BBC star Romesh Ranganathan has admitted his early stand-up comedy was racist.
The comedian, who grew up in Crawley, West Sussex, with his Sri Lankan parents, said of his early jokes: “Do you know what, so much of that material was from this joke book I had at the time and in that joke book was loads of racist jokes. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Asked in the Out for Lunch podcast with restaurant critic Jay Rayner whether the jokes were anti-Irish, he said: “It was so bad. But it didn’t occur to me at the time.”
Romesh, 42, added: “I think the truth is, I thought my dad’s accent was funny.
“I just basically did it in my dad’s accent. Which I gave no reason for. I don’t know if I felt that racism would be more acceptable coming from an immigrant?
“It is… the first time I have reflected on that and I have got to say I am not proud of it.”
The dad of three, whose shows include The Ranganation and The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, says the routine he delivered as a child in the 1980s helped him triumph at a Pontins holiday park talent contest.
He said: “I won. Turns out racism pays. The truth is people just couldn’t believe that a kid of that age was doing stand-up. I won sheerly by dint of novelty factor.”
In his 2018 memoir Straight Outta Crawley, Romesh described his late father, an accountant, as
a “Sri Lankan Del Boy”.
He recalled of the time he went to jail: “We went from living in a semi-detached house, Dad doing well, me and my brother at private school… a few months later, Dad’s in prison, I’m in a bed-and-breakfast with my mum and brother, and I’m moving to a state school in one of the worst areas.”
The comic says he has experienced racism throughout his life, including being spat on at school and “jumped by a load of skinheads” at university.
He said he had suffered “brutal, horrible” racist abuse since finding TV fame and added: “And then there’s the ‘I wonder why Romesh was booked on this show?’ comments, and the insinuation is that I’m a token booking, because I’m Asian. There’s loads of that.”
