Nick Mohammed is the latest guest on the award-winning podcast Dish, hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett.
In the wide-ranging interview out now Nick Mohammed, who can currently be seen in Taskmaster, talks about school parents trying to befriend him, his kids understanding fame, being friends with the Ted Lasso cast, his childhood and more.
Dish from Waitrose is available on all podcast providers such as this one.
NICK ON SCHOOL PARENTS
NICK GRIMSHAW: Yeah, a little glass of wine. Love that. What was it like for other parents when you're doing the school run and they're like- do you notice that other parents are like trying to befriend you at the school gates?
NICK MOHAMMED: Oh, goodness me. I mean, they might listen to the podcast, so, erm, ha ha…
NICK MOHAMMED: I would say, I would say, Becka notices it more than I do.
NICK MOHAMMED: In that they feel that she's the way in.
ANGELA HARTNETT: You invited ‘round for a lot of suppers?
NICK MOHAMMED: Yeah. It's like, ‘Oh, if Finn wants to come on this play date,’ it's like, ‘Who is this kid, Finn? Do you play with him?’ ‘Nope.’
NICK MOHAMMED: No, no, I'm not, that’s being- that feels very self-aggrandising. No, I think actually, actually, they are very normal and nice.
NICK ON HIS KIDS UNDERSTANDING FAME
NICK MOHAMMED: They do now, and like, and, and they, they find it quite, quite funny, and in fact, we, we used to live in Richmond like ten years before even Ted Lasso, so it was a stomping ground, and then we only moved last year out of Richmond, like not too far away. But, but, it was mad because I would be just regularly do like a jog over Richmond Green and do all my stuff. But it looked like I was hanging out there for people to be like, ‘Hey, it's Nate.’
NICK MOHAMMED: ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’And I'd be like, ‘Hey, oh, I just happened to be here again.’ But we lived there, like we lived there and we shop there and we walk around there, and we’ve got kids going to school there-
NICK MOHAMMED: We were then- we were there relatively recently and they now do walking tours, Ted Lasso walking tours in Richmond.
NICK MOHAMMED: But we, we, I- we were there and then we saw we saw this walking tour like walk past, and Arthur was just like, ‘My dad's in Ted Lasso!’
ANGELA HARTNETT: No!
NICK MOHAMMED: And they went mad, like, these people went mad. But I think they thought it was maybe part of the tour, like part- like we’d planned it, and so they were like-
NICK MOHAMMED: For the walking tour person like who was organising it, she was like, ‘Thank you so much, thank you.’ But it was, it was, it was, it's touching and like, it's it's very rare and I feel so grateful for that show. It has been life changing and I am so grateful, and I see, I saw Jason again like a couple weeks ago and like- and I just keep saying, I just, I just want to say thank you, like, cause it is, it's phenomenal. And like the friends that we've made from that, and it's so nice to have been in a show that has touched people in the way that we just know it has. Because partly of the time it came out and the positive sort of spirit of the show and everything.
NICK ON BEING FRIENDS WITH THE TED LASSO CAST
ANGELA HARTNETT: And it does genuinely feel like, as an obsessive fan on social media about Ted Lasso people, I'm following most of you. You’ll see that, you know, Hannah will go, ‘Oh, happy birthday,’ you know, she'll wish you happy birthday. Not as your, you know, she knows it and everyone does all that. It seems genuinely you guys are friends and mates.
NICK MOHAMMED: Oh, it is. And like I said, a few things before that, and, you know, there's often a sense of camaraderie on set and stuff, but that cast and crew in particular, very special, like what it was very special. And whether it was the subject matter or the pandemic, ‘cause you know, we were filming series two in proper, like COVID restriction time, like we were, we were a bubble basically. And so there was, you know-we had to become like a family really. And they are, you know, everyone's very supportive of each other and everything that they're doing. And that doesn't always happen, you know
NICK ON HIS CHILDHOOD
NICK GRIMSHAW: Was there a moment where you're like, wait, what could I do in my life? And is it acting?
NICK MOHAMMED: Well, acting and all that came really late. I was like twenty-something. So, I, I loved magic from a kid. Like I got a magic set when I was four.
NICK GRIMSHAW: Paul Daniels?
