Why is Nish Kumar such a bete noir for indignant rightwingers in all places? Everyone hates him, he cries from the stage tonight, in a present that takes inventory of his life as a partisan political comedian who has brown pores and skin. Its case examine is a 2019 charity gig (suppose “millionaires in ballrooms”) the place Kumar, anti-Brexit gags blazing, had a bread roll thrown at him earlier than being booed off stage. The incident, a lot embellished within the press, triggered dying threats, which in flip prompted a reckoning for Kumar along with his brittle psychological well being.
This will likely sound like a extra sobering present than you’d count on from Kumar. But it surely isn’t. It’s extra private, maybe – he’s seldom earlier than spoken about his psychological fragility, not least as a result of (as he says right here) he was completely in denial about it. However the keynote continues to be uproarious and self-mocking, because the 36-year-old holds himself up for relentless ridicule: because the comedian self-sabotaging in entrance of his “pre-gout” viewers; because the messianic ego fantasising his personal tragic assassination; and because the shmuck attempting to impress folks by pretending to have learn Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Save for Kumar’s opening 10 minutes, which leathers the federal government for its “incompetence, corruption and beliefs”, and takes specific purpose on the fable of Rishi Sunak’s competence, we’re not in a world of Mash Report-style topical satire. As a substitute, the present unspools its story of the gig-gone-wrong and its aftermath by means of “a foolish window on to one thing extra critical” – particularly, how non-white folks, public figures included, at the moment are being screened for his or her supposed anti-Britishness.
The set has its much less efficient moments. A routine in regards to the inanity of nationwide anthems is over-illustrated with a surfeit of caterwauling examples. Too many jokes, irrespective of their topic, attain for knob-gag punchlines. Possibly that stems from an nervousness that his critical considerations would possibly capsize the comedy – which is unwarranted, however comprehensible. Actually, Kumar’s chilling argument about our slide in direction of nativism, and the insights he affords into life on the receiving finish of dying threats, will linger even after the appreciable laughter subsides.
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