NISH ON HAVING A BREAD ROLL THROWN AT HIM

Nick: “Now as a lot of great meals begin with a bread course. And when we are doing our Nish research, we found out the bread roll incident.”

Nish: “I am umbilically connected for the rest of my life to bread rolls. It's a tragedy because I love bread. Somebody threw a bread roll at me when I was doing a comedy gig.”

Nick: “Disrespect.”

Nish: “It was absolute Dish-respect. It really was the act of wanton Dish-respect. Yeah. Yeah. So now occasionally- I don't think I've ever talked about this before, but so it, it happened and it was in the news, and then maybe two weeks later, I was doing the best man speech at my friend Tom Neenan's wedding, who is a great comedian and like, we went to university together, and he was the head writer on the Mash Report, he's- I've worked with him for years and years and years, and I was best man at his wedding, and the comedian Ahir Shah threw his bread roll at me. But unfortunately, Ahir Shah is not particularly one of our more physically capable specimen specimens. He missed and hit James Acaster in the face.”

NISH ON HIS SHOW HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

Nish: “It was really a really fun show to do. So Josh Widdicombe and I went and worked for six local newspapers all around the country. And Josh is actually a qualified journalist, like, when I first met Josh, he was actually working on the sports desk at The Guardian, and he had done the proper qualification, but it turned out he'd not paid attention to any of it. And I said to him, oh, so you must know how to do shorthand, and he said, ‘Oh no, the lecture was at 9:00am on a Wednesday so I just never went,’ yeah. And it, it was really great fun. I'm a stand-up comedian, you travel around the country a lot of the time, and you only see it through a particular prism. But when you get to go and work at local newspapers, you get to meet people, it's an interesting way to like, interact with a part of the country, and also the people who work at those newspapers are amazing."

NICK AND NISH ON THE MADNESS OF THE ONE SHOW

Nick: “I love a local news story though. Like I really love it, and I guess like The One Show, sort of has that - feels like it has those sort of like random stories, like, ‘Let's meet this lady who's got great eyebrows.’”

Nish: “The One Show turn… like - and you know exactly what I'm talking about, the, the tonal shift on The One Show like that- I've seen it up close and it's like watching Van Gogh paint, like the way that they can go from a story about somebody who had a botched blood transfusion to a cat that looks like Bob Holness, it's like, it is unbelievable. You get whiplash from watching it. And it is also responsible for my two favourite pieces of television of all time. One is Mel Brooks commenting on how weird the show is, and the other is the Cookie Monster wearing a poppy. I think the Cookie Monster wearing a poppy is like, if you wanted to explain to somebody, this is what The One Show is, it's the Cookie Monster paying respect - to the people who died in World War I and World War II.”

NISH ON EATING A BRAIN CURRY

Angela: “Yeah, but you see, I think you're saying that, but you've adventurous. I mean, I read your dad fed you a brain curry.”

Nish: “Yeah, yeah, I've eaten brain curry, yeah. Listen, I'm one of the great eaters of our age. I'm one of the great eaters. Yeah. I had brain masala in a- like in a restaurant in Mumbai that was like a sort of food stand. It's called Bademiya’s, and it's like, it was like a food stand behind the Taj Hotel, and it's like some of the best food I've ever eaten in my life. The thing with Mumbai and Delhi particularly, it's like the street food is insane but it's important to go with people who live there because they'll be like, ‘That's gonna give you diarrhoea. That's gonna give you diarrhoea. That stand, the guy washes his hands.’

Bang, you're in That street food in Mumbai and Delhi is like, it's kind of unbeatable. And Bademiya’s, the guy is incredible ‘cause like, he was a cook at this restaurant, he asked for more money and the guy was like, ‘I'm not gonna give you more money. People come here for the venue, not your food.’ And he then opened a stand - you know, like the spite store series of Curb your Enthusiasm? He basically invented the spite store. Like he opened a stand next to it and obviously everybody went to the stand because what people want is the food.”

NISH ON HIS FAMILY RUNNING RESTAURANTS

Angela: “So you never worked in any of the restaurants when you were a kid? You weren't farmed out?”

Nish: “No, I was too, I was too young. My granddad ran two Indian restaurants, and then his last job before he retired in like the early nineties, was he actually ran a proper greasy spoon. Which I see as like a real victory for the integration of an immigrant community. If you could go from like running curry houses to running a greasy spoon in Leicester, and that- but that was probably in the kind of early nineties, when I was about seven or eight. All my first birthdays were in sort of Indian restaurants. 

NISH ON HIS FAMILY’S TV SHOW IDEAS FOR HIM

Nick: “That could be on the next show. So like you trying to remake your gran's curry.”

Nish: “This is the thing like- ‘cause my, my parents are constantly suggesting television show ideas for me. It's a devastating indictment of me as a person because they're always like, is there a TV show where you could learn how to drive and learn how to cook? And what you realise is, what they're suggesting is, is there an infrastructure by which you could become a functioning adult?

Is there any string of televisual systems- they've given up saying, could you change? And they've now jumped to, is it possible for a television company to pay you to eventually scrape the bare minimum of what people expect from a - let's not be around the bush – thirty-seven-year old-adult.”

