you don’t get an opportunity and you are stuffed.
It’s quite a brutal industry, I think.
What was it like singing for Frozen star Samantha Barks?
Rob: Awful, just awful. I was quite posh and high. Romesh: It was quite posh.
Rob: (Singing) Let it go, let it go. (Laughs) I was so bad at it. Romesh: What was good is that Rob just continued singing. Most people would have heard a little bit what their voice sounded like and thought, ‘We’ve seen what we need to see’ but he was willing to do the whole musical.
This is the fourth series of challenges. Do you have a favourite from over the years?
Romesh: I always have a soft spot for the drag episode.
Rob: That was good fun.
Romesh: It was Rob’s idea and we were both admirers of the drag scene. We just thought those performers were great.
We did an element of drag in a ballet episode to get a bit more confident. We did an afternoon’s drag training and Rob said ‘I think we might be wasting this, I think this could be a whole episode’.
Rob: A lot of people come up to me and say they loved the drag episode. One of my favourite moments was just looking at Romesh’s face before we went out to do a dance at a Jamaican festival.
I was stood there, I was sunburnt – even though I had been wearing factor 50 every day – and I had learned this dance, and I hate dancing, and I just looked at him and thought, ‘What is this?’ and we just looked at each other in silence.
Then they called our names and we went out and later it was like, ‘I can’t believe we did that’.
All these things I don’t really know how I end up doing them.
I was quite a shy, awkward, nervous kid growing up.
I would never have been able to do these shows without Romesh.
My head would have gone completely. We are in it together. We have got each other’s backs.
Romesh: Sometimes you do think ‘Am I humiliating myself for no reason?’ and Rob will say ‘No, this will be good. Trust me’.
■ Rob & Romesh Vs series four starts on Thursday at 9pm on Sky Max and streams on NOW
I would never have been able to do these shows without Romesh... Rob on working with his pal
SAFFRON AND NUTS (Serves 4-6)
INGREDIENTS: ½tsp saffron strands; 2tbsp milk; 250g basmati rice; 100g ghee or butter (or flavourless vegetable oil), plus extra for greasing; 6 cloves; 8 green cardamom pods; 40g each shelled unsalted pistachios and unsalted blanched almonds, cut into thick slivers; 30g dried apricots, cut into small cubes; 150g granulated sugar; 2tbsp kewra (screwpine) water or rose water
METHOD:
1. Put the saffron in a small bowl, warm the milk to tepid and pour over the saffron strands.
2. Wash the rice in a bowl of cold water, stirring gently by hand in a circular motion. Repeat until the water remains clear, then soak the rice in cold water for at least 30 minutes or up to three hours. Drain the rice well in a strainer.
3. Boil the rice in one-and-a-half-litres of water until it is half done. To check remove a single grain from the hot water and squeeze between your fingers – there should still be a hard core of slightly uncooked rice. Drain the half-cooked rice and spread thinly on a plate to prevent it from continuing to cook.
4. Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4.
5. Heat the ghee or butter in a pan over a medium-high heat. Add the cardamoms and cloves, followed by the pistachios, almonds and apricots. Add 250ml of cold water and the sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves.
6. Butter a casserole dish and add the rice, then pour over the warm, spice-infused sugar syrup. Add the saffron-infused milk and stir gently to ensure the saffron is evenly distributed. Cover tightly with foil and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
7. Take the dish out of the oven. Gently fluff the rice, then re-cover and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Remove the foil and leave the dessert to stand for a few minutes.
8. Sprinkle the kewra or rose water over the warm rice before serving.
AMMU’S CHICKEN BIRYANI (Serves 6)
INGREDIENTS: 200g plain flour; 500g good-quality basmati rice; 5tbsp salt; ½tsp saffron strands; 80ml full-fat milk; 8tbsp ghee or vegetable oil (mixing both also works well); 2 white onions, halved and thinly sliced; 1kg skinless chicken thighs, on the bone; 3 garlic cloves, crushed; 5-6cm piece of fresh ginger, grated; 2tbsp full-fat Greek-style yoghurt; ½tsp chilli powder; 2 green cardamom pods; 1cm piece of cinnamon stick; 2 cloves; 1cm piece of mace, crushed; ¼tsp sugar; ¼tsp grated nutmeg; juice of half a lemon
METHOD:
1. Mix the flour with enough water to make a firm dough, cover and leave to rest.
2. Wash the rice in a bowl of cold water, stirring gently by hand in a circular motion. Repeat until the water remains clear.
3. Next, soak the rice for at least two hours. There should be 15-20cm of water in the bowl above the rice level. Add 6tsp of the salt; this keeps rice grains long and separate.
4. Warm the milk to tepid, then pour over the saffron in a bowl and leave to infuse.
5. Heat the ghee or oil in a pan over a medium-high heat and fry the onions until caramelised. Remove the onions – leaving as much of the oil in the pan as possible –and spread them across a plate to cool.
6. Remove half the oil from the pan and set aside. Then cook the chicken over a medium-high heat until golden brown. Add the garlic, ginger, yoghurt, chilli powder and 2tsp of the salt and cook until the garlic and ginger have lost their raw smell and the yoghurt has reduced. Add half the caramelised onions, then warm water to cover the chicken. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 25 minutes. The chicken will finish cooking with the rice.
7. Drain the soaked rice and place in a pan of boiling water with 6tsp of salt, until the three-quarters cooked (about five minutes). To test, remove one grain and squeeze – there should still be a hard core. When ready, drain and spread on a tray to prevent further cooking.
8. To assemble the biryani you will need a heavy-based pan with a tight-fitting lid. Remove the chicken from its cooking liquid and place in the pan. Strain the cooking liquid and pour over the chicken. Try to squeeze as much as you can from the onion/ginger/garlic residue, so the stock is nice and thick. It should just about cover the chicken pieces. Next, add the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, mace and nutmeg, half the saffron milk, the sugar and lemon juice. Then add the rice, ensuring it covers the chicken. Put the remaining caramelised onions, the remaining saffron milk and the reserved oil on top.
9. Put the pan on a high heat until it steams. Let the steam come through for one minute. Meanwhile, roll the dough into tubes and use it to seal the pan lid. Put the pan on an iron frying pan or tawa over a mediumhigh heat to diffuse the heat. If you have neither, put the biryani in an oven at 190°C for 10 minutes then turn the oven to 150°C and leave for 20 minutes. If you are using a tawa on the hob, reduce the heat to low, cover the top of the pan with a folded clean kitchen cloth for 20 minutes.
10. When ready to serve, unseal the lid. Using a large spoon and starting from one side, gently lift the chicken up and mix with the rice. You need to gently merge the wet rice with the dry rice on top, so each grain is perfectly moist.