Nish Kumar: ‘I have not got over Brexit’

The standup and TV host on how British politics broke his heart, Question Time abuse and why he’s the Bob Dylan of comedy

When Nish Kumar first made his mark as a solo comic, his material was mild-mannered, culturally engaged and political with a small “p”. It was also often, as the Guardian stated in a 2015 preview, “shockingly inoffensive”. Former homely topics included sleep, folk songs and his pessimistic mum. Scroll forward half a decade, however, and no one is accusing the former Edinburgh award nominee of being mellow. In a 2017 interview, he described a racist heckle he received while on stage. “Last year, on the night of Brexit, a guy told me to ‘go home’ while I was on stage, and that was, for want of a better term, a Falling Down moment for me where I thought: ‘Fuck this.’ The end of that show became quite anger-driven.” The fury has stuck with him since. Not that it is always easy.

“There’s a Seinfeld episode, where he talks about why he can’t get angry, because his voice rises to a comedic pitch and no one takes him seriously – and that’s true of me, too,” says the Croydon-raised standup. “One of my friends said: ‘I don’t know how you maintain that level of anger every night.’ But everyone I know is as furious as me; I don’t know how the rest of them are coping. I’m lucky to have an outlet.”