Nishant “Nish” Kumar, 37, was born in south London. He discovered comedy when he performed in revue shows while studying English literature and history at Durham University. He’s twice been nominated for best show at the Edinburgh comedy awards. Alongside his critically acclaimed standup career, he’s hosted satirical BBC Two series The Mash Report (which was cancelled after four series) and starred in Sky’s Hold the Front Page with fellow comic Josh Widdicombe. He now co-hosts weekly political podcast Pod Save the UK with journalist Coco Khan.
What’s the premise of your new podcast?
It’s a British political podcast but made by Americans. A bunch of former Barack Obama staffers started a podcast network called Crooked Media, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Trump’s nickname for the entire press. They’ve been doing Pod Save America, which is very successful. This is a British sister show, hosted by me and Coco Khan, two people trying hard to keep their faith in the political process. Against our better judgment and all available evidence, we still believe in the power of politics to improve people’s lives. The tone is hopefully going to be justified optimism.
It’s as much about grassroots activists as politicians, isn’t it?
We’ll talk to people at the forefront of getting things done. People engaged in direct action or striking. Protest is a huge part of a healthy functioning democracy, so we’ll celebrate that. Across the press, there’s a surprising level of contempt for protesters, which is strange. Especially when what they’re protesting about tends to be us all not burning to death in an inferno.
Has Westminster politics become a turn-off for many people?
The popular perception of politics is two men with similar haircuts arguing with each other in a velvet room. It’s so much more than that. The foundation of the NHS and the welfare state transformed the lives of people in this country. Why can’t we do that again? Why have we given up on the idea of positive change over the past decade? A string of incompetent governments have provided solutions to the wrong problems. Brexit is the ultimate example. Rather than solving this country’s problems, it made them considerably worse. I can’t imagine if you’re sat in a two-hour lorry queue at Dover, chucking a bottle of your own piss out into the Kent countryside, that you think everything is tickety-boo.
The US original brought Obama out of retirement for an hour-long interview. Who are your dream guests?
I’d love to get a Ouija board and have a chat with Clement Attlee or Nye Bevan. Failing that, there are lots of interesting thinkers around at the moment: Ha-Joon Chang is writing great books about economics and inequality; Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote a great book about race.
Who’s the UK version of Obama? Tony Blair?
That feels like a poor swap! Tony Blair increasingly resembles the supervillain in an 80s action film. Or an ageing rock drummer. He looks like he filled in for Keith Moon for a spell.
Are you a podcast listener yourself?
Massively. I’m a first-wave podcast listener. When I had temp data entry jobs in, like, 2007 and 2008, I’d structure my whole week around the podcasts coming out. My Monday to Friday was based around Marc Maron, The Bugle and Guardian Football Weekly. It’s an unusually intimate relationship and you form odd bonds with them. I still listen to those three. I also really enjoy Slow Burn, Brett Goldstein’s Films to Be Buried With and, against my better judgment, Off Menu. Those two clowns talking about sandwiches.
Do you worry for the future of the BBC?
I do, just in terms of the political pressure on it. Whatever my own experience with it, you’ll never hear a bad word from me about the existence of the corporation. I think public broadcasting is essential. The BBC is a global kitemark of quality in every fucking country apart from this one, where everyone moans about it. No organisation makes good decisions with a loaded gun pointed at its temple. Ultimately, I don’t think Gary Lineker tweeting is a threat to the future of the BBC but I’m very interested in how Richard Sharp was appointed as its chairman. That’s a much more serious question.
What did you learn about journalism from making Sky series Hold the Front Page?
That it’s fucking hard! Local newspaper journalists are really good at their jobs. It didn’t surprise me at all when Liz Truss did that round of interviews with local radio stations and got absolutely flame-grilled.
As an active Twitter user, how do you feel the platform has changed since Elon Musk’s takeover?
It never ceases to amaze me, people’s ability to ruin a perfectly good idea. Imagine buying Twitter and your first port of call being: “Let’s get the Nazis back.” I’m from the generation that’s been through the cycle of social media sites. We started with MySpace and Bebo, then graduated to Twitter. I haven’t joined TikTok because I find the idea of it exhausting. I feel like Jeff Goldblum in the second Jurassic Park film. It always starts well but ends with screaming and running. It’s quite a serious problem that a website can become pretty central to people’s lives, then just be bought by a man who’s basically trying to stop people calling him “Apartheid Clyde” or making fun of his weird flat face.
Do you think you’re funniest when you’re angriest?
Maybe. There’s something funny about me being angry because my voice sounds stupid when it’s raised. I don’t have this gravelly baritone that becomes rolling thunder; I have this suppressed nasal squawk that becomes a pungent whistle when provoked.
How do you feel about Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman?
Not positive at all. I don’t even think it’s a victory for representation. It’s perfectly possible for a brown person to be racist to other brown people. The symbolism of Sunak and Braverman is troubling. Two south Asians have reached the apex of the UK political establishment but consistently thrown other minorities under the bus. What’s the lesson here? That if you’re willing to enthusiastically regurgitate racist misinformation, there’s success for you in British politics?
How do you rate Keir Starmer’s electoral prospects?
His tactic seems to be say nothing. What concerns me is I’m not sure what Starmer’s Labour party stands for. He’s defined himself by being not Boris Johnson. It’s interesting that Johnson was such a bad PM, both the leader of the opposition and one of his successors have made capital from distancing themselves from him. He’s sort of this airborne toxic event in British politics. He was so bad that people have sort of forgotten about Liz Truss, which is a shame. Whenever Jeremy Hunt talks about making tough choices because there’s a hole in the public finances, I have to ask: who blasted that hole? Starmer has to give people a positive vision to vote for. The Conservatives are eminently beatable but having a sense of what a Labour government looks like would be pretty handy.
How are comedy audiences post-pandemic?
After lockdown, I think a lot of people didn’t really know their alcohol tolerance any more. Also, phone etiquette has dropped off a cliff. So there’s been a sense of people forgetting how to behave but I’m hoping it will slowly right itself. We’re sort of breezing past this terrible two-year collective trauma but there’s always going to be aftershocks. We all need to give each other a break.
And now theatre audiences are a talking point…
I don’t know a huge amount about cocaine – I’ve never consumed it and it’s not my vibe – but apparently an influx of cheap cocaine has flooded the UK. Are people doing coke at West End musicals? Getting gakked out of their skulls in the bogs during the interval at Les Misérables? I’d love to know.
How do you relax when you’re not working?
Listen to hip-hop and see live music. I’ve seen both Kendrick Lamar and the band Big Thief three times in the last year. So I guess what I do with my spare time is repeatedly go and see the same musicians, over and over again. I also play guitar badly.
Pod Save the UK is available on all major podcast platforms, with video episodes available to stream on YouTube
