Nish Kumar is a comedian best known for his hilarious(ly unsuccessful) performance on Taskmaster, and his impassioned and chaotic political rants. It felt fitting, therefore, that this interview was organised in the middle of an in-vacuation ordered by Cambridge Police at the end of a performance of his tour, Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. His demeanour during the interview also followed this pattern: animated, enthusiastic, and often going off on tangents that end up being a criticism of the government in some sense.

Kumar's first foray into the world of comedy came during his student days at Durham University, where he studied History and English Literature. His initial attempt to join the university’s comedy society during his first year didn’t go quite as planned: “I didn’t get in the first time”, he recalls with a wry smile. Encouraged by them to audition the next year, he “went back, got in”, kicking off his journey in comedy alongside a band of like-minded amateurs.

 “We took it incredibly seriously. We’d miss lectures – not that I can advocate that officially – but, in a sense, I’m sort of pleased we did."

Looking back, Kumar describes university as the “perfect time” to experiment with comedy. “We took it incredibly seriously,” he says. “We’d miss lectures – not that I can advocate that officially – but, in a sense, I’m sort of pleased we did. It gave me one of the most vocational university experiences possible.”

His comedy troupe, The Durham Revue, threw themselves into the craft, writing and performing sketch shows, designing their own posters, and even flyering for their gigs. The pinnacle of their efforts? Taking their show to the Edinburgh Fringe – a crash course, he says, in what a career in comedy truly entails. “We were largely doing gigs to people we were friends with at university, but we did actually have to go to Edinburgh and do all of our shows.” This mix between performing in a “protected, isolated environment” at university, and travelling to Scotland to perform to strangers was a transformative experience.

His first experience of stand-up was down to two of his friends in the sketch group, Ed Gamble, who also found fame as a stand-up comedian, and is currently performing his tour Hot Diggity Dog, and Tom Neenan, who was the lead writer for Nish’s show The Mash Report. They hosted a stand-up night in a bar in Durham, at which Nish performed, and it kickstarted his comedic trajectory. “It was great. I’m very grateful for that as an experience that I think allowed me to start this career.”

“if I ever left one [of my setlists] on the bus, I’d look like sort of a psychopath”

Nish Kumar is no stranger to the comedic culture wars. After the BBC cancelled his satire show The Mash Report in 2021, many speculated that it was because of the show’s (and Nish’s) political viewpoint, and The Spectator criticised its “liberal sanctimony and woke hectoring”. In the light of the cancellation of this show, and others like Mock The Week, we discussed the vitality of the current comedy scene.

According to Kumar, the state of comedy and entertainment is “perilous at the moment”. He highlights how these cancellations show that the television industry has “taken away a lot of the shows that you would use to blood new comedians in”, meaning that new talents “have to kind of manufacture their own opportunities” through social media.

On social media, he reflects that while “there’s this idea of increased democratisation” through much faster access to the audience, it is also “a bit of a smoke screen” because “social media companies are still owned and operated by oligarchs and billionaires”, and so, success is more about “whether or not you can successfully game the algorithm”. Kumar also points out that social media is “inflating some real mediocrity”, “artificially energis[ing]” people like Tony Hinchcliffe (who was a speaker at one of Donald Trump's final campaign rallies at Madison Square Gardens), who have now become “an opening act for fascism”.

Over the years, Kumar has been criticised by both strangers and friends alike over his choice to focus on very bleak, political topics for his comedy, rather than more relatable, apolitical observations. He admits that “if I ever left one [of my setlists] on the bus, I’d look like sort of a psychopath”. Whilst he does like the “technical challenge” of trying to get people to laugh “at 90 minutes of comedy about the worst subjects imaginable”, he stresses that the political stuff is “what is obsessing [him]”, and the stuff in his show always reflects “the constant churn of things that [he’s] thinking about”. Kumar sums up his comedic philosophy by saying “I think fridges are fine. I think aeroplane food is broadly bad, and I think the gender binary is a prison that’s trapping all of us.”

“I think fridges are fine. I think aeroplane food is broadly bad, and I think the gender binary is a prison that’s trapping all of us.”

Kumar’s derisive attitude towards the Tories has been made clear over the years. In one episode of the show Hold the Front Page, co-hosted with Josh Widdicombe, Nish runs down the street towards Boris Johnson’s motorcade shouting “you fucking c*nt”. Whilst there was less running during our interview, his convictions (and language) were no less strong. He expressed incredulity in the interview about characters like Dominic Cummings and Gavin Williamson, saying of the latter: “Why is [he] allowed to do anything?”

The hyper-speed pace of politics is crushing for many of us, and no less so for those in comedy. Talking about how David Davis “dominated [his] life for about three months”, Kumar reflects on how strange it is that events in 2018 feel like they took place “100 years ago”. Despairing at the state of international politics, he acknowledges the “sticky wicket” his generation inherited politically, but stressed that our generation’s global landscape, particularly as regards climate change, is worse. “There’s a fight coming, one way or another […] If we don’t act soon, we’re in irreversible trouble”, he warned.

Despite an often bleak political landscape, we discuss the politicians giving Kumar some hope in these tumultuous times, and he stresses the importance of not disenchanting people with politics by only discussing the bad, as that “is where fascism really thrives”. In particular, he highlights Rosena Allin-Khan, Nadia Whittome, Josh Babarinde, Mhairi Black, and Carla Denyer, the last of which was at Durham University at the same time as him. Self-deprecatingly saying that their two careers have been political, but “one helpful, and the other, me”, he reflects on the important though unenviable job of politicians, who are “absolutely essential to the functioning of society”.

In his current tour, he is upfront with how his therapist warned him against discussing traumatic unprocessed memories on stage, saying that re-telling unprocessed memories can re-traumatise you. When I ask him more broadly about the effects that comedy can have on mental health, he recounts conversations with his therapist about the destigmatising power of stand-up, and how a person standing in front of 1000 people talking about their mental health problems, then “at least one person in the audience might see that and go - ‘Okay, I feel more comfortable talking about this.’”