Romesh Ranganathan: Irrational

Alhambra, Dunfermline, December 6

The term “overnight success” seems to have been invented for the likes of Romesh Ranganathan.

Virtually unheard of four years ago, the London comic now has two Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Award nominations and a Leicester Comedy Festival new act award under his belt.

He is a regular face on all those panel shows you get nowadays and has fronted two series of his own BBC Four travelogue programme, Asian Provocateur.

However, the seeds for all this success were planted a long time ago.

“When I was growing up, I became obsessed with stand-up and comedy in general,” recalls Ranganathan.

“My dad was very into comedy, so I grew up loving it to the point that we went to Pontins holiday camp when I was nine or 10 and I entered a talent competition doing stand-up.

“I memorised jokes that I’d read in a joke book and delivered them in a Sri Lankan accent. It was quite a niche act. As I got older I never thought of it as a career path, but when I was a maths teacher I just thought I’d give it a go.”

Giving it a go has certainly worked out for Ranganathan, and he’s now trotting around the country with Irrational, his first solo touring show.

Filled with his own perceptions, perspectives and prejudices, this show has him wondering whether he’s the irrational one or whether everyone else has got it all totally wrong.

“I talk about Gogglebox being a sign of the end of days, though its popularity suggests that I’m wrong and everyone else is right. But the idea that people are entertaining when they watch television is a fallacy,” he says. “They need to set up a camera in my room and watch a chubby man vegetating in silence.”

Above all, Romesh Ranganathan’s buzzword comes through loud and clear in Irrational: it’s all about honesty. “I want to say things on stage that I wouldn’t have the guts to say in conversation,” he says.

“People say that I’m quite grumpy and negative on stage and that I surely can’t be like that off it, but I really am.

“So, up on stage is basically me without the filters and concerns about what people will think about me; they’re removed and I’m expressing what I really think.”

But what about those lengthy tirades against his own children: surely that’s not totally real?

“I do bits where I perhaps talk about my kids annoying me and you hope that the audience realise that you do actually love your children. You can still be a good parent and be frustrated by your kids,” he insists.

“But when you say that for the first time and don’t get it across properly, you can just seem like a horrible person.”