NICK MOHAMMED: Paul Daniels one, yeah. And I loved it, stuck at it, still read like a magic book every day, like still now, you know, one on one- by the side of my bed. Adore magic. And so that was always- so I always enjoyed performing.
NICK MOHAMMED: So I'd do that, and then as soon as I turned like sixteen I'd do like hotels, weddings-
NICK MOHAMMED: -bar mitzvahs, like just do all of it, like yeah. And then as a student used to sort of pay my way by doing like the college events and stuff like that. So I did it for ages. Then I went and started doing a post-grad at Cambridge and, and I got into the Footlights, a sketch group there, and and so went up to Edinburgh Festival for the first time and that was back in, God like 2005 or something
NICK MOHAMMED: Well, that's, that's when I got- I got into sort of comedy sort of through that, ‘cause, and I- but I'd still sort of do tricks, sort of, I sort of used the magic sort of hide behind a bit because I knew I could do magic.
NICK MOHAMMED: Gradually, the trick sort of phased out. But I remember distinctly going up to the festival and because I had to get permission from my supervisor, ‘cause I was doing a PhD and it was being funded, so I said, I'm going to need to take like two months off and he was like, er, okay, fine. And I remember walking out of the Bullard laboratories, I remember just thinking, yeah, I'm just going to go for it.
NICK MOHAMMED: And, I was just really lucky and, you know, again, just surrounded by really nice people, supportive people, like Sarah Solemani, Jonny Sweet, Joe Thomas, Simon Bird, we were all in the same cohort, we were all in the same group. And then I- Caroline Raphael, who was the like head of entertainment or was commissioning comedy at Radio Four at the time, she'd seen my show, you know, she was one of like three people in the audience at the Underbelly in Edinburgh or whatever, and she had just said, oh, I'll get- there's an agent who I know who will come and see it, and that was Hannah Begbie who was a- who was has become United Agents, and I signed with Hannah the year after, and then Hannah's assistant Kitty Laing is now my agent and has been forever. So it's sort of I've never known kind of any different. And that's not to say that suddenly then I was like a working actor and, you know always working, you know, there was a lot of kind of, sort of, you know, it was up and down, but the last sort of five, ten years have been, you know, good and fun, and I, I feel like I feel comfortable calling myself an actor, whereas before I was like, am I?
NICK ON HIS PARENTS SUPPORT WITH HIS MAGICIAN CAREER
NICK MOHAMMED: I think my, my, my dad in particular always liked sort of like the m- like that.
NICK MOHAMMED: And like my mum was just, not that she wasn't supportive, but was I guess, a little bit more sensible, and like, well maybe give yourself like a time limit and if not then. But yeah, I mean it just, I maybe was blindly optimistic. I don't know if that's a good thing, ‘cause I didn't have anyth- there was nothing really to go on and there still isn't, you know, I could not have a job, you know, next week, you know, so you know, I just feel very lucky.
NICK ON WRITING
ANGELA HARTNETT: But are you writing all the time as well?
NICK MOHAMMED: Yeah, yeah.
ANGELA HARTNETT: You continue to do that?
NICK MOHAMMED: And you know, even if that stuff doesn't see light of day for- you know, so I'm writing stuff that will probably not feature in a show until the end of 2025, you know, so it's sort of you kind of- and that's only because it's nice to sort of I guess break up, you know, if you're on an acting job, particularly if it's not something you've written yourself, so it's sort of, you're literally there as a jobbing actor, you do the words and you do your best. But it's quite nice to then break away from that and just do your own thing, which you're completely in control of. No one can judge it. It's not even going to see the light of day for a while. So it's nice to sort of do a mix of both.
NICK GRIMSHAW: When do you write? Is there a time where you're like, this is it, this is the moment, or is it just day- day to day?
NICK MOHAMMED: Well, there's relatively- partly because acting has sort of I've been acting a lot more than I guess I sort of was.
NICK MOHAMMED: An actor. I feel I write a lot on set actually, ‘cause there's so much downtime when filming so I just always have my laptop with me and if there is time, I'll just sort of tinker away or read, re-read stuff and just add little bits, and so sort of by attrition. But I need to spend more time probably sitting down and saying, this is a writing day.
