Romesh Ranganathan has admitted that while he has grown more at ease with fame, he still gets anxious whenever new projects are released — and at home his wife and children remain distinctly unimpressed.
The comedian, 46, is launching a new podcast, The Romesh Ranganathan Show, which mixes celebrity interviews with a weekly appearance from his mother Shanthi, who has become a fan favourite through his previous TV and radio work. But even with a CV that spans hit stand-up tours, BBC Radio 2, BAFTA-winning panel shows and prime-time presenting gigs, he confessed the act of unveiling something new continues to tie him up in knots.
“I really enjoy making stuff but I don’t really enjoy it coming out,” he told The Standard. “You want people to like it but that’s the most anxiety-inducing part of the job really. I would love a world in which you do all this stuff, but it gets put in a vault and then released after you die. That would be my favourite. But we definitely enjoyed doing them and it’s exactly the sort of thing that I wanted to do, so in that way you’re happy — you can stand or fall by it.”
He laughed that he is not always convinced by praise from fans. “When somebody comes up to you and they really like something it does feel amazing, but I don’t mind if they don’t mean it. As long as they say it, I don’t mind. I think you can tell if somebody means it or they don’t.”
Ranganathan also addressed his relationship with fame, saying: “I do like being famous – well, being famous is a bit of a byproduct of what I do and the truth is that you’ve got to have a bit of a profile to sell tour tickets and it’s something I’ve got more comfortable with.” But his wife, who shies away from the spotlight, struggles to understand why strangers are keen to stop him in the street. “I’d say my wife finds me being recognised… she’s quite shy and she can’t understand why anybody would want a photo with the thing that sits on the sofa.”
His children are equally unawed. “I think my kids are at that stage where they find everything I do embarrassing,” he said. “Whenever I’m doing something cool, or what they consider to be cool, they don’t understand why anybody else would want to do that with me. We’ve got Loyle Carner on the podcast and my eldest son loves Loyle Carner. When I said to him we’ve got Loyle Carner on the podcast, he said: ‘Why would he want to do that with you?’ It was almost rather than having increased respect for me, he had slightly less respect for Loyle Carner.”
The podcast, which takes his name “because that’s the only thing we could think to call it,” is deliberately looser and more intimate than his TV or radio projects.
“The kind of interviews I guess are funny chats but you also get something indepth out of them,” he explained. “What I think is good about this format is you can have a much looser chat, it’s a different kind of thing to seeing somebody on a TV show. So you’re trying to open them up and get as much as you can out of them and also have a laugh with them as well.
“Then, alongside that, the second part of The Romesh Ranganathan Show is I have a weekly catch-up with my mum where we reflect on how the interview went. My mum voice-notes questions into the guests regardless of how well she might know who they are or not. And then we take listener dilemmas and try and answer them.”
Guests include Paloma Faith, Jameela Jamil and Jamie Redknapp, with Ranganathan revealing his dream list features Kendrick Lamar and US comic Bill Burr. “I supported Bill Burr on tour years ago and it didn’t go well,” he admitted. “Normally I’d go, ‘remember I supported you on tour?’ But I’m hoping I can convince him it was just a different brown guy — maybe pin it on Nish Kumar — and then hopefully he will come on.”
Ranganathan, who insists stand-up will always be his anchor, added: “There will come a time where people don’t want to see me doing stuff anymore and I think at that time I’ll still be doing stand-up in a pub for like five people. I love doing stand-up so much I’ll still be doing that. I think just chatting to people — everything I do is a different way of chatting to people — so I’m hoping this podcast will continue for a long time.”
You can listen to The Romesh Ranganathan Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