NISH ON HIS NEW PODCAST, PODS SAVE THE UK

Nick: “Let's talk about Pods Save the UK, which is a brand new political podcast.”

Nish: “At last, a male comedian has a podcast. For too long male comedians have been boxed out of podcasting.”

Nick: “It's been a long time. Tell us how it all came about this show, because of course, you know, you’re a political comedian, you, you have an opinion.”

Nish: “Oh, I've got an opinion. And the brazen self-confidence to share it with anyone who will listen. I got approached by Crooked Media, which is an American podcasting company that was founded by ex-Obama staffers who started a show called Pods Save America, and I was at one of their live shows in London and somebody dropped out of the second show and they needed a replacement, and a friend of mine from America called me and said, ‘Are you free this evening to do the show?’ And I was like, not only am I free- I'm literally sat in the hall. Yeah, right now. And so I did the show with them and so I had- I knew them,

And then a couple of years later they sort of contacted me and said, ‘We're thinking of launching a British show,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that's a good idea,’ and they said, ‘We’re thinking of you hosting it,’ and I was like, ‘That's a terrible idea. You should get someone who knows more stuff.’ But no, they were pretty hellbent on it being me in spite of my own objections.

I host it with my friend Coco Khan who's a journalist, so- ‘cause I sort of thought, I need to get somebody qualified. We're trying to talk to as many people who understand what's going on as much as possible. You know, I- in spite of some things that may or may not have been said by prominent members of the government, I don't think that this country has had enough of experts. And so, I think as much as possible, we wanna have people who can understand things, explain them to us, and we, there's no point in us pretending to actually be experts.

You know, the great thing about the Pod Save America guys is they worked in the White House, they- so when they talk about trying to pass a debt ceiling bill, they know how the mechanics of that is gonna work. What we are trying to do is say, look, we are people who live in this country, we're interested in politics, we are engaged with it, can somebody explain to us what in the name of God is going on? Yeah, what the name of please God is going on, and how things could possibly improve. I think like for a long time, like, I've obviously made a lot of jokes about the news, and I'm interested now in seeing if we can find people who could offer some solutions to the problems that I've written jokes about.”

NUDE WITH NISH

Nick: “Can we talk about- we don't really know what this is, but our wonderful producer Claire told us about Nude with Nish.”

Nish: “Nude with Nish is a fictitious TV show that was created by the listenership of a different podcast called The Bugle. A few years ago- I have young cousins who got to an age where they were independently able to access the internet, and at this point, they found out that I had a Wikipedia page. Quite soon after they found out I had a Wikipedia page, they found out it was possible for anyone to edit Wikipedia. They subsequently played merry hell on my Wikipedia page and said that I was like, best known as Madam Lilly, which is the name that they've called me since the older one was four years old, and said that I weighed 10,000 pounds and every morning I stick a potato up my own butt. So some of it was true, yeah.

Listen, a stopped clock is right twice a day. But then I mentioned this on Andy's Zaltzman's show, The Bugle, of which I'm a sort of a frequent contributor, and I sort of forgot that the listenership of that podcast is both engaged and tech savvy, and so they did so much defacing of my Wikipedia page that my Wikipedia page can now only be changed by approved Wikipedia moderators. It's like a bunch of like prime ministers and presidents and me that have to have their Wikipedia pages protected, and mine don't need to be protected from cyber-attacks, they need to be protected from the listenership of a podcast that I'm a contributor to. One of the pieces of there were various fake TV shows that I was said to have hosted, and one of them was Nude with Nish, an all-naked chat show, and so that unfortunately now that is forever linked to me on the internet. Well now they can't, cause my Wikipedia page is like Fort Knox.”

NISH ON THE SUCCESS OF HIS FRIENDS’ PODCASTS

Nish: “‘Nish, for a Waitrose goodie bag all you have to do is answer this question: you are friends with Ed Gamble. You are friends with James Acaster. Are you secretly annoyed at how successful Off Menu is?’ And also underneath it says, ‘Because we are.’”

Angela: “Give us time, we're coming for those two.”

Nish: “I- yeah, no, I'm thrilled -a) I'm thrilled that it occupies the two of them ‘cause I worry what they would do with too much free time. The only thing that I'm furious about, and I have expressed this to both of them, is that they're doing the Royal Albert Hall live, and for some reason- I would be happy with them doing the O2, but for some reason the Royal Albert Hall, where Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan performed. The idea of those two clowns asking people if they wanna eat papadams or bread on the stage at the Royal Albert Hall has pushed me over the edge.”

Nick: “Like people watching that in like a royal balcony is funny. Like, in a box.”

Nish: “There’s people gonna be sat in a royal balcony. The last time I went to the Royal Albert Hall, I saw Ravi Shankar perform, like, do you know what I mean? Like these are like, these are- Icons. Legends of music- who have moved music forward and done things that challenge our perceptions of what art can and can't be. And now James Acaster's gonna be there going, ‘I'm a genie. Do you like sandwiches?’” 

Nick: “So, should we all go, yeah? Yeah, we should go.”

Nish: “Oh, I've got my ticket.”

Picture: Howard Shooter