NICK MOHAMMED: But I, but I was listening to, in fact, The Magicians podcast, which is fantastic, if you're into magic, it's called The Magician’s Podcast-
NICK MOHAMMED: Well, The Magician's Podcast Network it’s actually called now, but- and it was an interview with a guy talking about doing magic competitions actually. But he was saying, and I can't, I can't remember how it's specifically related to magic, but he was saying about procrastination actually being, there was a, some study, I think it was done on architects or something and it was actually the architects who procrastinate create actually better things than those who get straight to it.
NICK MOHAMMED: Because there's something in, there's something in, there's something in the kind of just absorbing something completely different and actually sort of subconsciously it kind of, you know, allowing ideas. And I I'm a big, maybe it just sounds like a procrastinating, but I'm a big fan of kind of just allowing something to just sit in the back of your head for a while and like allow it to gestate a little bit, rather than just going hell for leather, okay I’ve just got to get it out on the page.
NICK ON MR SWALLOW
NICK GRIMSHAW: Tell us about your character Mr. Swallow, ‘cause you've been doing Mr. Swallow for what, twenty years of Mr. Swallow?
NICK MOHAMMED: Yeah, I guess so. I mean I first started doing it as a sketch in Footlights, so yeah.
NICK MOHAMMED: So Mr. Swallow- but, well, you know what? It's longer than that because Mr. Swallow is based on my old English teacher, [in Mr. Swallow voice] who just spoke like this.
NICK MOHAMMED: And you know, not to be sort of, feel like I was being progressive in any way because it wasn't conscious, but she was a she, like she, it's, it's, it's quite camp and it's quite, it's northern because I'm from Leeds, but, but it's not, there's no innuendo in it. It's just because I am playing a woman in it.
NICK MOHAMMED: And she just had this, she just had this attitude.
NICK MOHAMMED: And she would do some absolutely- I mean, I don't want to go too- I mean, she sadly passed away, she no lo- and she never knew about it. But you know, I do that impression at school from when I was like fifteen. And she'd do things like, you know, we were learning The Merchant of Venice and she'd be like, and we'd do this thing where it was like, okay, well, it would, she'd divide up the parts and then we'd read it together to kind of get through it. And like, and she'd be like, ‘Right, who wants to play Bassanio?’ No, but she wouldn't look up and she'd be like, ‘I'll do that then. Who wants to play Porsche? I'll do that then.’
NICK MOHAMMED: So, so, so, so then the whole lesson was then her going ‘Bassanio is- in sooth I know not why you're sad. So is it your ship Bassanio?’ And we're like what the hell is going-
NICK MOHAMMED: She was Absolutely crackers. And then one lesson she ca- one lesson she stomped in, she was always dressed in black, long blonde hair, she sort of stomped in and was like, ‘Right, we're having a debate.’ And we were like, ‘Why?’ And she was like, ‘We're going to debate capital punishment.’ It's not on the syllabus. Yeah, she, I won't say-
NICK MOHAMMED: She literally just slammed down these A3 printouts of an infamous serial killer, slapped them down, was like, ‘I think they should have been put to death.’ And like, we're like, ‘Okay…’ And then, and then continued to just sort of like, talk as us as if we would kind of been heckling her.
NICK MOHAMMED: She just had this phenomenal, she was sort of using her position as a teacher to sort of just spout these, this, just as a platform.
NICK MOHAMMED: And it always tickled me and it always made me laugh. And then I just started doing, I was, I was, I was sort of just doing sketches and then occasionally I'd slip into that voice, and it just sort of, for me at least, it made things ten percent funnier.
NICK MOHAMMED: And I just, then the more I did- and I used to do lots of different characters and then that was the one that I could sense was getting the biggest reaction, and then I just started doing- and now I don't do anything else but, but that character.
NICK MOHAMMED: I mean, I sort of, I think in this next touring show I will- and now sadly she has passed away, I will talk actually about the origins of it. But as her, [in Mr. Swallow voice] because I think it's funny to talk as Swallow about her.
NICK MOHAMMED: Like- and it's called Mr. Swallow because she used to [gulps] she used to do that.
NICK MOHAMMED: Quite a lot. She used to sort of swallow, she used to punctuate some of the things she said with like a swallow, like that. And so that, so I’ll just call it, you know, save it on the laptop as Mr. Swallow or whatever.
DISH Nick Mohammed Credit: S:E Creative Studio Chris Blacklay 11.
