If You Read One Thing…
Don’t miss our exclusive interview with Still Game and River City funnyman Sanjeev Kohli
DESPITE being a part of Scottish pop culture for more than two decades, Sanjeev Kohli still has that niggling doubt about his place as a national treasure.
“I still don’t think I’m a natural performer,” he says, “but comedy is in my DNA.”
From Chewin’ The Fat to Still Game, Off the Ball to Fags, Mags and Bags, Meet the Magoons to River City, we’ve seen and heard the ever-likeable Sanjeev many times, but his career in comedy began by chance.
Sanjeev was studying for a PHD in mathematics at the University of Glasgow when a friend asked him if he wanted to join a radio show.
“I was writing my own links, and I would always put jokes in for my own amusement because no one was listening to this show,” Sanjeev says. “It was a phone-in show and nobody phoned in! I would write these wee funny gags and puns just to keep me and the two presenters entertained and I was quickly finding that my default setting was comedy.”
This early radio work inspired Sanjeev to join BBC Radio Scotland’s Off the Ball when it started in 1994, which he co-hosted with Tam Cowan and Still Game creator and co-star Greg Hemphill.
The show was soon taken over by current host Stuart Cosgrove, but for Sanjeev it was the spark to ignite his career.
“Now I’m writing comedy, but I’m still doing radio presenting. I was writing with Donny Mcleary – we write Fags, Mags and Bags together now – and we got commissioned to write a thing for Radio Scotland called Shredded Week, which was a listing show,” Sanjeev says.
“The idea was if you go and see one film, go and see this one, but we did it all in character. We presented it as ourselves but for example Donny would do the soaps round-up as the Emperor from Star Wars. It was comedy dressed up as a listings show and that was the first real time I was acting.”
Acting on Shredded Week, followed by his time writing for Greg Hemphill and Ford Kiernan’s sketch show Chewin’ the Fat, is what Sanjeev believes led to his most famous role, shopkeeper Navid Harrid on Greg and Ford’s legendary sitcom, Still Game.
“I was really friendly with Greg and Ford and we’d worked together loads. Navid was always going to be the breakout part.”
Playing Navid wasn’t Sanjeev’s first brush with shopkeeping, however.
“I’ve always been obsessed with shops because my family had one and I used to work in it. I actually wrote a pilot sitcom about shopkeepers for Radio 4 which was never broadcast. I also used to write the Lonely Shopkeeper character for Karen Dunbar on Chewin’ The Fat – that still gets quoted to me.”
Navid is without doubt the country’s most famous – and popular – shopkeeper, something of a badge of honour to Sanjeev.
“When they write my obituary, it’ll be ‘Navid from Still
“Navid celebrates the 95% we have in differences” common instead of the
Game’, and I’m happy with that. He’s such a beautifully written character. I don’t write him, I just play him. I bring openness to the character but Ford and Greg write every single word of it. So I’m quite jealous actually!”
“People feel like they know Navid. They get on with this old fictional character, an Asian, Muslim guy in his mid-60s, and they like him. That can break a lot more barriers than any number of anti-racist policies.
“Sometimes comedy can be a real Trojan Horse and I think what Navid does is celebrate the 95% we have in common instead of the five per cent that’s different.”
After playing such a popular character on one of
Scotland’s biggest programmes, Sanjeev gets a lot of attention day-to-day – often about Navid’s wife, Meena.
“I get ‘where’s Meena?’ shouted at me a lot,” Sanjeev says. “I remember playing five-a-side football and I heard from behind the fence a brilliant Navid impression – ‘Meena!’ – and there was an wee boy, ginger hair and freckles, I said ‘was that you?’ He was like ‘aye, I’ll do it again,’ so he did it again and nailed it!”
Sometimes, these encounters can happen in the strangest of the places, in the strangest of ways.
“I got chased in Ikea once by a guy. I was picking stuff up and I saw him running along the aisle trying to catch me and he ran up saying ‘mate, I’ve got my wife on the phone. Do me a favour and call her a lazy boot like Navid does.’ So he gives me the phone and I say ‘lazy boot’ and I gave him his phone back!”
“I’m really proud that people like Navid,” says Sanjeev, “people say ‘he’s my hero’ and you have to check yourself and say, ‘what, a shopkeeper in his 60s, who wears mostly polyester and a beard you could hide a badger in, he’s your hero?’ But it’s lovely, and so I’ll never ever underestimate the impact the character’s had. I owe Ford and Greg so much for that, for writing it and casting me in that part.”
Still Game originally aired on the BBC from 2002 until 2007. Following a seven-year hiatus, the show triumphantly returned as a live performance at Glasgow’s Hydro arena in 2014. It was so popular that it returned to the Hydro in 2016 and 2019 for two further sell-out runs.
“I still can’t believe it happened. I’ll drive past the Hydro and say ‘I’ve played in that.’ I’ve seen Prince there! I lie to people and say I used the same dressing room as Prince, I’ve no idea if that’s true or not but I’m sticking to the story!”
Despite the prestige of the gig, Sanjeev didn’t let playing to a 13,000 strong audience go to his head.
“I got a standing ovation, and I got a blue top milk cereal” for the kids’
“The usual script was, we’d do the show and then we’d have like an hour in a wee room with some warm Budweiser and some Pringles. The occasional celebrity would hang out for a bit. I don’t drink, I would just drive there and drive back. One Thursday night, I got back home about midnight and my missus asked how it went and I said ‘really well, I got a standing ovation, and I got a blue top milk for the kids’ cereal in the morning. That keeps you grounded!”
Not content with starring in just one of Scotland’s most popular programmes, since 2015 Sanjeev has played AJ in BBC Scotland soap River City.
“I’ve always felt like a Johnny-come-lately because I never trained as an actor and fell into it in my mid 20s.
“My character’s a bit of an idiot, but he will occasionally get to do straighter stuff. When I’m given that heavy lifting, I sometimes think ‘oh god, I’m going to get shown up here,’ because I know I can do comedy, I was never entirely sure that I could do straight drama but I have learned that.”
Sanjeev is best known for his vast array of TV and radio work, but he has also dabbled in music over the years. What started out as a sketch in his head about two love-struck tennis players became a song that he’s performed onstage in Glasgow and London.
“I was talking to a friend, Jan Burnett, he’s in a band called Spare Snare. There was a soup of ideas going on in my head, and when Jan got in touch, that was a message from the cosmos that this should be a song. So I went ahead and wrote the lyrics, it ended up being 13 minutes long and it’s called The Ballad of SW19,” says Sanjeev.
“I’ve done a few more songs with Jan. We’ve performed them live a couple of times, and that’s been an interesting departure. I’m mainly doing spoken word, but I’ll occasionally break out into Nick Cave – I’ve got a bit of a low voice. Think Nick Cave and Tony Bennett, but not a good version of either!”
What’s next for Sanjeev – more music, comedy or straight acting? He’s not quite sure yet, but thinks it might be time to broaden his horizons even further.
“Outside Scotland I don’t have that same profile, so it might be time to establish myself beyond Scotland, spread my wings a wee bit.”
Keep your eyes peeled for Sanjeev’s next role – whatever it is, it’s sure to be pure dead brilliant.